How the Never-Trumper Lincoln Project Ran Amuck
By J. Max Robins, October 6, 2022
How appropriate that the first episode of The Lincoln Project, a new Showtime docuseries debuting October 7 about the infamous PAC of never-Trumper GOP consultants, is called “Gunslingers.” The riveting inside look at their win-at-any-cost campaign is a wild west modern morality tale of deadly effective media marketing run amuck.
In the initial installment, cofounder Steve Schmidt (right), sports a 10-gallon Stetson as he rides a gorgeous chestnut horse, a breathtaking mountain tableau behind him in Park City, Utah. The camera takes in the stalwart scene…and then deliberately lingers on the steed’s hindquarters. It’s fitting; the images foreshadow the truth revealed in the five-part series that these swaggering shootists from the mouth, who fired off hundreds of brutally precise targeted spots that helped take down Trump, were often horses asses. As the Lincoln Project’s Stuart Stevens says in the series, “The cause is noble [but] there is nothing noble about us.”
Punching Below the Belt
Founded in late 2019, the Lincoln Project execs put together a dream team of high-profile Republican political hit men — including Steve Schmidt, Rick Wilson, and Kellyanne Conway’s saner half, George — who were masters at the dark arts of political advertising. They passionately believed that Donald Trump posed an existential threat to democracy and that they had the means to undermine his 2020 White House rerun. The collective goal was to turn the same kind of negative, often nasty, humor-laced messaging used by Fox News commentators and Trumpian political operatives to punch below the belt. Desperate times called for mean marketing moves.
Throughout the series there’s an ends-justify-the-means hubris that several of the founders espouse. At one point in the series, Schmidt, perhaps the most angry, bare-knuckle fighter of the bunch states that if the Lincoln Project hadn’t come together, Trump would be in the White House today. In the last episode he proudly states that the group’s anti-Trump campaign was only successful, because “(they) got there dirty.”
Case-in-point: The Lincoln Project secured a wraparound Times Square Billboard that targeted First Daughter Ivanka Trump and First son-in-law Jared Kushner. Alleging their complicity in the devastating New York Covid death toll, one billboard shows Ivanka smiling, while gesturing toward New York and the United States death tolls, while the adjacent one has her hubby smiling, quoting him saying that New Yorkers are “going to suffer and that’s their problem,” with a gruesome image of body bags beneath him.
Essential to the effectiveness of the Lincoln Project was having a frighteningly effective digital marketing team, led by Mike Madrid; and a savvy team of true believers, who, in laser-like fashion, marketed ads to specific demographics and regions from Facebook to YouTube, Twitter, local TV and beyond. Getting a closeup view of Madrid’s team discussing their strategy is a must-see for anyone interested in the important art of multiplatform political advertising. To paraphrase the most memorable line from The War Room, the classic documentary about the 1992 Clinton presidential campaign: “It’s the targeting, stupid.”
The Dirty Downfall
Madrid, a Latino and one of the few minorities among the mostly-Alpha white males who populated the Lincoln Project, ultimately left the group, as did most of his team and several of the founding partners, in the wake of a sex scandal that tore the PAC apart and nearly destroyed it, all of which is chronicled in episode five. The scandal became loudly public on January 31, 2021, as The New York Times began publishing a series of stories documenting co-founder John Weaver’s decades-long history as a sexual predator, including young men who worked for the Lincoln Project. In subsequent news coverage of the scandal, and despite the denials by several of the founders of the organization that they had been unaware of Weaver’s behavior, proof quickly surfaced that the top parties in the PAC did receive internal reports about it.
But even before the Weaver scandal, discord was sown among the Lincoln Project leadership, especially when it was discovered that three co-founders—Reed Galin, Schmidt and Weaver—appeared to have made big-time money off the PAC, with further ambitions to turn it into a private enterprise that had the potential to give them generational wealth. “The idea that the story of the Lincoln Project is a story of the good people against the bad is a very naive take on this,” says Schmidt.
In the final episode, the founders express a cacophony of mixed emotions. However well-intentioned their initial motives, and their fighting fire with fire pyrotechnics, theirs is a cautionary tale about confusing the problem of the current political moment with the solution. “There’s something addicting about outrage. It’s what this era is about,” says Madrid in the final minutes of the docuseries. “If you watch Fox News, there’s always something to be pissed off about. It’s blowing your stack, veins in your neck and being angry about it. There’s a lot of money in anger and outrage. We’ve monetized it.” Apparently, as Madrid suggest, that kind of earning comes with a cost. “Does it wear on your soul?” he finally asks. “F—k yeah, it wears on your soul.”
J. Max Robins (@jmaxrobins) is executive director of the Center for Communication. The former editor-in-chief of Broadcasting & Cable, he has contributed to publications, including the Wall Street Journal, Columbia Journalism Review and Forbes. Read more from J. Max Robins at www.jmaxrobins.com
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Cofounder Steve Schmidt: “The idea that the story of the Lincoln Project is a story of the good people against the bad is a very naive take on this.” (Photo: Wikimedia)
