U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio and U.S. Sen. Rick Scott have been given prominent spots in provocative, quick-hit videos put out by the project, which was founded by Wilson, George Conway, Steve Schmidt and John Weaver and has attracted $19.4 million in contributions, according to Federal Elections Commission filings.
Wilson and Weaver said recently they will continue going after people who enable President Donald Trump, including Gov. Ron DeSantis.
“If we're so fortunate that we can get rid of the main zombie, there's still all these other zombies that are going to be roaming around the body politic, people like (U.S. Sen.) Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) and (U.S. Sen.) Josh Holley (R-Mo.),” Weaver said last Friday on MSNBC. “And these MAGA governors in Florida, in Texas and in Georgia and Arizona, for example, who were so afraid of offending the president, that they were literally willing to sacrifice their citizens as opposed to doing the right thing in terms of the COVID pandemic.”
Wilson, who was a longtime GOP strategist, said in a New York magazine article Tuesday the project’s mission to drive Trump out of office has grown since it began in December with an eye on Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania as swing states.
“But now, the calculus has radically expanded,” Wilson said. “Our ability to go into Arizona, and Iowa, and North Carolina, and Georgia, and a whole bunch of other places has increased very rapidly. And Trump’s pathways to victory have narrowed very rapidly. So we will see this fight being waged and won, I think, at the end of the day, in Florida, Arizona, and Ohio, but we’re going to be active in a bunch of other places because it’s a game of very small numbers.”
The response to the group's ads indicates they are hitting a nerve, with the project dismissed by pro-Trump Republicans as a money grab.
The New York Post and the National Review went after the effort this week.
“They attack Republicans from the left, in terms that please the Lincoln Project’s predominantly progressive funders,” a National Review article titled “The Grifter Project” said.
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This article appears in Jul 23-29, 2020.
