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The Discovery Channel left two US senators from opposite sides of the aisle on an island for six days and six nights, the network announced on Thursday.
The gimmick is for a reality show that follows Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona, a Republican, and Senator Martin Heinrich of New Mexico, a Democrat, as they spear fish and build shelter together on Erdu, Marshall Islands.
The two reportedly approached the network about creating the series, Rival Survival, in part because of their frustrations with partisan politics.
Flake told the Arizona Republic that the show was vetted by the senate ethics committee and that neither senator was compensated for their appearance on the show.
“We kept it quiet,” Flake said. “The good thing about being back-bencher senators is you can slip away for a week.”
This is not Flake’s first documented trip to Marshall Islands. He traveled there with his family in 2013 and on his own in 2009. “I have the best job in the world, but still the islands beckon,” he wrote in a travel journal about the 2009 trip published in the Washington Post.
The pair, neither of whom is up for re-election, said in a statement:
“We can both attest that no one is more frustrated than those of us trying to get things done in this environment. We recognize how difficult it can be to cut through the partisanship. So we decided to do something completely out of the ordinary and frankly a little extreme to show the world and our colleagues that even if you have serious differences, if you want to survive you have to work together.”
Rival Survival premieres on 29 October in the US.
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