It appears at least one member of the anti-Trump Lincoln Project has found a brand spanking new grift in the aftermath of the 2024 election.
After being totally crushed on Election Day, Democrats are preparing a new type of “resistance” against President-elect Donald Trump and Republican leaders.
This time around, the left is abandoning the pink hats and rabid purple-haired protests and adopting a more comprehensive strategy that relies on influence, power, and messaging. Lincoln Project co-founder Rick Wilson is reportedly set to play a crucial role in this new “resistance,” according to a New York Times report.
Democrats have a growing belief that their efforts must extend beyond the political sphere, trying to go on offense in a splintered media environment where conservatives have amassed more influence. One new liberal dark-money group began prospecting for donors with a pitch that it would unearth unflattering revelations about the Murdoch family and Elon Musk — both pro-Trump media magnates.
The group, called the Two Plus Two Coalition, plans to “target the hidden sources of disinformation and expose them for what they are,” according to a donor prospectus being circulated this past week. The group asked donors for a minimum investment of $1 million, and was aiming for an annual budget of $10 million to $15 million.
The group’s senior adviser, Rick Wilson, a former Republican operative who was a co-founder of the Lincoln Project, said in an interview on Thursday that his organization would operate as an opposition research firm but with a military-grade intelligence-gathering operation that went far beyond the document vetting typical of a political campaign.
“A lot of people in the center and on the left have for a long time sort of bemoaned Fox, but they haven’t done anything about it,” Mr. Wilson said.
That’s right, dear reader. Wilson’s role in this movement is to dig up negative information on Elon Musk and the family that owns Fox News as part of its vast media empire. That’ll show ‘em!
Wilson’s claim to fame since 2016 has been “Orange Man Bad.” He is essentially a more grifty version of former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY), who can’t go for more than five minutes without mentioning just how bad the Orange Man is.
The Lincoln Project was originally touted as one of the primary players in the anti-Trump realm. The organization is made up of washed-up establishment Republicans who decided to take their ball and go home after Republican voters roundly rejected them in 2016. Since then, they have shown themselves to be utter failures when it comes to attacking Trump and the MAGA movement. Yet, they have been quite successful at deceiving donors into giving them millions of dollars to post ineffective anti-Trump ads on social media.
At least they are good at something.
This is part of a broader Democratic strategy to oppose a second Trump administration by leveraging state power and using lawfare instead of the mass protests seen in 2017. Democrat-controlled states are planning to do everything they can to block Trump’s policies on immigration, abortion, and other matters.
Advocacy groups like Democracy Forward have mobilized hundreds of attorneys to attack the president-elect’s policies in court. Democratic governors have formed a coalition called “Governors Safeguarding Democracy” to coordinate their resistance effort.
Wilson’s group will likely be as useless as the Lincoln Project. But the rest of the movement might actually put up a fight. Since Republicans will control the White House and both chambers of Congress, Democrats don’t have much of a chance at advancing their agenda at the federal level. At this point, resistance at the state level is the only recourse they have left – and it appears they plan to put up quite a fight.
