If you’ve been anywhere near cable news or social media in the last few months, you have probably seen an ad by The Lincoln Project. The group, composed primarily of Republicans who are very vocal in their opposition to President Donald Trump, has raised and spent gobs of money criticizing not just the president but his Republican allies in Congress for enabling what they say is his abuse of power of the office.
Joining us on this episode of Political Theater is Kurt Bardella, a senior adviser to The Lincoln Project and a former Republican who previously worked for GOP lawmakers such as Olympia J. Snowe, Brian P. Bilbray and Darrell Issa.
He’s also joined the ranks of the industry the president loves to hate — the media! — as a contributor to USA Today and MSNBC and as the founder of the country music newsletter Morning Hangover.
We talk about some of the pushback the project is getting from fellow Republicans, the thinking that goes into their hard-hitting ads’ rhetoric, why they are going after Republicans like Sens. Lindsey Graham and Susan Collins, not just Trump, and some lessons of the past for the GOP, which Bardella detailed in a Los Angeles Times op-ed.