As soon as the clip graced my feed, I knew I’d seen it before. The resemblance was uncanny, the dynamics eerily familiar. I wracked my brain for all of two seconds before figuring it out. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders are Real Housewives.
Loathe as any Bravo fan is to revisit “Puppygate,” I’m afraid we must. Please bear with me. It’s for America.
Behold this wonderful video. Watch and listen as Warren, fresh off the last primary debate before Iowa, confronts an unsuspecting Sanders before he can even leave the stage. Note the rebuffed handshake, the abrupt departure. The dialogue—from “You want to have that discussion, we’ll have that discussion” to “Anytime!” to “Let’s not do it now”—could have been ripped straight from the “Housewives” highlights reel. It’s all so obvious.
"I THINK YOU CALLED ME A LIAR ON NATIONAL TV" pic.twitter.com/c7LWL5SLoh
— Ursula Perano (@UrsulaPerano) January 16, 2020
This is Puppygate. Warren is Lisa Vanderpump. Sanders is Kyle Richards. All of it is spectacular. (Is Tom Steyer Ken? Is Tulsi Gabbard Teddi Mellencamp?)
At the heart of the conflict between Warren and Sanders is a story leaked to CNN, ostensibly by the Massachusetts senator’s camp, that accused her opponent of privately saying in a 2018 meeting that a woman could not win the presidency this year. Sanders denies the comment. Warren confirmed the report, and stands by it.
Similarly, on the last season of the “Real Housewives of Beverly Hills,” Vanderpump and Richards found themselves at odds over a story leaked to Radar Online about a rescue dog named Lucy Lucy Apple Juice. Compare the debate video to this footage of the infamous showdown at Villa Rosa.
Unlike Warren, Vanderpump denies the information in the leak. But she, too, refused to back down, even in the face of Kyle’s disagreement. “You came here to call me a liar!” the restaurateur shouted at her soon-to-be former friend, glistening under the soft lights of her newly refurbished kitchen.
As with the two tax-happy politicians, Lisa and Kyle’s conflict boiled down to both parties essentially disagreeing to disagree over the veracity of Lisa’s claim. Of course, the CNN debate did not end with Warren yelling, “get the f-ck out of my house,” but that’s a loss we’ll have to live with.
You hate to see it, two pairs of longtime allies, splintering so painfully on national television. Perhaps Warren will take a page from Vanderpump’s playbook and sit for a lie detector test to prove her truthfulness. Perhaps she’ll even quit the show.
There’s simply no way to be sure what’s going to happen next, but if we know one thing for certain, it’s that Andy Cohen must moderate the next Democratic debate. He’s really the only man for the job.
