[blowing air]
[Sam Harris] I have discovered a significant part
of Trump's appeal.
In particular, I think I finally understand
how he is supported because of his flaws,
rather than in spite of them.
How are all the things I find despicable in him not merely
things that people are willing to overlook,
but reasons in and of themselves
why people support him?
One thing that Trump never communicates,
and cannot possibly communicate,
is a sense of his moral superiority.
[newscaster] And votes still being tallied...
[Sam] Because he is never really judging you.
He can't possibly judge you.
He offers a truly safe space for human frailty
and hypocrisy and self-doubt.
[humming]
[Sam] He offers what no priest can credibly offer--
a total expiation of shame.
His personal shamelessness is a kind of spiritual balm.
Trump is fat Jesus.
He's "grab them by the pussy" Jesus.
He's "I'll eat nothing but cheeseburgers
if I want to" Jesus.
He's "go back to your shithole countries" Jesus.
He's "no apologies" Jesus.
And now consider, what are we getting from the left?
We're getting exactly the opposite message--
pure sanctimony, pure judgment.
You are not good enough.
You're guilty not only for your own sins,
but for the sins of your fathers.
The crimes of slavery and colonialism are on your head.
And if you're a cis, white, heterosexual male,
you're a racist, homophobic,
transphobic, Islamophobic,
sexist barbarian.
I sincerely hope we rid ourselves of him.
But I believe I now understand the half
of the country that disagrees with me
a little better than I did yesterday.
And this makes me less confused and judgmental,
less of an asshole, probably,
which is always progress.
[phone chimes]
[person] How you feeling, boss?
[Steve] Good. I'm one.
I was just talking to his sister.
And I was like, "You got it." She's like, "I'm Irish."
I'm like, "I get it. You got it."
He should be at 270 by one o'clock, hmm?
Yeah, it'd be this evening at the latest.
Yeah.
I think you should start using the Twitter to say...
[Rick] President-elect Biden?
[Steve] ...like, now, be patient.
Votes are being counted.
As those votes count, Joe Biden will be
elected president of the United States,
just over and over again.
[interviewee] He said from day one that
this is going to take time.
We want to make sure that every vote is counted.
[newscaster] And if I could jump in one more time,
because in the words of the president,
there's all this talk about, you know,
nefarious things are happening...
This is crazy.
The amount of missed opportunities here, not great.
Didn't get Montana, didn't get Alaska,
didn't get South Carolina.
All of them.
We got killed in Iowa.
That's uncomfortable to sit with.
It's not what we tell ourselves
about ourselves, right?
[newscaster] ...all come down to your 11 electoral votes
in the state of Arizona.
Kim Law says we'll get votes later tonight.
Do you feel any pressure on your...
[Lily] I think we all expected to be celebrating
and to be wildly hung over today, and none of us were.
[interviewee] Right, we want to make sure
that every vote is counted, and that...
[Lily] I mean, our country clearly has
an affinity towards racism, misogyny, and sexism,
homophobia, fascism.
So now it's just coming to grips with that.
[Conor] You can no longer use the phrase,
this is not who we are.
Yeah, it is.
Once the dust settles, we have to have
a collective reckoning with that.
Please.
[cheering]
Thank you very much, Eric.
It is very, very sad that we're here
in the city that's really the birthplace of our democracy.
And this is among one of the most anti-democratic things
I've ever seen or encountered.
This whole new thing that never happened before
in our country, these mail-in ballots,
which has been a cause of real concern
for everyone because they can easily be fraudulent.
Oh, here come these ballots.
Well, we have no idea if they really are ballots.
We have no idea if they're signed,
if they're postmarked properly,
if it isn't just the same person
who submitted 100,000 ballots.
Gee, just about the 700,000 votes
that President Trump was ahead by disappeared.
This is the way they intend to win.
[crowd chanting] Donald Trump!
[Rudy] But we're not going to let them get away with it.
[crowd chanting] Stop the count!
[newscaster] We saw protests across the country erupt.
Protesters took to the streets of Philadelphia,
in Pittsburgh as well, in Boston, Arizona,
hoping to stop the vote count.
[crowd chanting] Stop the count!
[Stuart] If the essence of conservatism
is protecting the Constitution,
this is the most unconservative,
radical act imaginable.
Stuart, like, I'm with you.
Like, I've--I was--
I think it's outrageous.
And it is dangerous.
But we have to project a tone that's not angry.
Our tone needs to be righteous--
not angry, though.
No one likes a scold.
I think we should try to war game a little bit
about what their next step is going to be.
I agree completely.
[Mike] But we need to be careful in assuming that
there's a mandate one way or the other, because I
don't think that's where the voters are at.
[Reed] I think Mike does make a good point,
which is, we should not forget the guy got
70 million fucking votes, right?
And so we should ask ourselves a broader question--
does half the country care that he's doing this?
No.
[Reed] Do they really care?
Have they decided that they just love him no matter what?
I don't know. I don't know the answer.
We should just assert that, right?
We should condemn them.
Kind of like it.
[announcer] They want to manipulate this election.
They don't care if it's illegal.
And they believe there will be no consequences.
It's over.
[announcer] Elections have consequences.
Your decisions will too.
[Stuart] I mean, all this stuff about Trump is knowing
that people just don't seem to care that much.
I mean, everything that we said the party was for,
the party now is against.
And you know, I helped elect a lot of these people,
and I've never had one conversation
with one Republican elected official
who tries to pretend that Donald Trump is qualified
to be president--not one.
There's always been this element in America--
crazies, people who believe in conspiracies.
And we needed them to vote for Republicans.
I think it all goes back to this post-war history.
So there was always, like, an Eisenhower wing
and a Joe McCarthy wing.
Eisenhower was this sort of governing,
boring, but sensible guy.
America knows that this world of ours, ever growing smaller,
must avoid becoming a community of dreadful fear and hate.
[Stuart] And then you had a McCarthy wing.
And McCarthy was paranoid, racist, angry.
[Joseph McCarthy] Our nation may well die.
And I ask you, who caused it?
Was it loyal Americans,
or was it traitors in our government?
[Stuart] Political parties have to serve
a circuit breaker function.
And Republicans never pulled the circuit breaker.
But I certainly felt that, like,
the crazies were on the wrong side of history, as it were.
We were the dominant gene,
and they were the recessive gene.
But I don't know any conclusion to come to
except we were wrong.
[birds cawing]
[Jennifer] They're all called this morning.
Hello?
- Is that Logan? - Hello, Logan.
[James] Hey, Logan. Can you say hi?
Hi.
Look at you walk. Oh, down--he's done.
He's like, "That's enough for me."
[James] Yeah, I just want to talk to you
- for a couple of minutes. - Oh, no. What is on your mind?
[James] Talking about last night, with those 23,000,
I wasn't saying it was an entire district.
But they've been doing vote dumps.
- Right, right. - [James] Right?
123,000 votes came in, all for Biden.
Yeah, I haven't seen that.
I tried to--I tried to find that online.
Other than that tweet that you sent me, I haven't seen that.
You know, people saying bullshit about how more people
voted in Wisconsin than are registered
to vote in Wisconsin, which is bullshit
- because the 2018 number... - [sighs]
...and the numbers of the administration--
James, your language is lovely this morning.
[James] Oh.
I mean, I know where you learned it,
and he's making breakfast for me right there.
But still, so.
[James] I learned it from you.
[laughs] He said he learned it from me.
All of our sons are--
I wouldn't call them conspiracy theorists,
but--and our daughter.
But they--they just mistrust what's going on.
And a lot of it is the misinformation
that gets posted.
You know, something like 125,000 votes
came in, 100% of them for Biden.
That's not realistic.
Well, because it never happened.
But that's the kind of thing that,
you know, people are hearing.
There's obviously a lot of questions around the election.
Miscalculations, misrepresentation,
a lot of fraud.
Joe Biden has said that he's going to lock
the United States down forever
under communist reprogramming.
He's voting to raise our taxes.
He wants to open our borders, our borders,
and give free health care to everyone.
[crowd chanting indistinctly]
[Conor] I was always, myself, knowledgeable about politics.
I don't think I realized how malleable
other people were in real life.
[protestor] Yeah!
Politicians lie, okay?
They just do.
But you know,
in order to win in 2010, 2014,
Republican messengers and political types
sold lies about the country,
spent millions of dollars peddling shit
they knew wasn't true--
that we were on the precipice of socialism,
that, you know, Obama was a communist,
or a socialist, or he was dangerous.
It wasn't a real argument over health care.
It was, this is socialist, and it's communist,
and it's coming for you.
You know, Barack Obama wanted to hurt your family.
He's trying to harm you.
These were some of my first jobs.
I'm not going to say I didn't know what I was doing.
I just thought that was how it worked.
Then they'd win, and they'd kind of all
high five each other,
and I think the consultant class, in particular,
would just forget that they had actually convinced people
of something--that they hadn't just won the election,
but that--that they had
altered a person's state of mind
about the country they've been living in.
[protestor] He's not your friend.
[protestors] USA! USA!
[Conor] People who have more resources
have convinced them of something that isn't true.
[protestors chanting] USA!
[cheering]
[Reed] Yeah, the recount stuff--
I mean, Pennsylvania is probably
going to swing into view here by the end of the week.
President Trump's already calling
some legal case there too.
Yeah, well, he's going to do it everywhere.
- [Sarah] Yeah. What? - [child] Can I have one?
Why don't you say please?
Can you give me a second?
One second, Reed.
- One second, Reed. - [child talking]
Hey, buddy.
[Sarah] The reason I went home was, I hit a breaking point.
Reed and I had several discussions.
And he's like, "You can never leave."
He'd said it in a nice way, like, you know,
you can't leave me, can't leave this project.
It pissed me off.
If Stu's allowed to fly back to see his relatives,
I'm allowed to fly back to see my kid.
We hit the president on COVID all the time
and being irresponsible; I'm going to be
a responsible parent. I'm going home.
But I was never leaving the project.
[Reed] We should play the balance of this week
sort of, like, you know, as it comes.
And we have Georgia, right?
So we'll have to get some ads running.
- Can I ask you one question? - [Reed] Yeah.
In the ranking of, like,
new entity media, democracy,
like, which one's your priority?
Saving democracy.
[Sarah] Right, all right.
Saving and defending-- all that's--anything
that we can do within the PAC.
[Sarah] I believe in The Lincoln Project.
In any organization,
there's going to be difficulties.
And I joined because
I thought the fight was worth it.
I'm not going to walk away from this.
[Reed] The early results bear out that Biden
got 10% of Republicans.
Mm-hmm.
[Reed] That's 3% more than Hillary got.
[Sarah] Mm-hmm.
So if that's the case, then, like, we're--
we're in the Bannon zone, right, which is that 1% to 4%
that he called out of establishment Republicans.
So I think--yeah.
[Sarah] Can you ask him to wipe himself?
[laughs]
[Sarah] You're five.
Isn't parenthood great?
[Sarah] Good job.
[Mike] Yeah, he's got 72 million votes,
with a million left to count.
There wasn't a landslide.
What does that say about the country right now?
I was really hoping that by the time we did the roundup,
we'd have a decision, but...
- [Mike] I know. - Okay.
Cool.
[Mike] Are they there yet?
No, just the cameras.
There's no closure yet.
Those guys have been watching every single day.
So they're feeling the anxiety about every single move.
That's not useful to me.
[person] I would like to give it a couple of hours
to have all of the results come in, but...
fuck.
It's just, like, fuck.
I can't believe the polling was off.
It gave us, like, a false sense of hope.
[person] I do think the absentee ballot issue
for military is a major issue.
There are several thousand votes that need to be counted.
And when we're talking just a few thousand vote difference,
that does matter, so.
[person] But I try not to be checking The New York Times
every three minutes.
What's going to happen is going to happen.
[Ron] Trump can do whatever he wants to do.
But he doesn't get to decide that the votes
are going to stop counting.
Terrific. Thank you so much.
[newscaster] After four long, tense days...
[dramatic music playing]
...CNN projects Joseph R Biden Jr. is elected
the 46th President of the United States,
winning the White House, and denying President Trump
a second term.
[cheering, horns honking]
- [person] Is that real? - [person] Yeah, look at that.
Can't believe it. All the horns.
Oh, wow.
That's amazing.
[laughs]
[horns honking]
"Dear Ron, on behalf of all of the patients
I have tragically lost to this virus,
and on behalf of every patient I have helped guide
through to the other side to breathe another day...
[voice breaking] ...thank you for all you and your team did
to help bring us to this point,
and help ensure we had a turnover of our presidency."
Have a pack.
He travels with it.
Thank you so much.
I'm afraid this might happen again.
[Rick] Congratulations, brother.
- [Reed] You too, man. - [Rick] No kidding.
Oh, my God.
Yeah, the phone is blowing up.
I've started, like, a pile-on of thank yous to all
of our Hollywood friends,
money people that I dealt with,
and everything else.
But what a day.
- [Steve] Hello? - [Reed] Hey, dude.
[Steve] Good to win.
[Reed laughs]
[Mike] There's a certain part of the coming down, you know,
where you don't realize how tense you were
and how much stress there was.
I have a tough time understanding and putting in
perspective things in my life that were of consequence.
This one, I'm really clear on.
We fucking took out the president
of the United States.
That changes history.
Okay, I just have to grab my coffee upstairs,
and then I'm good to go.
Mm-mm.
[Rick] We had set out to defeat Donald Trump.
We came from the right,
and a lot of our people came from the left.
We had a unique constellation of political experience
and knowledge.
And we kicked their ass.
[Mike] The creative content was phenomenal.
Without Rick Wilson's creative brilliance,
it never would have jumped
into the national consciousness.
The viral ads were the top of the iceberg.
Below the surface were all the ads people weren't seeing.
They were the digital ads in the States.
They were the ads talking to voters in the States.
[Mike] And that's what our job was to do.
I just--it's probably one of the best political teams
I've worked with in my entire career,
and I'm just really proud of them.
Just amazing.
[person] I'm so proud of you.
[Joe Biden] America has called upon us
to marshal the forces of science
and the forces of hope in the great battles of our time--
the battle to control the virus,
the battle to achieve racial justice
and root out systemic racism in this country...
[cheering, honking]
...and the battle to save our planet by getting
climate under control.
[cheering, honking]
The battle to restore decency, defend democracy,
and give everybody in this country a fair shot.
That's all they're asking for--a fair shot.
[cheering, honking]
And to my campaign team and all the volunteers
and all who gave so much of themselves--
I want him to sign so many executive orders.
Like, so many.
[Biden] Folks, I'm a proud Democrat.
Let's see how the-- the founders like it.
[music playing indistinctly]
[announcer] The end is coming--
the end of the noise and lies,
the end of the chaos and division.
That day is coming because of your vote.
Joe Biden, our president.
[Sarah] You have a very hopeful and lovely ad
going out tonight called Dawn,
about there being a new dawn with the Biden administration.
So we'll put that out this evening around eight o'clock.
[Reed] All right, well, listen,
if you had to take, you know, my temperature
after election day, obviously, you know, beyond pleased
that we beat Trump, right, or we helped beat Trump.
I think we played a unique role,
a role that probably we only could have played in this.
The organization will be smaller moving forward
just because we won't need as many people
as we have now.
I think that 2021, you know,
looks like we'll be leaning into some
pro-democracy efforts--
voting rights, election security, you know,
what it is we do to push back on the sort of torrent of,
you know, fake and, you know,
misleading information, disinformation,
misinformation that floods into the system.
[newscaster] President Trump, again out of the public eye,
rejects the reality of the election outcome online,
repeating baseless claims about the vote count
despite no evidence of widespread fraud.
Only four GOP senators have acknowledged
President-elect Biden.
President Trump is 100% within his rights
to look into allegations of irregularities.
President Trump should not concede.
Keep fighting for every legal and live vote.
It's just despicable, weak.
I--I mean, I really don't know what to say.
I mean, it's incredible.
Do we, as an organization, consider it a coup?
I think it is an inept attempt at a coup.
But still, I think you could call it a coup.
Maybe I'm just saying this for my own benefit
as I kind of breathe in the gravity of what's being said,
and I agree with it.
I believe this is seditious.
I believe that unity is no longer a goal.
They're not going back.
[newscaster] More than 100 House Republicans are now
supporting overturning the results
in four swing states Joe Biden won.
Joining us now is the co-founder
of The Lincoln Project, Jennifer Horn.
We can also call her
a former Republican.
[Jennifer] It's because of what we've seen
in the weeks since the election
from so many elected Republicans
across this country who were willing to enlist in a--
a coordinated, intentional effort
to essentially overthrow democracy
in the United States of America.
It has become clear to me that the party of Lincoln
is no more.
[Stuart] The thing about this democracy thing
is, like, somebody's got to be willing to lose.
Do you know what I mean?
If you had told me on November 2nd,
that if Trump lost by 8 million or more,
north of 300 votes, electoral college,
would Republican senators accept it,
I would have said, yeah.
I mean, like, yeah. I mean, it's stupid.
Yeah, of course they're going to accept it.
And I don't understand it,
except I'll never look at 1930s Germany
and wonder how it happened again.
[all chanting] Donald Trump!
Donald Trump!
[shouting]
[protestor] Yeah!
[shouting]
[Rick] What if it worked?
- What if the coup worked? - [Steve] Yes.
What are we then?
Can I just jump in for a quick second?
We have to answer the question,
what the hell are you going to do about it?
Not just talk about it, not just put a flag in the sand
and say, this was the first American coup.
What are you going to do about it?
And better fucking mean it.
But then what are the assets we need
to make those things happen?
[Rick] Yeah, so--
But we can discuss that later.
I--
[drummer playing lively rhythm]
Ooh.
- What'd she say? - She said goodbye to Brendan.
You know what the only rules are of The Bachelorette--
no rules.
Trump is out there basically, like, calling for civil war.
I mean, he's trying to do a coup.
And for whatever fucking reason,
The Lincoln Project is not doing much, you know?
I'm completely out of the loop.
Most of the staff is completely out of the loop.
I could be out there as soon as next week with--
Don't sign the fucking lease until you sign a contract.
And I can't believe I have to keep saying this.
[Eddie] We continue to have our political team calls.
We continue to do the work that we can.
But if it's supposed to be a daily call,
and it gets canceled for three weeks straight,
and then just gets canceled through the end of the year...
What?
...it doesn't take a rocket scientist to know
that, like, all is not well in Denmark right now.
I don't know.
- [Mike] Eddie. - Mikey G!
- How's it going? - [Mike] Good.
How was your day, brother?
Do you know if we're going to be able
to do anything in Georgia?
Or do you think that's going to stay on hold
for the next little bit?
[Mike] I mean, I don't know.
[Eddie] And, like, there's that voice in the back
of your head that's like, just ask him, ask him.
Like, what's going on? What's going on?
What's going on, you know? You want to know.
Okay.
[Mike] And if that's the case...
[Eddie] But there's also a competing voice that's,
like, I don't want to know.
I don't want to be involved in this.
What I think should be getting communicated is,
all is not well right now, right?
But I think it seem--
I would assume, and I would hope, that founders
are working amongst themselves to resolve
whatever it is that's going on.
[Steve] Yeah, there's significant revenue
that's possibly involved just already.
[Reed] We have the 527.
We have--right-- the super PAC.
We have the (c)(4) that's hanging out there,
we've got to figure out what the hell we want to do with.
Then we have a 4 Guys Inc.
true, like, media entity.
Steve, if you're going to talk to Mike today,
I need you to get him to sign
the board resolution I had him send--
I had the lawyer send over yesterday.
[Steve] Is he objecting?
Neither he nor Ron have signed it yet.
So I just need to get it done.
[Rick] Ron and Mike are on the board.
They're 2/3 of the board.
Reed is on the board too.
Steve and I were also supposed to be named to the board.
Basically, a scrivener's error did not get us
on the board at the same time.
Whatever happened, happened.
Steve and I, you know, let's be honest,
we're not detail management guys.
And we're not, like, legal paperwork guys.
Long story short, we get through the campaign.
We have some unpleasantness with Mike
and Ron and Jennifer.
Between, like, what's really happening and the plans
that they're making?
Yeah, like they're in denial, just kind of moving forward.
But yeah, they're playing a hand they don't have.
I believed all along, up until the last few weeks
of the campaign, that everybody was going
to have an equal say in what
The Lincoln Project would become.
It only made sense.
All of us jumped off at the same time as co-founders.
That's literally the name.
We all took risks
related to our livelihoods.
And then it became apparent through some conversations
with the other co-founders that the equity stakes
were going to be extremely disproportionate
if we were going to get anything.
When I say "we," I mean, Jennifer Horn,
Ron Steslow, and Mike Madrid.
[cheers and applause]
[announcer] Ladies and gentlemen,
The Lincoln Project.
Steve Schmidt, Rick Wilson, Jennifer Horn, Ron Steslow,
Mike Madrid, Reed Galen.
[Steve] At the first major event
of The Lincoln Project at Cooper Union,
everybody was introduced as a co-founder.
Rick Wilson called me up before, and he said,
you know, we have all of these early employees--
vendors, contractors, Horn, Steslow, Mike Madrid--
who have been hired, you know, to work on this.
They'd like to be called co-founders.
Those people co-founded nothing.
And my exact quote to him was, is,
"I don't give a fuck what anyone calls
themselves about the titles."
And it created a crazy--
and I mean fucking crazy--
sense of entitlement,
the likes of which I've never seen.
[Rick] They basically try to take over The Lincoln Project.
Because you know what the board can do?
Remove anybody from The Lincoln Project.
They can fire me, fire Steve, fire anybody.
[Mike] It's important to recognize that no super PAC
had ever done anything like this before--
not just the unbelievable amount of money
that was coming in as fast as it was,
but the notoriety, the awareness.
I can't think of another super PAC
that seeped into the consciousness
of American pop culture.
The media, political advertising, the Facebook ads,
all of my data is what they need
to create a media company.
Week before Thanksgiving,
I receive a DocuSign
asking for my signature
to add Rick Wilson and Steve Schmidt
to the board.
To which, you know, I just said,
I'm happy to do that once I meet my fiduciary obligation,
which is to understand where the $90 million... [laughs]
...that we raised and spent went.
[Ron] You used to have 41, 40?
Let's do pickups of the USVI.
Oh, yeah, let's do the pickups.
And then Ron and Mike, sometime tomorrow,
before we all get pulled into our family--
you know, family time and all next week,
I would love to be on a phone call with three of us
all at one time.
[Ron] Yes.
[Jennifer] As co-founders, we expected that
we were looped in on what was going on.
And Mike and Ron wanted an accounting of the finances,
and Reed and Steve were unwilling to give it to them.
I started to get suspicious about where did the money go.
Reed, I've said this many times before.
I think that one of the reasons that The Lincoln Project
was as successful as we were in the past year
is because we were honest.
And sometimes, the bare, naked truth
can be uncomfortable to look at.
But I think that there has been a yearning
amongst the American people
for a political organization
that just tells them the truth.
First time I looked at our FEC reports
was the first time that I saw in print how much money
went to Summit Strategies.
It was 27 million, you know, something like that.
And I started recreating in my head who did what.
All of the staffers on The Lincoln Project
are accounted for in the FEC report.
So they weren't getting paid through Summit,
they were getting paid directly.
You can see that.
All of our ad buys through TUSK or through Ashton Media,
like, they're all accounted for there.
And there's still $27 million
that went to Summit Strategies.
Summit Strategies did not serve a function
to the campaign.
They did not have a staff of employees who were working
for The Lincoln Project.
They weren't producing the ads.
They weren't developing the data.
They weren't doing the digital.
Summit Strategies was Reed Galen.
The question was, was that just the four of them
splitting up the money?
Hey, gang.
[person] Yo.
- Laura, this is very exciting. - [Laura] I know. It's cool.
[in falsetto] We're going to have a home!
[Laura laughs]
The rescue dogs of politics will finally have a home.
Like, if we're going to have the LPTV studio,
we should have a podcast studio too.
[Jennifer] And I realized that the four guys
who we all trusted to lead this effort
and to get us where we needed to go,
that they were using the efforts of The Lincoln Project
not just to advance our goals, but to build a foundation
for their personal media business.
That is an extraordinary betrayal.
[indistinct chatter]
[Mike] There's nothing wrong with making money.
I mean, take a celebrity athlete, right?
I think that if you look back at the year 2020
and you asked the average opponent of Donald Trump--
maybe someone who gave 25 or 50 bucks,
if they'd be willing to pay a professional athlete's salary
to some political consultants who came in
and would do the best job at taking out Donald Trump,
they'd say, "Yeah, all day long.
My worry is that a disproportionate amount
of resources went to people who had a financial,
rather than altruistic, stake in the organization.
If I had had more money,
could I have moved the needle more in North Carolina?
Yes, I could have.
Could I have pushed the boundaries in other states
and made them more competitive and put them in play?
Yes, I could have.
All of my data was saying that there were other places
that we could have made a bigger impact on the race.
The fact that we didn't
may not be a legal complication,
but it's certainly a moral issue.
[Reed] Whatever perceptions they might have
do not comport with reality.
At the time, our media buyer said,
"I can't be on a finance report."
And I said, okay, we'll use my company.
Why?
Because the people that made our ads, in that moment,
were still working for Republicans, too, right?
So they did not want to have their names
out there associated with us.
I didn't make $27 million.
Far, far, far, far, far from it.
[Rick] Here's what I can say.
I drive a five-year-old Volvo.
I could sure use a--
I could sure use to replace my driveway, you know?
I'm not--my lifestyle is--
is basically this fight.
There is no giant slush fund where people,
you know, went off and bought a volcano island
to have a lair.
Nobody made that much money.
We made money, but not that much.
They gave the enemies of The Lincoln Project
a sword to attack us.
And right now, all I'm trying to do
is--is patch the holes in the ship
and see if we can keep it afloat.
[cheering]
[Donald Trump] Let me tell you, this election was rigged.
Your governor could stop it very easily if he knew
what the hell he was doing.
[newscaster] On the same day the Georgia
Secretary of State's office moves closer
to recertifying the general election results,
President Donald Trump's campaign
slaps the state with a lawsuit.
Court documents lists numerous
county elections directors as defendants,
as well as Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.
The left lies. They cheat, and they steal.
They are ruthless.
And they are hell bent on getting power and control
by any means necessary.
[crowd booing]
You should want to have an accurate election.
And you're a Republican.
Ossoff and Warnock are the two most extreme,
far left, liberal Senate candidates
in the history of our country.
They cheated, and they rigged our presidential election.
And they're going to try and rig this election too.
[crowd chanting] We love you!
We love you!
Thank you.
[chanting continues]
[Sarah] What has happened over the last three weeks
has had a very quieting effect.
The Lincoln Project has not been able to be as active,
given that there are some legal questions right now,
of which I'm, like, privy to, like, 2%, I think,
of what is actually going on.
We're trying to determine how much can be done.
A woman reached out to me
from the Secretary of State's Office in Georgia.
And the president came out and started harassing
that office for the recounts.
The recount--they recounted the votes three times.
They went for Biden all three times,
and just really laid in to that office.
And the office refused to say that the--
the vote was fraudulent.
Like, they would not say it, and knew that
there was going to be hell to pay from Trump.
So this woman called and said, "Can you come and meet with me?
Will you back us? Will you help us?
Like, I don't know how to do this."
[official] I was hearing that the Trump campaign,
like, in February, wanted to question election results,
throw it to the legislature.
And, like, there's no function in the law
that would allow the Trump campaign to even do that.
[Sarah] Mm-hmm.
[official] He basically demanded that, you know,
we help steal elections on their behalf.
[Nate] This was an autocratic attempt.
I mean, we know this. We know this.
I mean, you just change one rung on this thing,
and now we're talking about removing voters and purging.
And we might just be talking about a different outcome
in this election.
And that's a frightful notion, that one guy
- stands between those things. - [official] Yeah.
So I am going to give you a heads up about
some of the things that the office is dealing with.
We started getting attacked by President Trump.
There were people, within minutes,
putting hits on Brad online.
Brad's house has been broken into twice.
[cameraperson] God.
[official] We are getting death threats
of people who are on staff, and, like,
folks who are in the counties running elections.
[Nate] And Loeffler and Perdue have said nothing about this?
I think we should absolutely hammer that.
That would be a very nice and cutting ad as well.
Just, like, these are the Republicans--yes.
[official] I think I cannot--
[newscaster] So there's two Senate races
on the ballot in Georgia.
A recount could be incredibly significant.
[newscaster] On the line-- control of the U.S. Senate.
If Democrats win both seats, the chamber is tied,
with Vice President-elect Kamala Harris
casting the deciding vote.
[indistinct chatter, shouting]
[person] He's right down there.
In the green, right?
Oh, in the green, yeah.
[person] Right there with the jacket.
[person] Okay, okay, okay.
[Conor] I got a phone call from Nate.
He was like, "Hey, I need your help
on this stuff in Georgia," and I was like,
"I can't spend money.
They're not giving me any money."
[person] Hey. Making sure that they vote.
[interviewer] Did you have any idea this shit
was going down between Ron and Mike and the board?
I'm happy that I was kept out of that, whatever it was.
I don't feel deceived.
That doesn't sound like anything
I want to be involved in.
[Reed] When Georgia is going on,
this is happening concurrently with the internal tumult
that was making it difficult to move money.
And the idea that we were on the precipice of Democrats
have 50 seats in the U.S. Senate and, instead,
we're fighting with each other is very disappointing.
It came to a point where it was sort of like,
do your job, or I'll find somebody who will.
[Sarah] Rick, since you're on,
can you tell us what's happening
in these last couple days?
[Rick] We've got to go fight this thing in Georgia
next week, guys.
So take a deep breath.
We're going to have a day or two off.
But we're going to be back in the fight in--
in Georgia to go after QAnon Kelly.
[Sarah] All right, I think we have
tons to do today, right?
Off we go.
[Nate] We've got NAACP, BlackPAC working
with Ossoff and Warnock.
We should create a video about it.
And if it takes two or three minutes,
I think that's fine.
[Nate] Is that, like, a little, short ad
that we could cut?
Like, Kelly's the only thing standing
between you and freedom?
We haven't given her the true Lincoln Project treatment yet.
Well, like, what if it's, like, an ad, and it shows her
on the plane, right? It's like...
I'm so rich, I'm so rich
I'm so rich
I can do whatever I want
[Reed] That entitlement.
[Steve] We're running against entitlement.
And then you have the insider trading thing, and the...
[Reed] And the airplane.
That's a good--yes.
[Steve] Right?
[Reed] The right-wing media wars are heating up.
Like, now is the time to be getting into that space
with our various channels, because they're
going to get crazier too.
We have always said, as a group,
that this would get crazier.
Like, it wouldn't snap back to normal,
that there's no normal, right?
That is, like, an article of faith.
I think January 6th could be crazy too.
[Steve] Yeah.
You have to frame--
you want someone to take an action, Nate, right?
You want someone to do something
that they haven't done yet, right?
And what you're trying to say is there's two sides.
You can't be on this side.
This is the bad side.
Thanks, Nate, for everything down there.
- Be safe. - It's no problem.
Thank you all. Talk to you in a bit.
[protestor] Proud Boy, Proud boy!
- [shouting] - [explosion]
[announcer] Today, the dividing line
in American politics is not between
conservative and liberal.
It's between those who believe in democracy
and those who are killing it.
Join us.
[dramatic music playing]
[Mike] Yeah, that's--my lawyer is reaching out to him
to try to have the meeting tomorrow morning.
There's going to have to be something more than just,
here's a check, pat us on the ass, and you're out the door.
For me, for me-- I'm speaking for me.
It's not for Ron.
This is not what I want.
This is absolutely not what I hoped for.
The last 72 hours felt like the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Now it's like, you want to blow up
The Lincoln Project and show everybody what happened here?
That's probably not-- probably not the best idea,
but go ahead.
I'm going to go to Mexico.
Ron and Mike are officially no longer with us
on January 31st.
And everything's being transitioned to a new firm,
new digital firm.
And there is no communication with Mike.
And I don't know what's next for them,
but they will not be a part of The Lincoln Project.
And Ron will not be hosting
The Lincoln Project podcast.
So that--those relationships are done.
They didn't have an entitlement to anything.
And I didn't have an obligation to be in business with them.
In fact, by the time we got to the end,
I did not want to be in business with Mike Madrid,
Ron Steslow, and Jennifer Horn.
Whatever the next incarnation of this was,
they weren't along for the ride.
And that's too fucking bad.
That's life.
All Ron wanted in the negotiations
was control of the podcast.
We had, like, 40 emails back and forth
with his attorney about various details of the settlement.
The podcast is mentioned, like, 40 times.
Ron wants the podcast-- podcast, podcast, podcast.
The white whale of a podcast
is all Ron wants out of this fucking deal.
[Mike] In particular, with those kind of
turnout numbers...
[Rick] And Mike could have sustained a role
in something that grew enormously.
But it turned out that he really
wasn't built for the big game.
Mike foolishly sent us a letter offering
to sell us his board seat for money,
which I was disappointed.
You know, if you want to--
if you want to play hardball like that,
if you want to play the big game,
play all the way through.
Don't jack yourself off for less than $1 million
for the board seat.
Could have been worth much more to him if he'd held the line,
but anyway.
He would've had control of the greatest
super PAC in American history.
[Mike] There are people that are actively working
to promulgate the myth that Ron and I were just
trying to get money out of it.
If I wanted money, I would have kept the damn thing
and beat the damn email list like they're going to
like a rented fucking mule, and made millions of dollars
just by grifting in the way that they did,
and I would have made 50 times more money.
There's some people that are fucking skating away
with this fucking story that deserve to have
what actually happened be told.
And it's fucking pissing me off.
There was some bad fucking shit happening
on this fucking campaign.
I need a break.
[protestor] We love Trump!
[crowd chanting] We love Trump!
[newscaster] Businesses are boarded up.
Streets are blocked off.
[crowd] We want Trump!
[newscaster] But pro-Trump demonstrators are undeterred,
descending on the nation's capitol with defiance.
Fight for Trump!
[all chanting] Fight for Trump!
[newscaster] Tensions are rising in Washington,
where Congress is preparing to certify
President-elect Joe Biden's win.
It is not Joe Biden that rules this country.
George Soros does not rule this country.
It's not over because we, the people,
demand that the Supreme Court do their jobs.
We will take it back one way or another.
At least 13 GOP senators plan to challenge
the electoral college count,
which Biden won with 306 votes
to President Trump's 232.
[crowd chanting] America first!
[cheering]
All of us here today do not want to see
our election victory stolen.
We will never give up.
We will never concede. It doesn't happen.
You don't concede when there's theft involved.
[cheering]
And after this, we're going to walk down to the Capitol.
[cheering]
And I'll be there with you.
And we fight.
We fight like hell.
And if you don't fight like hell,
you're not going to have a country anymore.
[all chanting] Fight for Trump!
[protestor] Donald Trump woke us up.
A highly mobilized army.
You think you can laugh at us?
We'll see who laughs last.
[shouting]
[Fisher] Why isn't the National Guard just coming in?
[Sarah] I mean, everyone has the right to protest, right?
And right now, it's peaceful.
- Is it peaceful? - [Sarah] Well, they're not--
If I'm not mistaken, they're throwing objects
- and trash at the cops and... - [Sarah] Are they?
[Nate] ...attempting to break into the Capitol.
[Sarah] You just talked about crossroads.
And it's--to me, it's shocking.
It's pathetic. It's disgusting.
It's unbelievable, but this was planned.
[shouting]
No go! Whose house?
[indistinct shouting]
[Karim] Americans never thought
that this would happen, because we assume
that things just get better.
[rioter] 1776!
[Karim] Is this the last gasp, Reed?
Or is this...?
I don't think so.
Why would it be?
He's not going to go away.
If anything, this-- this reinforces
these people's belief in him.
[Jennifer] I'm convinced it's exactly what the president
wanted to have happen.
He's been laying the groundwork for exactly this
from the beginning of his campaign.
[shouting]
So the Defense Department has just denied
a request by the D.C. officials
to deploy more National Guards.
[Sarah] Oh, now they're-- you see the gun?
[Nate] Look at this shit. Look at this.
Look at this shit.
Guns, yeah.
[Reed] This is just the end result of four years
of them deciding that they just thought that the vampire
was going to be nice to 'em
once we invited him into the house.
They played around with a fucking black mamba,
and you know what? The fucker bit 'em.
Like, what the fuck did they think was going to happen?
[shouting]
One of our staffers is texting me and Rick.
"I'm really worried about you guys.
I hope you guys are someplace safe."
And Rick just texts a picture of a 9 millimeter
with a silencer and an AR-15.
And he said, "I'm fine." [laughs]
[shouting]
[Rick] If they had found U.S. senators
who were not pure MAGA,
they would have killed them.
This was the plan.
This wasn't a coincidence.
I believe that we're in a civil war now.
[rioters chanting] USA!
USA!
This is the most despicable act that's ever
been incited by any president.
[shouting]
But Donald Trump didn't do this alone.
Always look for the coalition between the elites--
Josh Hawley of Stanford University
and Yale Law School,
the Harvard Law School graduate Ted Cruz,
the propagandists, the liars.
And then, of course, the financiers.
How many corporations in this country
signed statements in support of Black Lives Matter,
and then also funded Mitch McConnell's super PAC
and Kevin McCarthy's super PAC?
All of these efforts that were supported
by these House Republicans were aimed
at disenfranchising millions of Black votes.
A lot of companies in this country
are going to have some decisions to make about
whether they want to support an autocratic movement
that does violence to our institutions,
that's led to the deaths of people on the basis of a lie.
It is a lie.
These are domestic enemies.
This is what the word "domestic enemy"
means in the Constitution.
This has been an amoral
and an immoral regime.
[explosion]
What a tragic day.
[shouting]
There will be no letup on our pressure
until Kevin McCarthy is removed from leadership.
There will be no letup on our public pressure
until Rick Scott is removed as the chairman
of the Senatorial Committee, the chief finance arm.
There will be no letup on this campaign
until Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley and Ron Johnson
are either expelled or resign or censured
by the United States Senate.
The goal of the organization was to defeat Donald Trump.
That wasn't enough.
In the end,
politics is a heartbreaking business.
I had death threats.
I had to move.
I had 20 boxes of human excrement
sent to my house.
But would I do it again?
And the answer is, I would.
And the reason I would is because I think
if this organization did not begin,
Donald Trump would have been narrowly re-elected.
Because this organization took the fight to Donald Trump,
then knocked Donald Trump on his ass.
And this country needs an organization...
...that can fight.
[Mike] We've all known people who are just kind of angry
all the time.
Even in a beautiful country with,
you know, limitless opportunities,
there are still people who are just raging, pissed off.
I believe America is at an inflection point.
The American identity that we have known
is beginning to turn on our own institutions.
That is what Trumpism is.
It is about blame.
It is about grievance.
It is about anger.
There's something addicting about outrage, right?
That's part of what defines this era.
If you watch FOX News,
there's always something to be pissed off about--
like, blow-your-stack,
veins-in-your-neck angry about.
And then they're going to sell it to you
because there's a lot of money in anger.
There's a lot of money in outrage.
We've monetized it.
A lot of campaigns require it.
And at a certain point, I think we all have
an obligation to say,
"Is making money out of an outrage machine
helping democracy, or is it hurting it?"
And after 30 years, does that wear on your soul?
Fuck yeah, it wears on your soul.
Anybody who says it doesn't is full of crap.
[Steve] But make no mistake,
the idea that The Lincoln Project story
is a story of the good people against the bad people
is a very naive take on this.
- [static crackles] - [explosion]
[shouting]
[rioter] Cover your eyes!
[shouting]