Editorial From The Editor
A critical examination of selective evidence, political messaging, presidential records. The financial machinery behind one of America's most recognizable anti Trump organizations.
The Lincoln Project has built its public identity on a single emotionally potent claim. Donald Trump and the MAGA movement threaten American democracy and only vigilance can stop them. Its advertisements hammer away at corruption, dishonesty and the supposed betrayal of Ronald Reagan's legacy.
But that framing demands scrutiny. How much of this messaging is anchored in verifiable documentation and how much is persuasive packaging built on a carefully curated slice of the record?
The honest answer, after digging through court decisions, government data and campaign finance filings, is complicated. Some of the criticism is solidly documented. Some of it exceeds what the evidence actually supports. Distinguishing between the two is essential, especially for an organization that spends tens of millions of dollars positioning itself as the guardian of democratic truth.
The deeper problem is that the institutions we are told to trust with this sorting the courts, the Congress, the media have each demonstrated their own agendas. The Lincoln Project is not an exception to a broken system. It is a product of one.
The October 2024 advertisement Clean House tells Republicans that Reagan era conservatives cannot see themselves in Trump. There is a real historical basis for that pitch.
The differences are genuine. Reagan championed free trade, signed the 1986 immigration reform, and prioritized NATO and traditional alliances. Trump embraces tariffs, restrictive immigration enforcement, and transactional deal making over treaty loyalty.
But the comparison conveniently ignores the overlap. Both pursued tax cuts, conservative judicial appointments, military buildup, and deregulation. And Reagan's record includes Iran Contra, ballooning deficits and policy controversies that hardly make him an unblemished model of Republican governance.
The claim that Trump represents the total negation of Reagan's party is political rhetoric, not established historical conclusion. It is a useful narrative for disillusioned conservatives, but it is selective history presented as objective fact.
This is where the Lincoln Project's case is strongest and notably, it does not need embellishment.
The House Select Committee's December 2022 final report documented in exhaustive detail Trump's post election campaign to challenge certification results, pressure state election officials, push Vice President Pence toward rejecting electors and promote alternate slates of electors.
In Trump v United States, decided July 2024, the Supreme Court carved out immunity for official acts while explicitly distinguishing those from unofficial conduct. The ruling did not declare Trump's post election actions lawful. It set up exactly the kind of factual inquiry the January 6 case was heading toward.
But here is where a fair examination must refuse the framing rather than accept it.
The committee was created by a Democratic controlled House, with members appointed by Speaker Nancy Pelosi. After Republicans declined to participate, the committee consisted of seven Democrats and two Republicans, both of whom were vocal Trump critics who had already voted to impeach him. No member was inclined to defend Trump's conduct. The committee's stated aim was explicitly punitive, producing a recommendation for criminal prosecution, which is historically unusual for a congressional inquiry.
That is a structural bias, not a conspiracy theory. People who have already concluded someone is guilty do not conduct neutral investigations. They build cases. That is how these things are handled and it is worth stating plainly.
The media, which was supposed to serve as the independent check on this process, largely amplified the committee's framing instead. Headlines repeated insurrection and attack on democracy as settled fact. Independent journalists who questioned the process, who asked where the defense case was, were marginalized or labeled as apologists. The press did not verify. It participated.
The underlying documents the Raffensperger call, the Eastman memos, the alternate elector filings exist independently of the committee's politics. But the process that gathered them was one sided and no fair hearing was ever given to the counterarguments. The ECA ambiguity, the alternate elector confusion and the legitimate concerns about mail in voting changes were real legal questions being litigated in courts at the time. They were dismissed as conspiracy theories rather than engaged with as positions.
A genuinely rigorous examination would present January 6 as contested, complicated and ultimately resolved by courts rather than by advertising campaigns. Neither the Lincoln Project nor its most loyal critics want that story told, because both benefit from the simplified version.
The hush money conviction is a documented legal outcome. It is also a case prosecuted by an elected official who campaigned on securing a conviction of Trump, in a heavily Democratic jurisdiction, before a judge whose impartiality was challenged on documented grounds. The conviction stands as a matter of record. Whether it was produced by a fair process is a separate question that the original reporting did not examine.
The Carroll judgment is a civil verdict affirmed on appeal. It is also a case brought under a favorable jurisdiction and litigated by attorneys with a documented history of anti Trump advocacy. The judgment stands as a matter of record. The fairness of the proceeding is a legitimate subject of inquiry that the original article treated as settled.
But here is where the reporting needs care, particularly regarding Epstein.
Trump's social history with Jeffrey Epstein is documented and fair game. The fight over Epstein related records is a legitimate transparency issue. But association, allegations in investigative files, disclosure disputes, and proven criminal participation are four completely different things. The court findings reviewed here do not establish that Trump participated in Epstein's criminal operation or directed a coverup. When advertisements imply otherwise, they cross the line from advocacy to overreach.
It is also worth noting that the January 6 election interference case never received a full adversarial airing. It was dismissed after Trump's re election under Department of Justice policy. No jury ever heard the evidence. No verdict was rendered on the merits. The courts resolved preliminary questions about immunity and privilege and then the process ended. Claiming that the courts definitively resolved the matter is false. They resolved some questions and the rest was never adjudicated.
Judges are political appointees. Judicial philosophy shapes how they read ambiguous law. And some rulings in this arena, like Judge David Carter's sweeping language in the Eastman privilege case, reached well beyond the narrow question before the court. A judge deciding a narrow evidentiary question should not be issuing pronouncements about criminality. That kind of overreach erodes confidence in the judiciary, and it is fair to flag it.
The 2026 advertisement Time's Up MAGA points to rising gasoline, grocery and rental costs as grounds to reject Trump. There is a factual basis for current affordability concerns. The September 2026 Consumer Price Index shows substantial annual gasoline inflation, with smaller but persistent increases in groceries and rent.
What the advertisement omits is the comparison. The affordability squeeze Americans feel today is real, but it is not the worst of the past decade. Under the Biden administration, inflation peaked at 9.1% annually in June 2022, the highest reading since 1981 and averaged 4.9% across the full term, with cumulative prices rising roughly 21%. Average gasoline prices under Biden ran $3.46 per gallon and peaked at $5.02 in June 2022 following Russia's invasion of Ukraine. By contrast, Trump's second term has averaged 2.98% inflation, below the historical average and his average gas price to date is $3.35, still under Biden's. The current $4.42 per gallon price is higher than where prices stood when Biden left office and the recent spike is driven substantially by the Iran war that began in March 2026.
So the Lincoln Project is entitled to criticize the current cost of living and the current high gas prices are a fair point of attack given the administration's war policy. But presenting today's prices as evidence of a uniquely unaffordable Trump economy, while ignoring that the largest price increases in forty years happened under the previous administration, is selective history rather than honest economic analysis. Inflation is not a simple presidential toggle switch, and attributing every price increase to whoever happens to be in office is precisely the kind of oversimplification that partisan advertising produces and independent journalism is supposed to correct.
Here is the uncomfortable part that the organization's supporters and critics alike tend to skip.
The Lincoln Project raised approximately 87.4 million dollars during the 2020 election cycle. Its 2024 disclosures reported approximately 15.94 million dollars in receipts and 16.80 million dollars in spending. That is a serious political machine.
An Associated Press investigation published in February 2021 examined misconduct allegations against a co founder and raised pointed questions about self dealing, identifying approximately 50 million dollars of roughly 90 million raised flowing to firms controlled by Lincoln Project leadership.
Payments to affiliated firms are not automatically illegal. But they absolutely demand scrutiny, including conflict of interest review, compensation oversight and transparency. An organization that demands accountability from everyone else should be able to answer for its own ledger.
The same standard that the Lincoln Project applies to Trump, the same demand for full records and honest accounting, must be applied to the Lincoln Project itself. That is the test of whether an organization actually believes in accountability or merely deploys it as a weapon.
The entire theory of the American system rests on a division of labor. Courts weigh evidence under adversarial rules. Congress investigates with subpoena power. The media is supposed to be the independent check on both, the institution that does not have a horse in the race, that verifies claims against evidence regardless of which side makes them.
That is why the First Amendment protects the press. It is not so journalists can report what the powerful want said. It is so they can report what the powerful do not want said.
The mainstream press failed at this task during the January 6 coverage. And it fails at it daily in its coverage of the Lincoln Project and every other political operation. The incentives align against truth. Ratings and engagement reward outrage, not nuance. Access journalism means reporters depend on institutional sources for their stories and biting the hand that feeds you is career suicide. And the social alignment of major newsrooms is heavily one sided, which is documented rather than secret. When your entire professional and social circle shares one worldview, balance starts to look like betrayal.
The result is that the media became a participant in the process rather than a check on it. It cherry picked the same evidence the committee cherry picked, gave the same lack of fair hearing and then had the audacity to call itself the arbiter of truth while doing it.
The test of a real truth teller is not whether they criticize the side you dislike. It is whether they apply the same skeptical standard to everyone.
The Lincoln Project's financial self dealing deserves the same scrutiny as Trump's conduct. The committee's one sided process deserves the same scrutiny as the events it investigated. The media's own biases deserve the same scrutiny as the politicians they cover.
That standard is almost never applied. Instead, we get tribalism dressed up as journalism, each side's media amplifying each side's narrative and the actual truth buried somewhere in the middle where nobody is looking.
Americans should not have to choose between believing everything Trump says and accepting everything the Lincoln Project says. There is a third path. Read the records. Read the rulings. Check the disclosures. Weigh the claims against independently gathered evidence. And hold every institution, including the ones you might agree with, to the same standard.
The Lincoln Project has latched onto genuine controversies. January 6, the election challenges and the court findings all deserve attention. But its historical dichotomies, sweeping claims and fundraising practices deserve the same skeptical eye it turns on its opponents.
The real test of the Lincoln Project is not how effectively it attacks Donald Trump. It is whether it applies the same standard of honesty, transparency and accountability to itself that it demands from everyone it opposes. By that measure, based on the record examined here, it falls short.
The one directional nature of its criticism is itself evidence of that failure. The Lincoln Project has produced no equivalent campaign against Democratic leadership, no Time's Up advertisements aimed at Democratic lawmakers, no demands for accountability directed at the left. Its selective outrage is reserved exclusively for Republicans, which is its prerogative as a political advocacy organization, but it disqualifies the claim that it operates as a neutral defender of democratic norms. An organization genuinely committed to accountability would direct its fire wherever the evidence leads. The Lincoln Project directs its fire where its fundraising and donor base demand it and those are not the same thing.
The tragedy is that the institutions designed to keep all of this honest, the courts, the Congress, the press, have each demonstrated their own agendas. The media, which was supposed to be the independent check on every institution, has largely amplified the Lincoln Project's framing rather than scrutinizing it, applying to its claims none of the skeptical standard it applies to the targets of those claims. The remedy is not to trust any of them blindly. It is to refuse the framing, demand the full record and apply the same standard to everyone, regardless of which side happens to benefit. That is not cynicism. It is the only thing that keeps any of this honest.
Sourced from:
Time's Up, MAGA: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fhGaq7a1WeM
