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Photo by Stefani Reynolds/Redux Pictures | Sixteen months after the car accident that nearly killed him, Madison Cawthorn texted the friend who'd fallen asleep at the wheel with Cawthorn in the passenger seat before careening into a concrete wall. "I miss not having to convince myself every day not to pull the trigger and end it all," he wrote. Just five years later, Cawthorn had parlayed a stunning story of overcoming adversity into a seat in Congress at a shockingly young age, becoming one of the chamber's most well-known figures. Now, though, heading into his first reelection at age 26, Cawthorn finds himself in physical pain, divorced, dogged by a string of embarrassing incidents, challenged by seven Republican opponents in Tuesday's primary, and facing the very real possibility that the end of his political career could come as quickly as it began. In this intimate and revelatory new profile, pulled together from more than 70 interviews with people who know Cawthorn and depositions from several lawsuits, Michael Kruse explores a growing consensus about the young congressman: He wasn't ready for the job. People who know him see him as immature, a serial embellisher, whose insecurities have made him unusually susceptible to the twisted incentives of a political environment that prizes outrage and partisanship. They say he's a man in crisis. "It's never going to be just totally fine," said a friend. "He's not OK," said Michele Woodhouse, the former Republican chair of the 11th district who's now running against him. "He was a flawed individual who by surprise ended up in the brightest of spotlights and wasn't ready for it," said Chris Cooper, a political scientist at Western Carolina University. "It's a tragedy." Read Kruse's profile.
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| "Garfield has shown that he is not possessed of the backbone of an angleworm." Can you guess which former president said this about President James Garfield in 1881? Scroll to the bottom for the answer.
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Politico illustration/Getty Images, iStock | Watch C-SPAN DESTROY the Competition … The cutting of TV cords and the rise of social media have walloped C-SPAN, slashing its revenues, shrinking its reach and leaving the famously staid network forced to fight for eyeballs online. In his latest Capital City column, Mike Schaffer reports on how an institution that worries about calling an argument between lawmakers "heated" is trying to compete for oxygen in a social media landscape that prefers to watch politicians ABSOLUTELY EVISCERATE the opposition.
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| Steve Schmidt vs. Meghan McCain was the talk of Twitter this week. Don't know the basics? Here's how to sound up on the intricacies:
- Don't worry, nobody really knows how it started. They're both Republicans, and Trump critics, but the two reportedly haven't spoken since 2008, when Schmidt was a top strategist on John McCain's presidential campaign.
- Schmidt's reaction to a barbed Tweet that McCain liked has spawned more than 100 tweets, a brand new Substack, a confessional podcast episode and roped in Sarah Palin, Jared Kusher and Meryl Streep.
- If there's actual news here, it's old. Schmidt claims that John McCain lied to the public back in 2008 when he denied having an affair with a lobbyist.
- Schmidt didn't actually vote for McCain. The McCain family didn't invite Schmidt to the funeral.
- Bonus points for a reference to the Palin speech scene in "Game Change," the movie starring Woody Harrelson as Schmidt. It has a 67 percent on Rotten Tomatoes.
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POLITICO illustration by Jade Cuevas; AP and Getty Images | Dr. Strange Comes to Washington … The concept of a "multiverse" — that there are infinite alternate universes containing every possible variation on existence, from a universe in which Hillary Clinton was elected president to a universe in which Donald Trump can fly — has taken over pop culture, appearing in everything from Marvel blockbusters like "Dr. Strange and the Multiverse of Madness" to critical darling "Everything Everywhere All at Once." This trend is a symptom of our fractured politics, Derek Robertson writes in the latest Culture Club essay. And the longer we live in fantasy partisan universes, the harder it is to make real change in the messy reality we inhabit.
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Politico illustration/David Badders, Getty Images | A Conservative Walks Into a Bar … Liberals have long dismissed the very idea of conservative comedy as an oxymoron. There's no conservative Stephen Colbert, they argue, no right-leaning SNL, no truly funny jokes at CPAC. But according to professors Matt Sienkiewicz and Nick Marx, authors of a new book on conservative humor, comedy is alive and well on the right. More than that, they told Ian Ward in this week's Q&A, conservative comedy is attracting new voters and uniting the Republican Party. In other words, the left's unwavering belief in its comedic monopoly isn't just wrong, it's also bad political strategy.
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| 49 percent of Democratic men can play a musical instrument, compared to just 36 percent of Democratic women. There's much less of a gender gap in the GOP, where 40 percent of women and 38 percent of men play a musical instrument. Every week, The Weekend inserts a question in a POLITICO/Morning Consult poll and see what the crosstabs yield. Got any suggestions? Email us at politicoweekend@email.politico.com.
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John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum | Artist Bernard Lamotte puts finishing touches on a mural at the White House indoor pool, May 10, 1962. The art was a gift from John F. Kennedy's father and depicts Christiansted Harbor in St. Croix, Virgin Islands — a place Kennedy liked. As president, he swam in the pool religiously, at noon and night, and held races with cabinet members there. The pool was originally built for Franklin D. Roosevelt to help treat his polio. In 1970, Nixon put a floor over the space to create the current press Briefing Room. The pool is drained but intact, and it holds over 500 miles of cable and fiber optic wires for the media's use. The pool is still accessible by a staircase, and Bono is one of many who has signed their name on the tiles. People say it still smells of chlorine.
**Who Dissed? answer: Former President Ulysses S. Grant said this of President James Garfield because Garfield had named James Blaine secretary of state instead of Grant's favorite, Roscoe Conkling.
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