The disgraced Lincoln Project’s meteoric rise and descent is chronicled in a new five-part Showtime docuseries about the anti-Trump PAC set to be released Oct. 7.
From a $90 million success story in 2020 with designs of becoming a global media empire, to a punchline in 2021 whose ex-Republican co-founders bitterly turned on each other in the aftermath of John Weaver’s online sexual harassment scandal, the Showtime crew appears to have gotten a front-row seat in the trailer that dropped Wednesday.
Co-founder Steve Schmidt, who has since disassociated himself with the organization, is prominently featured in the trailer – on horseback and shooting skeet – as is fellow co-founder Rick Wilson and adviser Stuart Stevens.
While the trailer features the Lincoln Project’s triumphant trolling of former President Trump and President Biden’s 2020 victory, it also shows staffers’ anguished reactions to the Weaver scandal broken by journalist Ryan Girdusky and confirmed by multiple news outlets, followed by other brutal headlines that led to an exodus of top staffers and co-founders last year.
Led by Schmidt and Wilson, the anti-Trump group of disgruntled former and current Republicans burst onto the scene in late 2019 and fought Trump and his GOP allies in the form of trolling ads and a bombastic social media presence. Trump openly disparaged the organization during the 2020 election, increasing its popularity on the left.
A documentary crew led by Karim Amer and actor and liberal activist Fisher Stevens got inside access to the group at its Park City, Utah, headquarters beginning in September 2020, when the group was a media darling for its efforts. In addition to fawning profiles in “60 Minutes,” TIME and the New Yorker, its members and audacious digital strategy were applauded on CNN and MSNBC.
The group succeeded beyond what sources say was its wildest dreams by raising nearly $90 million in 2020, and Schmidt and others dreamed of creating one of the world’s largest media companies.
But the film crew stayed on after the election, when the Lincoln Project toasted itself for its role in President Biden’s victory, despite a study finding its vitriolic ads were ineffective in swaying swing voters.
Shortly after Biden won, the group collapsed in a torrent of embarrassing scandals, beginning with Weaver and then reports of financial self-dealing, in-fighting and an ugly, toxic work environment. Then came the stormy exit of co-founder Jennifer Horn, culminating in Schmidt ordering a subordinate, Kurt Bardella, to publish her private messages with a reporter. The tidal wave of negative stories led co-founder George Conway to call on the Lincoln Project to dissolve, but it remains active today.
Its bad 2021 only continued when the PAC revealed it was behind a disastrous racial hoax meant to smear Glenn Youngkin supporters in Virginia as racists. Figures on the right and left are now wary of the Lincoln Project, as it doesn’t bother to hide its open support of Democrats but nevertheless comprises many members of the GOP diaspora.
According to a source familiar with the project, the documentary won’t be flattering to Schmidt or others high up in the organization, and it could provide revelations about who knew what, and when, regarding the Weaver scandal. Schmidt has flatly denied he knew about accusations of Weaver’s online predations before some reports said he did.
Beyond that, the trailer shows Wilson – a longtime GOP hatchet man – admitting he’d done whatever it took to win in the past, interspersed with images of January 6 and the forces of Trumpism the Lincoln Project’s remnants are still fighting.
“There’s nothing noble about us,” Stevens says at one point in the trailer. “But we’re useful.”
