Remember the Lincoln Project? It’s the political organization founded in 2019 by ex-McCain staffers and GOP establishment insiders bent on attacking former President Donald Trump.
The group is still alive and kicking and was made the topic of a recently-released Showtime documentary that held no punches in terms of painting the group as a disorganized, unethical mess. For as much as the Lincon Project called Donald Trump a “grifter,” the real grift seemed to be on project donors who were simply lining the pockets of washed-up DC strategists with an anti-Trump message.
Steve Schmidt, manager of John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign and a co-founder of the group, blasted his organization, which he left two years prior, as a disorganized mess of backstabbers and grifters:
Lincoln Project founder Steve Schmidt on Wednesday unloaded on his former organization in a lengthy Twitter thread, calling on it to dramatically reform or disband in the wake of a Showtime documentary that shows “despicable and unethical behavior.”
Schmidt wrote it “should either be professionalized and reformed or shut down,” and specifically called out fellow co-founders Reed Galen, Rick Wilson and others as liars and fame-seekers.
“The @Showtime documentary documents some of the most despicable and unethical behavior I have ever seen,” he tweeted after watching the five-part docuseries that got behind-the-scenes access to the group.
In another stunning move, he went after co-founder Wilson over raising money for an anti-Trump film he never made. Wilson raised nearly $65,000 for a film called “Everything Trump Touches Dies,” and its GoFundMe page claimed it would be released in January 2018. He continued to give updates into 2019 but said the film wasn’t ready to be completed. Schmidt said Wilson should return the money.
Wilson “is a brilliant ad maker who clearly should never have any leadership or management responsibilities whatsoever in an organization,” Schmidt tweeted, adding he was troubled that Wilson never made the movie he promised. “I asked him about it 500 times. No movie. I was not comfortable with this.”
Schmidt’s Twitter thread on the topic went for a dozen tweets or more in which he called out Lincoln Project co-founders and management by name:
I would like to see the following things happen.
1. @reedgalen must step down from the @ProjectLincoln board because his lie and coverup destroyed the organization as much as @madrid_mike @ronsteslow and @madrid_mike @JenniferHorn did with their fame seeking and narcissism.
— Steve Schmidt (@SteveSchmidtSES) October 12, 2022
Schmidt continued by bashing the organizations handling of finances:
4/ charge.
I want to see complete and total financial transparency around the organization. This means the following:
1. An independent CFO
2. A financial oversight Board made up of @ProjectLincoln donors
3. Quarterly public financial reports.
4. Salary caps for all— Steve Schmidt (@SteveSchmidtSES) October 12, 2022
There was a lot of money to be made in hating Donald Trump from the elite DC establishment of strategists, donors, and party insiders. They hated Trump to the core. They hated what he stood for, they hated the people who voted for him. They hated everything about the phrase “Make America Great Again” with a deep, deep passion.
That level of hatred is unhealthy and made for an environment where greed could rot the organization from the inside. Schmidt didn’t even touch on perhaps one of the most damaging allegations against the group which was covering up sexual harassment allegations against another co-founder, John Weaver, in 2021:
Some of the leaders of the embattled Lincoln Project knew about sexual harassment allegations against co-founder John Weaver as early as March, multiple sources, including the group’s former executive director, told The 19th late Monday.
The Lincoln Project on Monday evening announced it had hired the law firm Paul Hastings to conduct a “comprehensive review of our operations and culture” and released current and former workers from nondisclosure agreements to discuss their “workplace environment.” Weaver has been accused of sexually harassing more than a dozen men, including some connected to the Lincoln Project.
It was obvious at that time that the group had morphed into a tool designed to enrich and protect its own founders and keep the money flowing from Trump-hating donors.
The Showtime series is called, “The Lincoln Project” and all episodes are now available for streaming. I’m putting it on my watch list the next time a Showtime free trial rolls around. Here’s the trailer which starts with the perceived “success” of electing Biden in 2020 but quickly shows how the group unraveled over questions of the Weaver cover-up and financial misappropriation:
As one quote in the trailer says, it’s about money and power, not ideology. This is the “old guard” of power within the Republican establishment that all got bested by Trump in 2016 running a simple campaign of “America First” and rallying a populist message. For the Lincoln Project, it became a war to put themselves back in charge as gatekeepers of the Republican Party.
The battle still rages within the GOP but with Trump still wielding massive influence, the Lincoln Project in ruin, and future candidates like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on the horizon, it looks like MAGA is currently winning.
