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Senator Tim Scott today joined the ranks of GOP candidates hoping to displace Donald Trump as the party’s nominee. America would be better off if one of them could win, but the GOP is no longer a normal political party.

First, here are four new stories from The Atlantic:

Beware of the food that isn’t food. Harlan Crow wants to stop talking about Clarence Thomas. Where living with friends is still technically illegal A firearm-owning Republican’s solutions for gun violence

Thanos From Queens

Tim Scott of South Carolina joined the field of Republican contenders for the GOP presidential nomination today. He’s polling in single digits among primary voters, as are all of the other (so far) declared candidates. Only Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida is managing to get out of the basement—rumors are that he will announce his candidacy this week—and even he is getting walloped by Donald Trump in polls of the Republican faithful.

Scott seems like a classic no-hoper presidential prospect but a strong choice for vice president, which of course is why some weaker candidates run and then bow out (see “Harris, Kamala”). The current GOP field, however, includes at least some politicians who should be credible alternatives to Trump: In any other year, people such as DeSantis, Nikki Haley, and Asa Hutchinson, all current or former governors from the South, would be obvious contenders. Instead, their campaigns are flailing about in limbo while the rest of the field is populated by the likes of the wealthy gadfly Vivek Ramaswamy and the radio-talk-show host Larry Elder.

Of course, in a normal year, a twice-impeached president who has been held liable for sexual abuse would do the decent thing and vanish from public life.

The United States desperately needs a normal presidential election, the kind of election that is not shadowed by gloom and violence and weirdos in freaky costumes pushing conspiracy theories. Americans surely remember a time when two candidates (sometimes with an independent crashing the gates) had debates, argued about national policy, and made the case for having the vision and talent and experience to serve as the chief executive of a superpower. Sure, those elections were full of nasty smears and dirty tricks, but they were always recognizable as part of a grand tradition stretching all the way back to Thomas Jefferson and John Adams—rivals and patriots who traded ugly blows—of contenders fighting hard to secure the public’s blessing to hold power for four years.

Such an election, however, requires two functional political parties. The Republicans are in the grip of a cult of personality, so there’s little hope for a normal GOP primary and almost none for a traditional presidential election. Meanwhile, Republican candidates refuse to take a direct run at Donald Trump and speak the truth—loudly—to his voters; instead, they talk about all of the good that Trump has done but then plead with voters to understand that Trump is unelectable. (Hutchinson, who is unequivocal in his view of Trump, has been an honorable exception here and has called for Trump to drop out.)

The electability argument about Trump is not only amoral, but it also might not even be true: Trump might be able to win again. In normal times, there’s nothing wrong with “electability” arguments. It is hardly the low road, if presented with two reasonable candidates in a primary, to choose the one who can prevail in a general election. But such a choice assumes the existence of  “reasonable” candidates. Instead, some of the Republicans who are running or leaning toward running against Trump are saying, in effect, that Trump really should be the candidate, but he can’t win—instead of saying, unequivocally, that no decent party should ever nominate this man again, whether he can win or not.

Republican contenders are caught in a bind. If they run against Trump, they will likely lose. But if they don’t run against Trump, they will certainly lose—to Trump, and then everyone in America loses. GOP primary candidates want to pick up Trump’s voters without overtly selling them Trump’s lies and conspiracy theories, which is why the “electability” dodge is nothing but pandering and cowardice. Not that any of these hopefuls have tried to lay a punch on Trump: Haley is AWOL—is she even still running?—and DeSantis is busy clomping around with flaming wastebaskets on his feet as he tries to stomp out fires he’s already set.

Tim Scott is an especially vexing case, because he has a life story that should have made him the natural anti-Trump candidate in every way. A religious man who triumphed over poverty, got an education, and became a successful businessman, his life and character are a photo-negative image of Trump’s. And yet, Scott can’t help himself: He’s “thankful” for Trump’s years in office.

None of these Republicans are going to overcome the Thanos from Queens, who, with a snap of his fingers, will soon make half of the GOP field disappear.

These Republicans are likely waiting for a miracle, an act of God that takes Trump out of contention. And by “act of God,” of course, they mean “an act of Fani Willis or Jack Smith.” This is a vain hope: Without a compelling argument from within the Republican Party that Fani Willis and Jack Smith or for that matter, Alvin Bragg, are right to indict Trump—as Bragg has done and Willis and Smith could do soon—and that the former president is a menace to the country, Trump will simply brush away his legal troubles and hope he can sprint to the White House before he’s arrested.

No one is going to displace Trump by running gently. A candidate who takes Trump on, with moral force and directness, might well lose the nomination, but he or she could at least inject some sanity into the Republican-primary process and set the stage for the eventual recovery—a healing that will take years—of the GOP or some reformed successor as a center-right party. DeSantis would rather be elected as Trump’s Mini-Me. (It might work.) Hutchinson has tried to speak up, but too quietly. Haley, like so many other former Trump officials, is too compromised by service to Trump to be credible as his nemesis. Tim Scott is perfectly positioned to make the case, but he won’t.

A Republican who thinks Trump can be beaten in a primary by gargling warm words such as electability is a Republican in denial. Trump is already creating a reality-distortion field around the primary, as he will again in the general election. Is it possible that the GOP base would respond to some fire and brimstone about Trump, instead of from him? We cannot know, because it hasn’t been tried—yet.

Related:

Why outspoken women scare Trump America’s lowest standard

Today’s News

The head of Russia’s Wagner mercenary group has vowed to transfer the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut to the Russian army by June 1. Ukraine insists that the city has not been entirely captured. Arizona, California, and Nevada agreed on a plan to reduce water usage from the drought-stricken Colorado River.   Speaker Kevin McCarthy said U.S.-debt-ceiling talks were on the “right path” ahead of a meeting with President Joe Biden this evening.  

Dispatches

Famous People: Lizzie and Kaitlyn down “Pumptinis” at a live screening of the scariest show on TV.

Explore all of our newsletters here.

Evening Read

Apple TV+

Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon Is a Triumph

By David Sims

David Grann’s nonfiction book Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI is the sprawling story of a criminal investigation undoing a systemic evil. It lays out in riveting detail the mystery of the Osage murders of the 1920s, when dozens of Native Americans were killed in a grand conspiracy to exploit their oil-rich land. Grann digs into the societal phenomenon surrounding the Osage, many of whom became ultra-wealthy after generations of displacement and persecution. But the book’s through line is the federal investigator Tom White, who helped solve the murders on the orders of a young J. Edgar Hoover.

Martin Scorsese’s adaptation, which premiered at this year’s Cannes Film Festival and will be released in theaters this October, takes a very different narrative approach.

Read the full article.

More From The Atlantic

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Culture Break

Illustration by The Atlantic. Source: Getty.

Read. The Princess Casamassima, a novel written more than 100 years ago (and originally serialized by The Atlantic!), is a political novel that could’ve been written today.

Listen. The first podcast episode of our new podcast series How to Talk to People, which explores the barriers to good small talk.

Play our daily crossword.

P.S.

I’m concerned about events at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, where the Russians have apparently dug in for a fight. I’m especially concerned that the Kremlin, facing a Ukrainian counteroffensive, might be planning a nuclear disaster in retaliation for losing more ground. That hasn’t happened yet, and I promise I’ll come back to this if events change.

In the meantime, however, the danger at the Ukrainian nuclear installation has jogged loose a memory of a lost bit of music from the 1980s. After the 1986 disaster at Chernobyl—also in Ukraine—the New Zealand musician Shona Laing released a song in 1987 titled “Soviet Snow.” (You can see the video here.) Given my, ah, heterodox musical tastes, you might be surprised that I would like something with such obvious environmental advocacy. (Don’t tell the other young Ronald Reagan voters, but I also bought Bruce Cockburn’s Stealing Fire album in 1984, and I still like it.) There is an urgency and panic in the song, a strong New Wave feel over Laing’s plea:

Are we wide awake? Is the world aware?

Radiation over Red Square

Creeping on to cross Roman roads

I remember feeling a great unease hearing that song the first time. Thirty-six years later, I am feeling that same unease once more.

— Tom

Katherine Hu contributed to this newsletter.

Sign up for Kaitlyn and Lizzie’s newsletter here.

Kaitlyn: I saw a good tweet the other day that was like, “Watching Vanderpump Rules makes me so proud to be an American. We’re incredible people. We lead amazing lives.”

Lizzie and I have now watched this program for 10 years and we’re happy to say it. A spin-off of Bravo’s Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, the show was meant to follow the hot, mean employees of Real Housewife Lisa Vanderpump’s West Hollywood restaurant SUR (“Sexy Unique Restaurant”). The first season was filmed before the rise of Instagram and the influencer—lightning in a bottle. Like no other people before or since, these deluded freaks were willing to fight, lie, cheat, steal, and generally humiliate themselves and one another on national television. They were all aspiring actors, models, and pop stars, and in the most tragic way possible. They were back-alley chain-smokers who treated Coors Light as a breakfast beverage and ordered Taco Bell for delivery despite living in Los Angeles. They were pathologically obsessed with the concept of “Boys’ Night” and with bickering near walk-in refrigerators.

For viewers, the thrill was trying to keep up with the always-shifting alliances and contradictions in personality. Once, the guy who everyone claims is the nicest dumped a beer on his girlfriend’s head to get her to stop talking. Later, the woman who everyone claims is the nicest obtained an audio recording of her boyfriend cheating on her and played it over the sound system at their housewarming party. Hero, villain—there has rarely been a difference. James Kennedy, a British DJ who used to refer to himself as “the white Kanye West” and once ended a relationship by spitting on a woman’s apartment door, somehow became one of the most likable people in the group.

Sadly, however, there was no way to avoid the fact that being on an amazing TV show turned these broke, desperate people into rich, boring people. Inevitably, they stopped working at Lisa’s restaurant, bought $2 million houses, and developed a certain level of interest in coming off as normal, which put Vanderpump Rules into a several-year slump from which it looked as though it might never recover. The ninth season was almost entirely about the cast learning to play pickleball.

Lizzie: We were ready to end the infinite pickleball game. We’d had a good run. We considered taking up new hobbies, like fermentation or sobriety. Until, of course, about three months ago, when it all changed. The slump was over. I assume if you have any interest in reading this at all, you already know what happened and I don’t need to rehash it for you. But briefly, for my parents: One of the cast members (Tom Sandoval) cheated on his girlfriend of nine years (Ariana Madix) with another cast member and Ariana’s good friend (Raquel Leviss), the seemingly harmless if somewhat one-dimensional former fiancée of the DJ (James Kennedy) who also dated Sandoval’s ex-girlfriend (Kristen Doute), who, several years ago, accused Sandoval of cheating on her with Ariana. This all came to light in March, after Season 10 had wrapped, when Sandoval was playing a show with his cover band in L.A. His phone was dislodged from his pocket while he was doing splits onstage or something; it landed in Ariana’s lap and revealed incriminating videos of him and Raquel. The rest, as they say, is herstory. (I’m kidding.)

The season was already in the can, but the cameras picked up again just in time to give us this: the second Season 10 finale, titled “#Scandoval,” an episode shot and edited several months after the original Season 10 finale, in which the cast members discuss the fallout in the days immediately following the phone incident. For longtime fans of the show, it was an exciting new era. You have Sandoval, a 40-something man with a mustache who plays bongos in, from what I can tell, a Fountains of Wayne cover band; sees Coachella as sacred ground; and dresses like Gerard Way moonlighting as a magician. And you have Ariana, considered by fans to be one of the most “levelheaded” cast members; she doesn’t contribute much to the drama pool, but is generally nice to everyone and doesn’t dress like Criss Angel Mindfreak. It was easy this time to know who to root for. Not a “nice” thing to happen, but a pretty good storyline.

So the finale was kind of a big deal. I don’t think Kaitlyn and I are normally the type of people who go to bars to “watch” things, but we figured we should be among other fans for this occasion. So we down-the-hatched over to Down the Hatch, a dive bar in the West Village that was hosting a live watch party.

Enter if you dare! (Courtesy of Kaitlyn Tiffany)

Kaitlyn: All day, I was wringing my hands trying to decide what time we should arrive at Down the Hatch in order to secure seating. The watch party had been advertised on Reddit, which is not normally where we source our invites, so I had no sense of the kind of crowd it might pull. Ultimately, Nathan and I got there two hours before the show started, and this was lucky because there was only one table in the whole place that didn’t have a little Reserved sign on it. (Reserved for EMMA, Reserved for LAURA, etc.)

While we waited for Lizzie and Sam and Jamie, we took photos of a neon sign that read Hot Mess and ordered some rosé and a bunch of bar snacks. At least 13 different white blond women came up to us and asked if we were going to be using all of the stools we had. We were nice about it at first, and then, in the spirit of things, we got meaner: a flat “Yes, we are,” with an implied “What do you think?” Jamie then texted that she wouldn’t be able to come after all and sent a photo of a spider bite on the back of her hand. The lump was the size of a clementine, but she was trying to avoid taking a Benadryl, because to be sleepy on a night like tonight would be a fate worse than death.

Lizzie: I thought spider bites were something that happened in Australia, not Bushwick. Nathan had us all worried it was a “brown recluse,” which is apparently a very poisonous spider. Now that I’m looking at photos of it, it looks like every spider I’ve ever seen. Something to dive into at another juncture.

Speaking of Nathan, earlier in the day he had texted me asking me to spray some “little seeds” he has germinating in his and Kaitlyn’s living room. I was going to be feeding Kaitlyn’s cat, Ghost, over the weekend anyway, he figured, so I could just spray the seeds while I was there. Sure, I’ll spray the seeds, I said. But of course I worried. Spraying Kaitlyn’s boyfriend’s seeds while she’s out of town? I brought it up to both of them as soon as I got to the bar. Let’s just clear the air, okay? Nathan sent me a video with detailed instructions about how to spray his seeds and I have it on my phone; please look.

They laughed it off. I laughed too. I ate a chicken wing and finished my Hal’s Grapefruit Seltzer. The crowd around the bar was approaching four rows deep.

Kaitlyn: I said, “I trust Lizzie completely. She’s someone that is kind and sweet and loyal and just a delight since the day I met her.”

Around 8 p.m., nearly every TV in the bar was switched over to Bravo, which was re-airing the previous week’s episode of Vanderpump Rules ahead of the finale. (There was one “TV for men,” Lizzie noticed, which was playing a wrestling match.) Things heated up instantly. “Trash!” a woman next to us screamed when Raquel appeared on-screen. A group of women in Barstool Sports merchandise confronted a couple of 40-year-olds making out in a corner booth and explained to them that they had actually reserved this seating for a very special event. By this point, it was standing-room only and the decibel levels were approaching “pop concert.”

Sam arrived just in time to join us in a round of “Pumptinis,” very loosely based on the cocktail sold at Lisa Vanderpump restaurants. Lisa’s is, I believe, basically a raspberry cosmopolitan in a sugar-rimmed martini glass. The Down the Hatch version was lychee liqueur and vodka in a stemless wine glass. I found myself in one of those embarrassing situations where everyone else at the table thinks something is really gross but you kind of like it. To fit in, I said that the anemic canned lychees that had been tossed into the bottom of the drinks looked like the rabbit kidneys they make everyone eat in the movie Raw.

A table full of "Pumptinis." (Courtesy of Kaitlyn Tiffany)

Lizzie: Sam asked if the lychees were hard-boiled eggs.

I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that the air felt electric. Everyone was hyped up and ready for the big event. At one point, a woman walked into the bar, fist pumping in the air, chanting “VANDERPUMP! VANDERPUMP! VANDERPUMP!”

Still, a few people had no idea what was going on. “Is this some big Bravo thing?” I heard a man ask his companion. He would have no choice but to figure it out. As the clock struck 9 p.m., the crowd dropped to near-silence in anticipation, the volume on the TVs got louder, and everyone selected one of the half-dozen screens to turn their body toward. Live from his NYC talk-show studio, Andy Cohen, semi-benevolent ruler of the Bravo Universe, reminded us that the Scandoval came to light during International Women’s Month. Of all the months!

Kaitlyn: The editors were going for something new and special for this episode. After a quick montage of recent events, including Ariana’s revelation that there are “evil, evil people in this world,” they cut to a prolonged stretch of Los Angeles B-roll set to a demonic song that openly plagiarized “Steal My Sunshine.” “The sun keeps on shining,” a faceless man announced over and over. Yet it was raining in L.A. The rain fell on the street, and it fell on a crow sitting on a fence.

I respect the effort. They had to mix it up a bit because the episode could really only be a series of highly emotional but not-at-all spontaneous or organic conversations taking place in a procession of ugly living rooms. Tom Sandoval was carrying around a can of Squirt soda in nearly every scene he was in, suggesting that most of them were filmed during the course of one day or that he’d developed a serious Squirt-soda habit in the aftermath of the scandal.

Lizzie: I didn’t even know they still made Squirt. I thought it was like Crystal Pepsi or Jolt. I wonder how the Squirt team feels, brand-marketing-wise, about the current most disliked cast member toting a hand-warmed can of their product around in every scene in the show’s biggest episode in years like he’s being paid to do it.

Because the news of the affair broke months ago, and every detail of the whole situation has already been documented on gossip blogs, Reddit, and the cast members’ various podcasts, watching the episode felt more like a recap than a finale. But the crowd didn’t care. They were there to have fun, yell at the screen, and see extended versions of the scenes we’d already seen in the trailer.

I told Kaitlyn it felt like one of those screenings where people rewatch a cult favorite for the sole purpose of “interacting” with the movie, you know, by throwing forks or toilet paper at the screen, or doing some kind of call-and-response thing with the actors. We gasped together; we laughed together. We furrowed our eyebrows at how many scenes there were of Sandoval crying.

Kaitlyn: It did feel a bit like a Rocky Horror Picture Show midnight screening, or the time I went to see the Mean Girls musical with my mom and people kept yelling the lines they knew from the movie. Those of us who follow Bravo-related Instagram accounts had already seen a preview clip of Ariana screaming “I don’t give a fuck about FUCKING RAQUEL” dozens of times, so it was a familiar tune by the time it aired in prime time, and everyone sang (screamed) along.

My favorite part of the episode was when Scheana showed up to Ariana’s house looking like a streetwear-brand-ambassador angel. She was all in white: white bucket hat, makeup free, opalescent four-inch square-tip nails. “She-Shu! She-Shu!” I chanted, wiggling on my stool. She’d brought a bottle of rosé and what appeared to be two packs of Camel Crush cigarettes, though the logo was blurred out and a bystander snuck them quickly out of her hand while she embraced Ariana.

Scheana, recalling how she had physically shoved Raquel away from her upon learning of the affair, started to tear up. Raquel was now telling people that Scheana had punched her in the face, which was “scientifically impossible,” she explained, because of her four-inch square-tip nails. If she tried to make a fist and punch someone with it, she would either slice open her own hand or break her own thumb. “My hands don’t work like that,” she said.

My second-favorite part of the episode was when everyone gathered in James’s apartment to watch him call Raquel (his ex-fiancée) and ask her, “How do you feel about what you’ve done and pretty much what’s going on?”

Tom Schwartz sitting on the floor. (Courtesy of Kaitlyn Tiffany)

Lizzie: As the night wore on, the Pumptinis started to hit. The hushed silence that had taken over the room at the start of the episode was replaced by boos (whenever Sandoval was on-screen), cheers (whenever Ariana was on-screen), and side conversations (at least one about how Sandoval’s presence was evoking a feeling of PTSD).

Kaitlyn: “I bow down!” someone shouted when Ariana walked into a bar called Grandmaster, wearing a nice dress. The crowd also went wild when she appeared in an Uber Eats commercial, singing Scheana’s 2013 hit song, “Good as Gold,” while auto-tuned to the highest heavens. Whenever Sandoval talked (and admittedly, everything he said was shocking), they would roar “Bullshit!” and “Liar!” and “Go to HELLLLLLLL!” (The outrage was at its loudest when Tom Sandoval suggested to his best friend, Tom Schwartz, who was sitting on a kitchen floor for some reason, that Ariana was at fault for not discovering his affair: “All she would have had to do was follow me.”)

I was having fun, but the crowd-with-pitchforks, get-him-girl vibe was a little bit confusing to me. Do we come to this show for lessons in morality? Do we feel offended when the cast members deliver moments of shock and betrayal and demarcate the outer limits of what human beings are capable of doing to one another in full view of a television camera? I thought we loved it!

Lizzie: We should be loving it, and the cast members need us to love it too, because how else will they buy their next multimillion-dollar homes in Valley Village? I was also surprised by the force of the crowd’s reactions. This season was a return to form for a show essentially predicated on the idea that everyone is a liar and everyone is trying to sleep with someone else. Sure, we had a pickleball intermission there, but we were back, baby!

Kaitlyn: With Vanderpump Rules, every sword is double-edged. The drama’s returned, but it made everyone hate each other so much that it’s not clear how they can continue filming a TV show together. The cast is now famous enough to advertise for Uber and pose for The New York Times. They’re also famous enough to unfollow Lisa Vanderpump on Instagram in mysterious piques of rage—in other words, to bite the hands that feed. Eek! What will these monsters do next?

On Nobody Famous: Guesting, Gossiping, and Gallivanting, a collection of Famous People letters from the past five years, is available now from Zando Projects and The Atlantic.