User Controls
The Lincoln Project...Republicans Trying To Defeat Trump
-
2020-10-29 at 8:23 PM UTCThe Lincoln Project
From Wikipedia
Type Political action committee
Purpose Prevent the reelection of Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election
The Lincoln Project is an American political action committee formed in late 2019 by a number of former Republicans. The goal of the committee is to prevent the reelection of Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election and defeat all Republicans in close races running for reelection in the United States Senate. In April 2020, the committee announced their endorsement of Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden.
History
The committee was announced on December 17, 2019, in a New York Times op-ed by George Conway, Steve Schmidt, John Weaver, and Rick Wilson. Other co-founders include Jennifer Horn, Ron Steslow, Reed Galen, and Mike Madrid.
Conway is an attorney and the husband of Kellyanne Conway, at the time an advisor to Trump; Schmidt managed John McCain's 2008 presidential campaign; Weaver oversaw McCain's presidential campaign in 2000; and Wilson is a media consultant. All four are outspoken critics of Trump; Schmidt left the Republican Party in 2018. Jennifer Rubin, in a Washington Post op-ed, described the four founders as "Some of the most prominent NeverTrump Republicans". Horn is a Republican operative and former chair of the New Hampshire Republican Party, Steslow is a marketing strategist and political consultant, Galen is an independent political consultant, and Madrid is a former political director for the California Republican Party. Galen serves as the Lincoln Project's treasurer.
The committee is named for Abraham Lincoln, a Republican who fought to keep the country unified. On February 27, 1860, Lincoln delivered his Cooper Union speech in Manhattan during his campaign to be the first Republican president. Several members of the committee—Schmidt, Wilson, Horn, Galen, Madrid, and Steslow—spoke in the same venue on the 160th anniversary of that talk, from the lectern that Lincoln had used. The group was outspoken in their criticism of Trump and the current divide in the Republican Party, with Madrid saying that "two views cannot exist in one party" and Steslow saying he will "vote blue no matter who." Schmidt warned that a second term with Trump would be "unrestrained and validated."
The members of Lincoln Project's advisory board—Conway, Schmidt, Weaver, Wilson, and Reed Galen—published another op-ed in The Washington Post on April 15, 2020, endorsing the presidential candidacy of former Vice President Joe Biden, the Democratic presidential nominee, writing: "We’ve never backed a Democrat for president. But Trump must be defeated." The op-ed argued that Trump was unqualified to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic and the ensuing economic downturn.
Stuart Stevens announced, on May 28, 2020, that he had joined the project. Stevens had previously been the chief strategist for Mitt Romney's presidential campaign in 2012. Prior to that, he had worked for George W. Bush and Bob Dole. Jeff Timmer, a former executive director of the Michigan Republican Party, is an adviser to the project.
On June 2, 2020, the project announced the release of their podcast, Republicans Defeating Trump (later renamed The Lincoln Project), hosted by Ron Steslow.
On August 23, 2020, Kellyanne Conway announced that she was leaving her White House position to spend more time with her family. At the same time, George Conway announced that he was withdrawing from The Lincoln Project for similar reasons.
On August 24, 2020, former Republican National Committee chair Michael Steele announced that he had joined the Lincoln Project.
In October 2020, Ivanka Trump and husband Jared Kushner, through lawyer Marc Kasowitz (who has had previously represented Donald Trump) threatened to sue the group for its Times Square billboard display mocking the couple for the Trump administration response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The Lincoln Project said the billboard would remain, releasing a statement saying: "While we truly enjoy living rent-free in their heads, their empty threats will not be taken any more seriously than we take Ivanka and Jared. It is unsurprising that an administration that has never had any regard or understanding of our constitution would try to trample on our first amendment rights. But we fully intend on making this civics lesson as painful as possible." The project referred to the pair as "entitled, out-of-touch bullies, who have never given the slightest indication they have any regard for the American people." -
2020-10-29 at 8:24 PM UTCTelevision ads
The Lincoln Project has produced a number of anti-Trump and pro-Biden television advertisements. The Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin called the project's ads "devastating for several reasons: They are produced with lightning speed, and thereby catch the public debate at just the right moment; they hammer Trump where he is personally most vulnerable (e.g., concerns about his vigor, concerns about foreign corruption); and they rely to a large extent on Trump himself—his words and actions." About two-thirds of the group's television advertisements focus on the 2020 presidential election, but the Lincoln Project has also created ads backing Democrats in other races, such as an ad in Montana promoting Governor Steve Bullock's Senate candidacy against incumbent Republican Steve Daines.[29] Additionally, they have released videos attacking Republican Senators Cory Gardner, Martha McSally, Thom Tillis, Susan Collins, Joni Ernst and Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, all of whom are up for reelection in 2020, as enablers of Trump.
On March 17, 2020, the committee released a video, titled Unfit, which criticized Trump for his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States.
On May 4, 2020, the group released Mourning in America, a video styled after Ronald Reagan's Morning in America 1984 campaign ad. The ad focused on Trump's handling of the coronavirus crisis and said that the country was "weaker and sicker and poor[er]" under Trump's leadership. On June 1, 2020, the Lincoln Project released another ad, Flag of Treason, that blasted Trump's record on race relations in the U.S., highlighted the use of the Confederate battle flag by Trump supporters at Trump rallies, and emphasized the support Trump has received from white nationalists. Both ads ran on television in crucial swing states.
In early June 2020, the Lincoln Project released an ad, Mattis, that repeated criticisms of Trump by former Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis, a retired Marine Corps general, following the Lafayette Square and Saint John's Church attacks against protesters, and asked viewers, "Who do you trust: the coward or the commander?" The ad also criticized Trump for having "dodged the draft" and for hiding "in a deep bunker—firing off tweets."
On June 17, 2020, the Lincoln Project released two ads. The first, entitled #TrumpIsNotWell, ran 45 seconds and showed a video of Trump walking slowly and haltingly down a ramp at West Point, and a video of Trump appearing to struggle to lift a glass of water, with narration suggesting that Trump was physically unfit. The ad's voiceover said, over images of Trump: "He's shaky, weak, trouble speaking, trouble walking. So why aren't we talking about this? The most powerful office in the world needs more than a weak, unfit, shaky president. Trump doesn't have the strength to lead, nor the character to admit." The ad was controversial: some observers viewed it as appropriate in light of Trump's past comments and mockery about the health of his rivals, while disability rights activist Rebecca Cokley of the Center for American Progress criticized the ad as ableist. The second ad released on June 17, Tulsa, criticized Trump for planning a campaign rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma (the site of the 1921 Tulsa race massacre) on Juneteenth, a holiday marking the abolition of African American slavery.
On June 18, 2020, the Lincoln Project released an ad entitled Chyna, attacking Trump on his China policy, with narration saying "They know who Donald Trump is: weak, corrupt, ridiculed, China beats him every time. No matter what he says, China's got his number." The ad attacks Trump for his handling of the trade war with China and makes reference to Ivanka Trump's business dealings in China, including the Chinese government's grant of trademarks to her. The project released the ad just after Trump's former National Security Adviser, John Bolton, published an excerpt from his memoir, in which Bolton wrote that Trump asked Chinese leader Xi Jinping to assist him in getting elected and had told Xi that he should continue building internment camps detaining Uyghurs. The ad makes reference to Bolton's book The Room Where It Happened.
In late June and early July 2020, the Lincoln Project released two ads, entitled Bounty and Betrayed, attacking Trump for failing to respond to U.S. intelligence reports of a Russian bounty program targeting U.S. troops in Afghanistan. In Bounty, a narrator says, "Now we know Vladimir Putin pays a bounty for the murder of American soldiers. Donald Trump knows too and does nothing." In Betrayed, a former Navy SEAL and emergency room doctor Dan Barkhuff says that "any commander-in-chief with a spine would be stomping the living shit out of some Russians right now—diplomatically, economically, or, if necessary, with the sort of asymmetric warfare they're using to send our kids home in body bags." Barkhuff calls Trump "either a coward who can't stand up to an ex-KGB goon" or "complicit." The ad entitled Fellow Traveler says in Russian with English subtitles that "Comrade Trump" has once again the blessing of Russia. The ad features communist imagery such as the hammer and sickle, as well as photographs of Bolshevik revolutionary Vladimir Lenin and Soviet leaders such as Mikhail Gorbachev. -
2020-10-29 at 8:25 PM UTCThe Lincoln Project...
Bernie Sanders is our favorite Republican! -
2020-10-29 at 8:26 PM UTCThe Lincoln Project...
Joe Biden is our favorite Republican! -
2020-10-29 at 8:27 PM UTCThe Lincoln Project..
Trump is just as bad as George W Bush! -
2020-10-29 at 8:27 PM UTCThe Lincoln Project...
We hated Reagan too! -
2020-10-29 at 8:28 PM UTCThe Lincoln project...
Left wing republicans that support Israel and Russia! -
2020-10-29 at 8:39 PM UTCMy compliments on your speed reading abilities, Ghost. You read both of my long posts in only a minute each.
Or...you didn't read any of it because, you know...facts don't matter to you.
You're more of a Kellyanne Conway "alternative truths" kinda guy, aren't you? -
2020-10-29 at 8:42 PM UTC
-
2020-10-29 at 8:44 PM UTC
-
2020-10-29 at 9:29 PM UTCGhost absofuckinglutely has to scramble to make sure his is the last post in each and every one of my political threads.
Thanks for the verification as well as the attention, chump. -
2020-10-29 at 9:34 PM UTCThe Lincoln Project...
Iranian propaganda is our specialty!
