The RINOs are going to Hollywood.
The “conservative,” anti-Trump PAC known as The Lincoln Project is in talks to take its brand beyond mere electioneering and transform into an all-out media company, with the potential for television programs, books, and films.
Sources told Axios that the group is currently having discussions with the United Talent Agency (UTA) to weigh offers from various media entities.
The Lincoln Project is run by prominent “Never-Trump” Republicans such as Ron Steslow, Rick Wilson, George Conway, Jennifer Horn, Reed Galen, Mike Madrid, and Steve Schmidt. In this election cycle, the organization aims to secure a Joe Biden victory and decries the persistence of “Trumpism” in the GOP.
Axios reports:
The group, formed in late 2019, has been approached by several media and entertainment companies and podcast platforms looking to launch franchises from its brand.
The company is currently working with a documentarian and a motion picture producer to create a non-fiction film after the election.
It’s also attracted interest from TV studios looking to work with the Lincoln Project to help develop a “House of Cards”-like fiction series.
One source notes that a few linear TV networks have indicated interest in having Lincoln Project’s streaming show “LPTV” on their networks.
UTA has a long-standing relationship with Rick Wilson working in partnership with his literary managers at Fletcher & Company.
The Lincoln Project’s podcast currently sees 1.5 million downloads a month and is on track to hit two million in October. The group’s two shows, which stream on YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter, together have 16 million views so far.
Additionally, its gear shop has already fulfilled 70,000 orders, accounting for more than $1.8 million in total sales through mid-October, $670,000 of which the group says is profit.
The PAC has spent millions of dollars on anti-Trump advertising, placing the group among the top outside spenders in 2020 election.
Steve Schmidt, the John McCain senior campaign strategist who helped found the Lincoln Project, has explained the motive behind it with the following words: “The analogy would be in the same way that fire purifies the forest, it needs to be burned to the ground and fundamentally repudiated. Every one of them [senators who support the president] should be voted out of office, with the exception of Mitt Romney.”
As OpenSecrets.com has noted, the group “has come under scrutiny for funneling money to its advisory board members [while] spending relatively little [money] airing political ads to influence voters.” It added: “The group also hides some of its vendors by stealthily paying subcontractors, making it difficult to follow the money.” A spokesman for the National Republican Senatorial Campaign (NRSC) called the Lincoln Project a “scam PAC” and accused its founders of “lining their own pockets” with its supporters’ contributions.
The Lincoln Project not only rejects Donald Trump as an individual, but the entire anti-establishment, anti-globalist movement he has come to represent. To that end, the group has gone so far as to smear the John Birch Society (JBS), of which The New American is the flagship publication.
In an ad released earlier this month, the Lincoln Project lumps JBS together with the Ku Klux Klan and Neo Nazis. “We’ve seen this before,” the narrator in the ad says. “In the history of the great American experiment, extremist groups have risen up to challenge our democracy. There were anti-semitic fascists in the 1930s, the KKK, The John Birch Society.”
While the narrator mentions each of the three groups, it shows black-and-white film of American neo-Nazis, KKK rallies, and (representing JBS) G. Edward Griffin. The footage of Griffin came from his 1969 film presentation This Is The John Birch Society: An Invitation to Membership, in which he condemned Communism, Nazism, and the KKK — while supporting limited government under the Constitution.
Moreover, the Lincoln Project’s communications director is Keith Edwards, who previously worked on communications for Mike Bloomberg’s presidential bid and for New York City Council speaker Corey Johnson (also a Democrat), who tried to kick the Christian relief organization Samaritan’s Purse out of NYC merely for setting up a field hospital in Central Park during the coronavirus outbreak.
The Lincoln Project pitches itself as a return to true constitutional conservatism. What it really wants to return the Republican Party (and America) to is the fake conservatism of big government, open borders, globalism, and foreign interventionism.
