Lincoln Project Co-Founder Steve Schmidt: “The Pro-Democracy Side Of This Argument Cannot Be Gentle”

When Steve Schmidt was a senior advisor on John McCain’s campaign in 2008, Twitter was a curiosity. Now, he and a number of former Republican establishment members are using social media deftly to make the case against President Trump with the Lincoln Project. Their anti-Trump ads seem to go viral at least once a week, and may indeed influence the outcome of the election. Schmidt, a Lincoln Project cofounder, joins the Big Technology Podcast to discuss the evolution of the Republican Party since the McCain days, and how social media is changing politics. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Alex Kantrowitz?

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• 0:43Alex Kantrowitz?

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• 1:03Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay, ready to do this thing? Ready to do it. Okay, great.

• 1:19Alex Kantrowitz?

  Hello and welcome to the Big Technology Podcast, a show for cool-headed nuanced conversation of the tech world and beyond. And today, we have an amazing guest joining us, all the way from Utah, I believe. It's Steve Schmidt, co-founder of The Lincoln Project, which I think many of you have heard a lot about. And I can't wait to get into a discussion of what's going on with the project, a little bit about the election, and talk a bit about Steve's work and the evolution of the Republican Party. Steve, welcome to the show.

• 1:48Speaker 01

  Good to be with you, Alex.

• 1:50Alex Kantrowitz?

  So are you in Utah right now?

• 1:52Speaker 01

  Park City, Utah.

• 1:53Alex Kantrowitz?

  And you guys have just created like a little bubble where the entire Lincoln Project is working out of?

• 1:59Speaker 01

  We have about 40 people out here in total, and we had another 50 that are in different places across the country, but the plurality of the Lincoln Project's out here, it is in a bubble.

• 2:12Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, it must be nice to be around some other people these days. It's rare. So I feel like, especially with the work that you're doing, having some social interaction is probably nice.

• 2:22Speaker 01

  For sure, for sure.

• 2:24Alex Kantrowitz?

  So I want to start by talking a little bit about you. You were a senior advisor to John McCain's campaign in 2008. I remember the campaign was, you know, basically dead and you helped turn it around. Can you tell us a little bit about what that was like?

• 2:37Speaker 01

  Well, I was a consultant for John McCain's campaign and, you know, campaign was functionally bankrupt by January. And I stayed on and the campaign collapsed by July of 2007. He had started the race as the frontrunner. He was in last place. He was broke. He literally flew on a middle seat on a Southwest flight up to Manchester to be greeted by the national press who were saying, when are you getting out of the race? And he called me. I was walking my dog in Northern California. And this is how the movie Game Change opens up.

• 3:18Speaker 01

  And it's just, it's completely accurate. John McCain called me up and the exact quote, he goes, hey, boy, he goes, they're fucking me. I said, who is, sir? He goes, all of them. He goes, all the bastards. He goes, I'm not getting out of the fucking race. He goes, will you help me, boy? Will you help me? And, you know, I told him I would that, you know, I and, you know, I went backpacking that weekend and, you know, came back and we talked about a strategy that ultimately helped reinvigorate the campaign and, you know, he became the Republican nominee.

• 3:54Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, I remember back in the day, it was looking so bad for the McCain campaign that I was, you know, I hosted this show in Ithaca, New York that was listened to by like three people. And I was trying to get folks on from all the major campaigns and no one would answer me. But I feel like so little was going on with the McCain campaign that I was able to build a relationship with them and ended up having some of their top surrogates on during primary day on Super Tuesday. So it had gotten to the point where they were taking calls from college radio stations. But it ended up being quite a comeback.

• 4:27Speaker 01

  Well, it's the, it's the nature of the enterprise. You know, this is the, the race for the presidency of the United States is, is literally the greatest non-lethal competition of any type. You know, that exists on on earth. The level of pressure, the scale of the coverage, the intensity of the psychological combat that's involved, the ups, the downs, the resiliency that it requires. You know, in the in the end, it's a test. And you're seeing Donald Trump right now in this moment really fail the test as his as his campaign is in this state of collapse and chaos as we round the final 12 days

• 5:11Speaker 01

  in this tragic era in this country.

• 5:14Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right. And so when you were on the McCain campaign, what was, you know, what type of role did you play? Did you help guide that that strategy, you know, to lift him up out of the depth of the primary situation?

• 5:25Speaker 01

  Well, what what I said to him at the time, you know, my analysis was, I remember the conversation. I said, you know, you've already lost. And I said, once you, once you embrace that, right? That there's nothing else to lose. We're going to be liberated. And the campaign has to be guided by that spirit and say that, well, you go out and you talk about causes greater than self-interest. And I said, the one thing we can, we can do in this campaign, win, lose or draw, but no matter what, this is what we should build the campaign around. Because this is the thing in this moment in time that you have the greatest conviction about. And that was that at a moment when the American people

• 6:07Speaker 01

  were done with the Iraq war, that we were losing the Iraq war, John McCain was the person in the country who said, whether you were opposed to us fighting this war, whether you were for us fighting this war, we are there now and the only way out is through, not back. And we can't lose the first war of the 21st century to an amalgam of terrorist groups and Shia and Sunni militias controlled by Iranians or in some cases, you know, other extremist elements. And And he went out and started something called the No Surrender Tour. We had no money.

• 6:52Speaker 01

  And the idea was travel the country in the bus and talk about this. Make the campaign about advocating for the least popular issue in the country. Because that's what you believe. And that's what he did. And slowly by slowly, he started to inch back up because people were able to see the dimensions of the man's characters. And you know, the other reality about a presidential primary is it's a demolition derby. And the key to winning the demolition derby isn't to run around the track or race around the track crashing into 15 other cars. It's to avoid collision with anybody until there's one car left. And so we could see the Romney Huckabee murder-suicide scenario playing out.

• 7:35Speaker 01

  Rudy Giuliani was ahead by a lot in New Hampshire, but I never viewed him as a credible candidate for the Republican nomination for for a lot of different reasons and believed he would he would collapse. And we made our stand in New Hampshire, you know, McCain won onto South Carolina and and he became the Republican Republican nominee. But it was a it was a great comeback and it was a incredible adventure during those months where every week we were at a do or die elimination series of primaries, you know, over the course of January, February, March. It was it was an intense part of my career.

• 8:17Alex Kantrowitz?

  Totally. And one thing that I want to seize on is you said that people could see what John McCain's character was about. And you know, the one thing people say a lot of things about John McCain, one thing everybody can agree on is that he was a decent man. And a respectable person. And I just kind of wonder what's happened to the Republican Party since then. Where has it gone astray?

• 8:40Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, where to start? I mean, fully. You know, the Republican Party is in a state of moral, intellectual and spiritual collapse right now. There's not even a pretense that it stands for issues. And you can evidence that by looking at the platform. And what the platform of the party says ratified at the convention this summer, in essence, confirms that, you know, the party is a cult of personality, where to be in good standing requires obedience and loyalty to Donald Trump. And so what the

• 9:20Speaker 01

  party's become in essence is an organized conspiracy to maintain political power for the advancement of the self-interest of the elected officials and the donor class that that supports them. It's devoid of any principles. You know, whether it's the nutty pastors, the frauds, the money changers in the temple, if you will, the Billy Graham juniors, the Jerry Falwell juniors, crazy pastor Paula, the Joel Osteens of the world. These are the the people that occupy a religiosity space around the around the party absurdly.

• 10:02Speaker 01

  You look at the Matt Gaetzes and the Mark Meadows and the anti-intellectualism, the anti-science, the brace of incompetence, cronyism, corruption, the willful turning of the blind eye to all of Trump's excesses. You you consider for a moment that every one of these senators, and I mean every one of them, knew how lethal COVID was. They all knew that Trump knew how lethal it was. And none of them said anything about it. None of them, when he was lying and causing chaos and catastrophe in this country, went

• 10:45Speaker 01

  to the floor of the United States Senate in the spirit of Margaret Chase Smith, who, the Senator from Maine, who denounced McCarthy and McCarthyism. A declaration of conscience in the 1950s. None of them went to the floor of the Senate and said, "Stop this madness. You're killing people." None of them went to the Oval Office and banged on the desk and said, "Stop this insanity." And now these people are running for reelection, asking for six more years under the premise, "Hey, I'm an independent voice that'll have your back and your family's back." Holy shit. I mean, you can't make it up.

• 11:23Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right. But Steve, how did we get here? Because, you know, you go, and literally, what, it was 12 years from a person, the standard bearer was a decent guy, and to the situation that you described. So, take us on the path a little bit about what happened inside the Republican Party that allowed us to get to this point.

• 11:42Speaker 01

  Well, look, Trump is a symptom of our politics. And it's important, I think, for Democrats to be self-reflective in that, who did Donald Trump beat to become the President of the United States? And I'm not making any type of judgment and casting no aspersion here, but I just throw this out as a thought exercise. What is it that the American people saw that they put a con man from New York City into the Oval Office by 78,000 votes across three states? Now, you can go a long ways back, and you can look at the trajectory that brought us to this moment.

• 12:27Speaker 01

  You could go back, for instance, to 1965, when the first Marines came ashore in denying the first American combat forces, regular combat forces.

• 12:41Speaker 01

  You can sit overlooking that spot in the four seasons today, and you can ponder the question of, "We were fighting these people because of why." But in that moment in time, the people who were there to fight were poor, white, black, and brown, while privileged kids like Trump were exempted from military service by gaming the system, getting into the National Guard, multiple student deferments. And the culture war that began over the lying by the government in a war that couldn't be won had the effect, for the first time

• 13:24Speaker 01

  in the country's history, of really shattering trust between people and their institutions of government. And the issues that percolated from that period of time carry forward to this day. They played out through all of the baby boomer presidencies, through Clinton's presidency and his battles with Newt Gingrich, the Bush presidency, the Obama presidency, and the Trump presidency. What we've seen is a Civil Rights and a Voting Rights Act passed in the 1960s, when there were exactly three elected representatives of the Republican Party to federal office, south of the Mason-Dixon line. You've seen the Republican Party

• 14:09Speaker 01

  fully, wholly become the southern party in the country culturally. We've seen the Republican Party embrace the tenants in the spirit of the Know-Nothing Movement, right? From the 1830s and 40s and 50s. These forces in American politics have always been there, and they were exacerbated in 2009 through the Great Recession.

• 14:36Speaker 01

  And I think it defined, redefined, American politics in a fundamental way. You know, it used to be, and for the two races that I was at the highest level of in presidential campaigns, you know, the Bush campaign and the McCain campaign, you know, the truth of the matter is, is the nominees debated vituperatively, you know, between the 45-yard lines. I mean, if you were to look at the rhetoric of the two campaigns I just mentioned, and take it on its face, you would believe that the delta between a just and an unjust world is the difference between the Democratic preferred top marginal tax rate of 39.6% and the Republican rate of 35%, right?

• 15:20Speaker 01

  I mean, that's what, that's what we were arguing about. What happened after 2009 is that politics dimensionally began to shift and to be defined by a series of lateral lines, or horizontal lines. And above that line, Alex, are people like me and you and, and the people that are listening to this podcast, right? And we're in the top 20% of the country economically. We're living longer and more prosperously than any people on earth since the beginning of time. And we tend to have more in common culturally with people who live in London and Geneva and Paris than we do with the citizens of a lot of cities of our own country.

• 16:05Speaker 01

  We got, we got about 40% of the country is vestigally middle-class, still middle-class, but they believe three things. They, they believe that they're one misfortune away from economic collapse and falling down the ladder into the bottom 40%. They believe their kids will be worse off. And they have a profound sense that one misfortune takes it all away.

• 16:36Speaker 01

  Bottom forty percent doesn't have $400 of cash available, is wrestling with a opioid epidemic that's going to kill half a million people over the next 10 years. For the first time in the history of the country, you see, you see, uh, white men at age 50 facing declining life expectancies, just as was the case at the fall of the Soviet Union. We see rising infant mortality rates. We see rising, uh, maternal labor death rates. And these people are lectured to about their privilege by many folks on the left. And it creates tremendous resentment.

• 17:18Speaker 01

  But the message that Trump sold to the country, to these people, is that there's one set of rules for the people at the top and a different set of rules for everybody else. It's not fundamentally different from Bernie Sanders' message. It's a populist message that's rooted in real grievance by people who, by any objective measurement, would be regarded, if FDR could visit with us, as the forgotten man, the forgotten woman, the invisible people.

• 17:56Speaker 01

  And we heard from them in their frustration and in their rage about the ineffectiveness of government and the sense that none of it is on the level in the form of somebody who promised to blow the whole system up. And that's how we got here. Now, the, the question is, when Donald Trump got to Washington, could he have been restrained? Could there have been a check on him? Did the co-equal branch of government controlled by Republicans have to acquiesce to his every indecent whim? And the answer to that is, of course, it did not.

• 18:40Alex Kantrowitz?

  Now, I want to talk to you a little bit about the strategy to speak to this forgotten person, right? Because, you know, it seems like there's two ways to go about it. One is to say, "They're the problem." And the other is to say, "I see the issue, and I'm gonna help you." And it just seems like there's an opportunity for, you know, both sides of the party, and I think Biden is doing a much better job of this than Trump, but like, to say, "Hey, I see the issue, and I'm gonna help you." Uh, you know, before we jumped on the line, uh, there was, uh, there was a video I was watching of John McCain, who we mentioned that you work with, um, speaking to voters. And one of the voters comes up and says, "You know, I need to tell you, John, I'm scared of Barack Obama."

• 19:21Alex Kantrowitz?

  And John McCain says, you know, "Don't be afraid of him," and then the crowd boos him. So there's, there's definitely a, a segment of the electorate that was willing to, uh, you know, that would be receptive to a message of someone saying, "They're the problem." I just don't understand why it seems like, you know, with Trump and with the, you know, rest of the Republican Party that you mentioned, the message that's really resonated, the message that they've stuck with is, you know, it's us versus them versus we're the ones that are gonna help you, and then give actual policies that are going to, going to lift those people out of the situations that you described.

• 19:55Speaker 01

  Well, so, first off, um, it's impossible to talk about any of this without talking about the legacy of, um, the most dangerous and the most injurious immigrant to America in all of our long history, and that's Rupert Murdoch. And so, we've had an increasingly extreme, very sophisticated, interwoven series of institutions that monetize billions of dollars, driving anger and misinformation in this country, from talk radio, Fox, um, you know, Facebook is a, is a cancerous part of this, of this mix as well now.

• 20:41Speaker 01

  And so you have to, you have to understand the, the impact on the polarization of this. And in essence, right, what, what voting has become for a lot of people in this country is an act of aggression where the vote is to impose punishment by electing a faction to do harm to the other faction that's viewed as, as the enemy. And you see this playing out with Trump refusing federal aid for California because of the fires, threatening democratically run states and, and cities.

• 21:21Speaker 01

  So we're, we're just in this moment of, of tremendous division that's been stoked and, and, and not, not accidentally.

• 21:32Speaker 01

  Um, I, there's a lot, obviously, of racial animus, right? That's teeming throughout the Trump movement and that, that has been stoked by him and the, and the party that that is the home for, um, in our politics has, has clearly in this era, uh, is the Republican Party. Um, that's, that's part of it. That's part of it as well. Um, you know, we as a, as a, as a country,

• 22:06Speaker 01

  have not addressed in any type of meaningful way, the question of what type of society, what type of country do we want to live in, in 20 years? So, so the short-termerism, right? The short-term thinking, right, is all part of this, right? There's a, there's a total absence of substance in our politics. I mean, the idea that a presidential candidate will run for an election on the premise that the Mexicans will be, build a wall that we don't need, right? That, you know, overlooked, you know, in addition to the racial animus is, is just how stupid the premise is, right? But I, but I do want to make this point about two types of lies that were told in

• 22:51Speaker 01

  2016, and I think that, that it is important to understand Trumpism. Let's look at Appalachia and let's look at West Virginia and Eastern Kentucky. Let's look at coal country. And Hillary Clinton and, and Donald Trump both went to coal country and lied to those people. So Hillary went there and lied and said that the clean energy jobs were coming. And so this is an economically depressed, isolated part of the country. It's really, in a lot of ways, fundamentally unchanged, but for the devastation of the opioid epidemic since Bobby Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson toured through there in the late, late 1960s, talking about, talking about poverty.

• 23:35Speaker 01

  And so Donald Trump went back and he said, "The, the coal jobs are coming back." What's the easier lie to believe? The lie where there's still remembrance of a life that's no longer there, but still seems within touch? Or about jobs in a world that never existed ever in the first place, just a fantasy? And so when Trump went out there and he said, "Hey, I, I do, I pay people a lot of money, so I don't, I don't have to pay any taxes." Democrats in the left all go crazy, media saying, "Oh, my God, that's it, right? He's, we finally got him."

• 24:18Speaker 01

  And people hear him and they credit him for being honest, because that's what they believe. They believe that rich people game the system, that he doesn't pay taxes. They credit him with being honest about it and then buy into the idea that, yeah, he did pay off all the crooked politicians. He knows how the game is played. He's strong and he's tough and he's gonna fight for that. You know, of course, it's all a con. It's a charade, and we've seen the deadly consequences of that con now, four years on, as this country is in the middle of one of the great crises in its history.

• 24:50Alex Kantrowitz?

  You know, I'm thinking about, thinking about, you mentioned the media. I want to just go back to that quickly. You know, there is another great clip on YouTube that you can watch, the Fox News hosts reacting to Obama's win over McCain in 2008.

• 25:04Alex Kantrowitz?

  And, you know, knowing the Fox News that you know today, you'd imagine that they would be losing their shit. But actually, in reality, it's a very respectful reaction. And they talk about the history that Obama makes. So, so, and maybe, you know, I also think like, yeah, you can point the finger at the media, but it also takes two to tangle, right? Like, they have to be speaking with, you know, a party that makes a decision to go along with some of the stuff that they're talking about. So, I guess, like, what do you think's happened in the last 12 years in particularly? And, you know, Steve, you were part of the Republican establishment up until recently. So, you know, is there anything that you think that you would have done differently, or anything you think you could have changed as time, if you look back in time?

• 25:49Speaker 01

  Not so, I mean, look, I, I've been, you know, my, you know, my time in the, you know, my heyday in the party was from about, you know, 2002 till, you know, 2010. Um, you know, and I've, I've been, my career, I've represented companies and individuals over, over the last 10 years and have done political analysis. But to your point, um, the party is profoundly different than it was when I was there. And, you know, media, conservative media is very different than when I was there. Um, you know, the level of extremism is just

• 26:30Speaker 01

  completely unbound. And, you know, a lot of this happened during the Obama presidency and is responsible for, you know, the place this, this moment that we're, you know, that we're at, that we're at now. Um, you know, I think that every Republican knew who and what Donald Trump was, and we know that because we can go back to the video record of what they said. You know, what's astonishing and tragic is the capitulation through silent complicity of every principle these people.

• 27:12Speaker 01

  Previously claimed to hold. I mean, this idea that, well, I can't speak out against what's wrong because I'm up for reelection is one that I don't have a lot of sympathy for. Um, there are no, there are no former US senators living on the streets. Standing for what's right and being able to be willing to lose an election over that should be a requirement of the job. And so, you know, we, we've come into this place over a long period of time, and it's going to take a lot of work to get out of it.

• 27:45Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right. And so what I'm, what I'm hearing is basically, it was a move that once Donald Trump started playing to the, you know, that they're the problem versus there, I'm going to help you. A lot of, of the, of the elected officials felt uncomfortable with that at first, but then saw the power and decided to play along. And that's where we find ourselves in today.

• 28:03Speaker 01

  Well, we have a crisis of cowardice in the country. We have an elected class that trembles and cowers, um, over the idea of a mean tweet. Um, you know, look, I, you know, Marco Rubio, right? Case in point. And I, I've said this, and you know, everyone around Marco Rubio went crazy, but it's true. And it's true of Ted Cruz, too. You know, they both talk about Castro and, you know, Rubio's family left Cuba during the Batista regime. Marco has, you know, repeatedly dissembled about that. Um, but the story he tells is

• 28:43Speaker 01

  about his parents fleeing tyranny, coming to the United States and his father working as a bartender, trying to live the American dream and, and living long enough to see his son, um, move to the front of the room into the heights of political power in the United States, which is great. It's a, it's part of the American story, part of the American dream. You know, the Cuban-American population is, you know, one of the most successful immigrant groups in the, in the history of the country. But, but, but if you go back to 1959 Cuba, does anybody doubt that Marco Rubio wouldn't have been one of the men who held Castro's

• 29:24Speaker 01

  coat? I mean, what's the, what's the premise that Marco's a great champion for freedom in all the other countries except for America? Right? Along with, along with Ted Cruz, you know, so, so when you, when you look at an American president start to talk about whether we're going to have a peaceful transition of power, starts to make it dependent on whether he wins the election and says that any election that he doesn't win is evidence of massive corruption and therefore invalidated. And, you know, the, the circle continues. I don't know about a peaceful transition of power. I mean, that, that is, that is unpardonable for an American president to say that. It is foundational

• 30:06Speaker 01

  to the country, right? This is, this is part of the great miracle of the country. It's the peaceful transition of, of power. Not one Republican senator has denounced this in the language and the terms with the force that it deserves to be denounced. It's, it's an appalling moment of cowardice in public life in this country.

• 30:25Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah. And we're going to talk about what you're working on to, uh, to fight back against it. When we come back, uh, after this quick break, we're here with Steve Schmidt on the Big Technology Podcast. We'll be back right after this. This episode is brought to you by Avpoint. Everyone's racing to roll out AI right now. Co-pilots, chatbots, agents doing real work. But here's the part nobody loves talking about. All that AI runs on your data. And most teams have no single way to see it, secure it, and prove it's under control. That's exactly what Avpoint does. For 25 years, they've been the trusted layer beneath the world's most demanding data,

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• 32:39Alex Kantrowitz?

  And we're back here on the Big Technology Podcast with Steve Schmidt, co-founder of The Lincoln Project, and who was a former top strategist on the McCain campaign in 2008. We spent much of the first segment talking about the evolution of the Republican Party into what it is today and what might have gone wrong there. And now, Steve, you're working with The Lincoln Project, which a lot of people know. But just to give a quick recap, and let me know if I get this right, but you're an organization that's making a lot of very salient ads that are making the argument against President Trump.

• 33:16Speaker 01

  We view ourselves as an American pro-democracy organization that's deeply concerned about the trajectory of Trump and Trumpism and is dedicated to defeating him.

• 33:30Alex Kantrowitz?

  And I like what you're doing. But I also wonder about the tactics. And I'm curious if you've thought about this. We've gotten into this place where we're living in a very negative, very combative, very like point the finger at the other type of world. And I wonder if you think The Lincoln Project ads, while probably effective against Trump, are contributing to that sort of toxic environment in our politics today?

• 33:55Speaker 01

  Well, let me step back.

• 33:59Speaker 01

  On this question, and let's talk about this moment in time. This is an hour of great crisis in this country, and none of it had to be. If we had the same mortality rates as the Germans do, we'd have 165 to 170,000 more Americans alive. Trump's response to this has been the greatest act of negligence and malfeasance in the history of the country. The lie he told to the American people downplaying the lethality of this virus is the most lethal lie in the history of the country. Hundreds of thousands of people, hundreds of thousands of Americans, will be dead because

• 34:44Speaker 01

  of it. It has wrecked the economy. It has wrecked the education of every primary and secondary grade kid in the country. It has destroyed the American way of life for the foreseeable future. All of the rituals of life, from the bar mitzvahs and the first communions to weddings, it is all ended because of Trump. He has divided the country, he has stoked a cold civil war, he has assaulted the rule

• 35:22Speaker 01

  of law, he has assaulted our institutions, he has attacked our military, he has encouraged autocrats around the world, he has incited violence and extremism in this country, and he has threatened the continuity of the American republic through the peaceful transition of power. The pro-democracy side of this argument cannot be gentle, and it cannot be restrained.

• 35:51Speaker 01

  This needs to be fought fiercely and harshly. And so we seek to disrupt him psychologically and have been effective at that. We seek to drive laughter and mockery at his buffoonery. We seek to diminish him and hurt him and cut him and to hold his enablers accountable, including all of the United States senators, to inflict maximum pain to excise this from American public life over time.

• 36:27Speaker 01

  And so anybody who says, in my view, that, wow, you guys are confronting him in a harsh and negative light, and therefore your part of the problem comes from a place of utter delusion against the stakes that the country faces. We are on the edge of losing this country to Donald Trump. We are in a moment of profound danger as a nation because of Donald Trump, and he must be defeated. And what we're seeing now, 12 days from the election, is the culmination of a fierce

• 37:10Speaker 01

  resistance to this man that has built up over four years and has grown to a crescendo with a tidal wave coming to wipe this out. The good news is, we're going to win this first major fight against Trump and Trumpism as he's repudiated and humiliated in this election. The bad news is, in defeat, the Republican Party is just going to get crazier. Trumpism will be the animating force ideologically inside the Republican Party. The white supremacists, nationalists, boogaloo boys, and militia groups have heard Trump's siren call, have been energized by it, they're not going away, and it's going to be a fight

• 37:55Speaker 01

  that we're in in this country for a long time. And it's going to have to be a harsh fight where we tell the truth. And the last thing I would say, Alex, there's not one ad, not one, that we've run that isn't entirely truthful. Not a single one, not a single embellishment, not a single exaggeration, not in any of them.

• 38:19Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, I mean, first of all, that's a great counterargument. I also think that the Trump administration does make it make it easy to run ads that are truthful and also sting, just given the way that they've they've run the country over the past few years. Do you guys have measurement? Like, are you looking at the effectiveness of these ads? How are people responding to them? Because I do think that the election can be swung by just a few thousand votes, given the way that 2016 ran.

• 38:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, it is a game of small numbers at this point in the States. And so, of course, right, we, you know, we are most known for the ads that, you know, are targeted to an audience of one that tend to go viral. But we're spending tens and tens of millions of dollars in the States on sophisticated campaigns at both the grassroots level and advertising level, at a digital level. And we measure everything that we do. You know, when when COVID began, you know, the best statistics people, best best data analytics people in

• 39:23Speaker 01

  the world are baseball people, and they were all unemployed. And so, we had a lot of baseball statisticians and and data people come in and help us design our targeting programs and software against the small numbers that were that were going after. And, you know, we are, we are trying to peel off. Rasmussen, which I don't think is the most credible polling, but he made the point that we have breached the Bannon line. And the Bannon line refers to what Steve Steve Bannon talked about, which is, you know, the four to 5% of Republicans that they were worried would peel off of Trump. And we've breached that line, right?

• 40:06Speaker 01

  The work of all of the, you know, anti-Trump organizations from the Republican side, you know, of which we're one of, have been successful in doing that. And and I think is going to be a component of the landslide we're about to see.

• 40:22Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, I mean, the ads are definitely, you know, I mean, without seeing the data, just watching them from the ground, they seem like they would be extremely effective. So, you know, for the, I guess, the question is, how many people have their mind made up at this point? But I think people can always swing, no matter whether they're in a persuasion bucket or a mobilization bucket, it seems like. Sorry, go ahead.

• 40:46Speaker 01

  You're down to infinitesimally small numbers of people who are persuadable. But it's a game of turnout. Making sure that intensity stays, make sure that the intensity of the argument stays. And you know, the places, you know, where where people are in line. We released an ad today called Boys. It accompanies one that we put out last week called Girls. It's narrated by Sam Elliott. It's a very soft touch and it's meant to persuade that voter who voted for Trump in 2016. You know, who may have voted for Obama in 2012, right? That it's time to come back across the decency line and vote for Joe Biden.

• 41:30Alex Kantrowitz?

  Do you think this is the nature of politics now? I mean, in 2008, when you were on the McCain campaign, I imagine the ground game was probably the most important thing, right? Getting out, knocking on doors and getting people to vote. It seems like since then, you know, politics been played out on Twitter. You know, we're going to get to the technology side of it a little bit. You know, played out on Twitter and viral videos and, you know, in the media more often. So do you think that that's going to be a permanent change now that we're sort of living on social platforms?

• 41:56Speaker 01

  You know, I think more so every election cycle.

• 41:59Alex Kantrowitz?

  So how does that change politics?

• 42:01Speaker 01

  Well, look, I think that you social media, all of it combined are tools, right? And you can have a lot of hammers and saws and nails that doesn't know, that doesn't mean you know how to build a house with it. But if you if you have a message, you have conviction and you have audience share who's receptive to it. You know, the the social media age we we live in allows, you know, for people to hear that message and also to be participatory in it. You know, specifically our work, right? And, you know, if you people call the Never Trump Movement on the Republican side, you

• 42:43Speaker 01

  know, we're a loose Confederacy of groups that act in coordination for a common cause trying to get to a result. And, you know, social media obviously allows people to be participatory in that. So, yeah, I mean, it's, you know, we will. You know, social media has forever changed politics and the changes in technology. No, no one was talking about TikTok four years ago, right? You know, so whatever, whatever will be up next four years from now, you know, will just become part of the culture and anything that's, you know, in the culture, politics is downstream of that.

• 43:19Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, I know we're coming up on time. Do I have time for a couple more questions? Or do you have to run?

• 43:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, no, for sure.

• 43:25Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay, great. I wanna, you know, I definitely want to talk to you about the money side of things and just give you an opportunity to, to address some of the stuff that bubbles up on Twitter here and there. You know, folks talk about how some of the fundraising from the Lincoln Project has gone to communication firms owned by some of the co-founders. I think I was looking at Open Secrets today and there was like $19 billion to Summit Strategic Communications, which is owned by Reed Galen, who's a co-founder. So I was wondering if you could just, I mean, I imagine this is all coming from, you know, media buys or for the most part. I'd love to hear your thoughts on that and if you can just clarify the percent of the media buy that these firms are taking, that would be great.

• 44:04Speaker 01

  Well, we, when, when it's all sorted out, we have about 82, 83 cents of every dollar raised will go into a voter contact activity, which is a very high number against any campaign or any super PAC. And we have a substantial amount of investment in grassroots activities. We are required by the Federal Election Commission to report all of our expenditures and we do report all of those expenditures. A lot of those payments that flow through a company like Summit Strategies are then dispersed to subcontractors. And one of the, one of the decisions that, you know, we made early on is to shield

• 44:49Speaker 01

  by specific requests from people, but also, you know, on the basis of our good judgment, our people who were involved in this from the type of online abuse, death threats, physical threats, you know, that, that all of us receive. We do think it's laughable when you look at the Trump campaign that the accusations of untowardness are coming from the greatest group of grifters who've ever existed in American history. I mean, honest to God, Brad Parscale. We'll have stolen more money from the Trump campaign, about $80 million, it seems like, which is why they're broke, than the Lincoln Project will have raised by the time we get

• 45:34Speaker 01

  to the end of the election.

• 45:37Alex Kantrowitz?

  So no one's getting rich off of this, is what you're saying?

• 45:40Speaker 01

  No one is getting rich off of this.

• 45:43Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay, the last thing I want to ask you is sort of how you see the next couple of weeks playing out. I mean, we're recording now, a couple of weeks out, the election, we'll probably post this a few days afterwards. It seems like you believe the polling that Trump is going to lose and Biden will win pretty handily.

• 45:59Speaker 01

  I do. I do.

• 46:00Alex Kantrowitz?

  What makes you believe that that's going to happen this cycle as opposed to what happened in 16 where the polling was off?

• 46:07Speaker 01

  Polling wasn't off in 2016. That's a mythology about the race. You know, the polling average had Hillary Clinton up 2.8%, you know, with a 3.5 point margin of error. And she won by 2.1% and lost the presidency across 78,000 votes in three states. You know, fundamentally, in 2016, the person who was losing that race was the person whom the race was about. And the race was about Donald Trump for 99% of the race until James Comey made it about Hillary Clinton in the last week of the race by enough that he was

• 46:51Speaker 01

  able to pull off that inside straight. Truthfully, I think if the election were two days earlier or three days later, she would have, she would have won. And she made big mistakes by not going to Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan. Michigan is going to go to Joe Biden. Pennsylvania is nearly out of hand for Donald Trump. And Wisconsin is looking good and has been ravaged by COVID, which is an indicator of where the votes are going. So I think the only difference between 2016 and 2000, I think the only similarities between

• 47:33Speaker 01

  16 and 20 are that both years have a 2 and a 0 in front.

• 47:38Alex Kantrowitz?

  Um, yeah.

• 47:39Speaker 01

  The, um, you know, the, the reality is, is everybody feels snake bit. Nobody wants to be wrong twice. And so the media has systemically reported or underreported the size, the durability, the duration of Biden Biden's coalition. Um, and has overstated, you know, the possibility of Trump winning. I mean, I, I don't believe that there's some secret Facebook deal going on there. Right. That is shielding Trump's real support from the numbers. I mean, the country's in a state of chaos. His behavior is profoundly unhinged. And I just don't believe the American people, a majority of the American people are going to look at this. They want four more years of this.

• 48:26Alex Kantrowitz?

  That's right. And okay, last question for you. Let's go to November 4th. Uh, no matter who wins, um, is there a way for this country to pick the pieces back up and not fall into this world that you mentioned, which is going to be dominated by chaos and the bug glue boys and other extremist groups?

• 48:45Speaker 01

  I think that 30% of the country will never accept the legitimacy of the result. Trump won't accept the legitimacy of the result. Who will step into the water with him though? When he does that is an open question. Um, I hope the result is big enough that it won't be a lot of people. But, you know, it used to be, and this 24 race is going to start very, very early. Um, it used to be that Democratic candidate go gives a speech trying to establish their liberal bona fides. And the Republican candidate go gives a speech trying to establish their conservative bona fides.

• 49:27Speaker 01

  And I think all these candidates are going to try to go out and establish their conspiracy theory bona fides on the Republican side. Because I think a majority of the Republican party just as a majority accepts the central tenet of QAnon theory. Right. Poll out yesterday that the government is controlled by a cannibalistic pedophile ring of Democrats and deep staters that Trump is trying to unravel, working with the military. Majority of the Republican party's membership in the poll believes that. Majority of the party believes that Barack Obama is a Kenyan Muslim. You know, majority of the party believes a lot of crazy shit.

• 50:07Speaker 01

  And so, right, we're going to see more of that in 2024, more of it in 2022. I mean, do you think that there's going to be more QAnon candidates running for Congress in 22, or less QAnon candidates in the Republican Party? You know, I'll take a lot of money and put my chip on that there's going to be more QAnon candidates. So, look, there are not enough of these people to rule over us and to win elections, but there are enough of them to bring great destabilization to our polity and to our politics, particularly when we have a political class that is as selfish, cowardly, and as unfaithful to

• 50:51Speaker 01

  the discharge of their duties as that we've ever had in the history of the country.

• 50:57Alex Kantrowitz?

  Man, well, it's going to be an intense few weeks ahead, no doubt about that. Well, Steve Schmidt, thank you so much. This has been one of the most fascinating, if somewhat disheartening, but fascinating conversations we've had on this podcast ever. Where can folks learn more about The Lincoln Project and find ways to connect with you?

• 51:15Speaker 01

  Just go to, it's Steve Schmidt, S E S on Twitter, and The Lincoln Project. You can find us on Twitter, on Instagram, on Facebook, and all the usual places.

• 51:27Alex Kantrowitz?

  Great. Well, thank you, everybody, for listening. If this is your first time here, if you could hit subscribe, that would be great. We come up with a new episode every Wednesday. And if you are a regular listener and like what you're hearing, if you could rate us, that would be terrific. We'll be back next Wednesday with a new episode. Thank you so much for listening to the Big Technology Podcast.

• 51:55Speaker 02

  Now, more than ever, we need someone on our side. But Rob Whitman? Whitman's votes drove up costs, cut Medicaid, and risked 350,000 Virginians' health care to pay for tax breaks for himself and his donors. He's not on our side. Shannon Taylor will fight corruption, cut taxes, and bring down costs. This November, vote for Shannon Taylor. She's for us. Paid for by HMP, the HouseMajorityPact.com. Not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.

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