It was because of this instinct to trolle the President, and Conway’s knowledge that Trump, as an enthusiastic consumer of cable news, would be temptingly easy to reach, that the Lincoln Project was born. The super PAC, which was founded in December by Conway and prominent current and former Republican political strategists for “NeverTrump,” including Rick Wilson, Steve Schmidt and Jennifer Horn, was quick to hit the mark.
“They’re all LOSERS,” Trump responded shortly before 1 a.m. on Twitter in May after seeing one of the group’s announcements unfavorably compare his coronavirus response to Ronald Reagan. “RINO losers … I HIT THEM ALL!” it followed the next day, using the acronym for Republicans In Name Only.
Now, Democrats have also begun to pay attention to President Lincoln’s relentlessly negative election year assault on the President, and how the super PAC quickly creates ads designed to infuriate and distract Trump and hyper-targets on his TV screen. .
“These are the best commercials on television. They are absolutely devastating, “said former Vermont presidential candidate and governor Howard Dean, who congratulated the group’s founders on the” controlled anger “that fuels their places.
The Lincoln Project has not followed Jesus’ publicity joke. But if they tease Trump for (allegedly) being scammed by his campaign manager, for looking shaky as he walks down a ramp, for messing up the nation’s coronavirus response, or even for the size of his hands and the crowd in his Tulsa’s recent meeting, the Lincoln Project is willing to go places that Democratic groups have not visited. And that draws the attention, and even the money, of the liberals.
“I am excited by the impact of the Lincoln Project, its substance and also its message, which is so compelling,” said Robert Zimmerman, a member of the Democratic National Committee and a fundraiser, who said he heard other Democrats say they are donating to the group. . “Frankly, Democrats, activists and patriots should be grateful for their participation and there should be no competition.”
The Lincoln Project’s “Mourning in America” ad, which sparked Trump’s angry tweets, featured images of concerned Americans in hospital wards or waiting in long lines along with grim violin music. A narrator warns that Trump has made the United States “weaker, sicker, and poorer,” as the ad cleverly produced contrasts Trump’s performance on the coronavirus with Ronald Reagan’s hopeful reelection slogan “Morning in America.” .
More recently, the group has bought ads stalking Trump as he travels across the country. One that aired in Tulsa ahead of its June rally compared Trump’s rhetoric to segregationist George Wallace, uniting Trump’s image with that of Wallace and white supremacist protesters with torch tiki. Another broadcast in South Dakota, where Trump visited on Friday, features the grim words of the nation’s presidents carved out of Mount Rushmore. Then the image of Trump appears and a narrator warns: “The worst president of the United States will not be remembered or venerated.”
The Lincoln Project is the most prominent of several Republican anti-Trump groups that promise to spend money to defeat it. Its founders, who also include Reed Galen, Ron Steslow, Mike Madrid, and John Weaver, bring extensive political pedigrees to the task. Schmidt worked on the presidential campaigns of Senator John McCain and George W. Bush and was essential in pressuring McCain to choose Sarah Palin as her running mate. Wilson was a veteran of the George HW Bush campaign and later became a Republican publicist. Weaver also worked on McCain’s presidential offer. Horn is the former chairman of the New Hampshire Republican Party.
The group’s founders have their share of critics: Republican agents who view them as traitors, the president who has complained about them, and Democrats who question whether his Trump trolling and his limited budget so far will really influence voters in a handful of changing states. who decide elections.
So far, Project Lincoln ad purchases have paled compared to those of the big Democratic super-CAPs and the campaigns themselves. Unite the Country, which supports Biden, announced a $ 10 million ad purchase in May, for example. That is many times more than the Lincoln Project raised in its entire first quarter of existence. The group raised just $ 2 million in the first three months of the year, according to Federal Election Commission documents, but received a fundraising boost when Trump attacked them on Twitter in May. (A spokesperson for the Lincoln Project has not released details of its fundraising since then, but said the average contribution is $ 40, which is unusually low for a super PAC.)
But the relatively modest production of the Lincoln Project so far, including some ads that seemed to be aimed exclusively at one audience of one, is racking up millions of visits on social media, its reach amplified by the president’s subsequent response and coverage of Related news.
“When he started chasing us directly, he highlighted and magnified his incompetence,” Horn said. “A president who is awake at 1 in the morning using the medium of a teenager to persecute political agents for saying something that he perceived as bad about him? It is a reflection of him being weak. “
There’s also an aspect of psychological warfare at stake, as strategists hope that the more the president gets involved with his announcements, the less time he has to focus on a reelection message. Wilson has a gag on Twitter that he and Conway are living “without rent” in Trump’s head.
“It takes away the message that he should have been … and also shows how crazy he is,” Conway said on the podcast.
The Lincoln Project is also constantly harassing Trump’s campaign manager, Brad Parscale, in what appears to be an attempt to destabilize his campaign operation. “The director of his campaign told him that 1 million people” were going to appear at the rally in Tulsa, an ad mocks. “Is @bradparscale okay?” The Project Lincoln Twitter account asked after the rally, which drew only about 6,000 and left most of the arena empty.. Another ad alleged that Parscale was enriched by the 2016 Trump campaign, which shows pictures of sleek cars and a yacht full of bikini-clad women.
The Trump campaign recently spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on the solid Democratic market in Washington, DC, to advertise, which some see as a response to the president’s anger over the announcements of the Lincoln Project.
Sam Nunberg, a former Trump chief aide, said the recent $ 400,000 ad purchase from the Republican campaign in DC was a “waste of money.”
However, he underestimated the efforts of the Lincoln Project for being inconsequential.
“These are troll ads, that’s all they are,” said Nunberg. “He’s a consultant in baseball that nobody cares about.”
The Lincoln Project has made other enemies in the Republican Party. Galen said on the group’s podcast that the Republican Party had “fundamentally changed” and that Trump’s “facilitators” in the Senate must also be “removed from the system.”
This type of conversation, and the spending of the super PAC against vulnerable Republican senators Susan Collins of Maine, Thom Tillis of North Carolina and Cory Gardner of Colorado, have caused great encouragement among other Republican agents, including those who have criticized Trump. .
“They’re not just chasing Trump, they’re chasing Republican senators,” said Ryan Williams, former chief aide to Mitt Romney during his 2012 presidential run. “These are not Republicans unhappy with the President. They are just Democrats now. ”
Privately, Democratic strategists and donors have wondered what propels the Lincoln Project to campaign against Republicans generally. Are you planning to rebrand as centrist Democratic operatives if presumptive Democratic candidate Joe Biden wins the White House, as some of the founders, including Schmidt, have already left the party? Or do they have a genuine hope that the Republican Party will transform if Trump loses, and that future Republican candidates will want to hire the agents who helped defeat him?
“These guys helped allow this, helped create this for years,” Ian Russell, the former head of the House Democrats’ campaign arm, said of the Project Lincoln operations. “The Republican Party has increasingly flirted with the sheer madness we are seeing right now. Trump just knocked down the wall. “
But the founders of the Lincoln Project say they were conscientiously driven to do everything possible to deny Trump a second term, after witnessing what they said was their lack of respect for the rule of law. At the group’s launch event in February, Wilson said he had seen former colleagues and bosses “humiliate and abandon their principles” and that he couldn’t take it any longer.
Occasionally, the Lincoln Project appears to alienate some liberals who follow them on social media, underscoring the still-shaky alliance between centrist Republicans “Never Trump” and the left. “Dick Cheney … welcome to the resistance,” the group tweeted last week, with a photo of the former vice president, who was reviled by liberals for his role in the Iraq War, wearing a coronavirus face mask. “This tweet should never have been sent,” replied a Democrat.
In the meantime, an uneasy peace reigns as Democrats welcome anyone who can help them defeat Trump in 2020. The Lincoln Project recently released an ad for Biden that will air in the swing states of the Midwest. He portrayed Biden inspiringly speaking alongside clips of other presidents comforting the nation in times of crisis, juxtaposed with Trump’s comments showing a lack of empathy for people protesting racism and police brutality. Former Barack Obama campaign manager David Plouffe called the announcement “moving.” Future points will focus on convincing Republicans to abandon Trump, strategists say.
“I appreciate the success we’ve achieved so far, but honestly, we’ve only just begun,” Horn said. “Donald Trump shouldn’t expect a good night’s sleep at the White House ever again. If he was upset with us at 1 in the morning, then just wait.
Liz Goodwin can be contacted at [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter @lizcgoodwin
