0:00

I would do this fight if I was living in a cardboard

0:02

box. I would do it if I had

0:04

to use stone knives and bear skins. Your task will

0:06

not be an easy one. Your

0:08

enemy is well trained, well equipped, and

0:10

battle-hard. There is not a

0:13

liberal America, and a conservative America. There

0:15

is the United States of America.

0:20

Good night, and good luck. Hey

0:22

folks, it's Rick Wilson, and welcome back to Lincoln

0:24

Project's The Elephant in the Room. I'm

0:26

your host, and we're gonna talk about The Elephant in

0:29

the Room today. First off, I

0:31

wanna say this. It was a bad night for Joe

0:33

Biden. I'm not gonna spin it for you, I'm just

0:35

not. But you know what, I've

0:37

learned that being a pilot for a long time, when

0:39

you're in an emergency, the first

0:41

thing you do is fly the

0:44

plane. In

0:46

flying, we practice these emergency scenarios all the

0:48

time. What happens if the engine quits, if

0:50

your avionics die, if there's a fire in

0:52

the cockpit, if a bird flies through the

0:54

window, smacks through your window like

0:56

a goose flies through your window. You practice those

0:58

things all the time. And I'll tell you, you

1:01

practice them so much because you

1:03

memorize certain parts of it, okay? So

1:06

you could wake me up in a sound sleep and say,

1:08

Rick, I've got an engine out, we're

1:10

flying a Beechcraft Baron, what do you do? And I

1:12

know what to do, I've memorized the boldface checklist, I

1:15

know what the flow of the controls is. But

1:18

the first rule of this, okay, is

1:20

not to go through the checklist line by line. The first rule

1:22

of it in any aircraft emergency

1:25

is to fly the plane. It's

1:28

as simple as actable, you fly the plane.

1:30

If you don't keep flying the plane, you're

1:33

not gonna solve the emergency and you're gonna be out

1:35

of control and you're gonna crash. And

1:37

so when you have a problem

1:39

when you're flying, there are three rules, they're

1:41

very simple. Fly the plane, which

1:44

is the AVA, navigate and communicate.

1:47

Right now we're in the AVA part, gotta fly

1:49

the plane. Had a bad night

1:51

last night. It was late June,

1:54

everybody thought this race was, kinda

1:57

settled into a stasis and I will tell

1:59

you. you. It

2:01

wasn't. Joe Biden went on stage last night with

2:04

a felon, a man who tears

2:06

down America, did the whole his whole speech last night

2:08

was tearing down America. He told 500 lies

2:11

or however the number is, bragged

2:13

about ending Roe versus Wade, defended

2:15

the January 6 terrorists, denied

2:17

having sex with a porn star,

2:20

promised to betray Ukraine, talked down

2:22

our country really, really wrecked the

2:24

way he described America.

2:26

It's always a disaster. It's doom.

2:28

It's terrible. It's the worst. It's

2:31

a hellhole. That was the

2:33

guy Joe Biden went on stage with. And

2:35

I wrote a piece the other day basically telling Biden how to

2:37

do this. And sadly, I'm not

2:40

advising Joe Biden on debate. He

2:43

went in there and he was trying to talk about parts

2:46

per billion of carbon and policy stuff and he got in

2:48

the weeds. He was over prepared. He was tired. That's

2:51

malpractice on the campaign's part. They

2:53

had him do multiple events that day. That wasn't smart.

2:57

And so Joe Biden had a bad, bad night.

2:59

He put in one of the worst debate performances

3:01

I've seen and I've seen a lot. And

3:04

beyond age, there was a sense

3:06

that that wild over preparation

3:09

got to him. And look, I wanted

3:11

him to prepare. I wanted

3:13

him to rehearse. But what I thought he

3:15

should have rehearsed was, you know, the turn

3:17

to Donald Trump and saying, you're

3:19

a criminal. You're a felon. You're

3:21

an idiot. Instead, it was

3:23

more policy driven and I don't think that worked for him.

3:26

But I'm going to tell you something else, folks. While

3:28

there is a stampede right now, every

3:31

must get out today, all that stuff,

3:33

half of it's being driven by the Trump side, which

3:36

I would do the same thing if I was them, by the way.

3:38

I'd do the same thing if I was them. But

3:41

history is full of bad debate performances. I

3:44

can tell you, 1980, I wasn't there.

3:46

I was still in junior

3:48

high. Thank you very much.

3:50

1980, Ronald Reagan

3:53

had a bad first debate. He had a

3:55

terrible first debate. People forget about this. Bill

3:58

Clinton in 1992. against

4:00

George Bush and Ross Perot. His first debate

4:03

was awful. Time magazine ran a cover like,

4:05

you know, Clinton in third, he's doomed, is

4:07

he doomed, is he out? They

4:10

were like, the Democratic Party's gonna die because Bill Clinton's

4:12

going down in flight. Happens.

4:15

I was in Boston in 19, oh

4:18

I'm sorry, in 2000 watching

4:20

George W. Bush debate Al Gore for the

4:22

first time and we're

4:24

standing backstage and the then chairman of

4:26

the Republican National Committee has

4:28

his head in his hands, he's like, we're

4:30

so effed, this is gonna go wrong, what

4:32

are we gonna do? He can't debate this

4:34

guy. Al Gore's a genius. Then W. turns

4:37

around in the success of two debates and

4:39

whips Al Gore's ass on the debate stage.

4:41

Okay? Obama goes out against

4:43

John McCain, his first debate. Not great. We

4:45

tend to overcorrect on what debates mean and

4:48

what they are. The

4:50

chattering classes love them, the media loves

4:52

them, and this year the media particularly

4:54

has been looking for ways to

4:56

accomplish their framing of Joe Biden. They

4:59

got it last night. Okay, they

5:01

got it. They got it. There is no

5:03

spinning this thing. I'm not

5:05

gonna try to spin it for you, but the

5:07

herd is moving right now. Support

5:10

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That's odoo.com

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slash Lincoln. Odoo. Modern

5:43

management made simple. Now, I

5:45

want to give you some tough love really quickly. The

5:49

herd is very, very frequently wrong

5:51

and has to recalibrate itself seven

5:54

to 10 days after a panic. Stampedes

5:56

happen a lot left and right. We're

5:58

in a stampede. Okay, the thing I'm

6:01

going to stampede to do is to stay calm. You

6:04

know, and with everything with with all

6:06

that with with the entire perspective of

6:09

last night's debate being terrible, Joe

6:11

Biden turned in a bad performance.

6:13

Donald Trump also

6:15

turned in a terrible performance. I

6:18

know the Magas are like, I use the

6:20

greatest debater in history of mankind. But

6:23

no, here's the real thing. We'll

6:25

talk about Trump's debate stuff in a second. Okay.

6:29

Donald Trump remains an existential threat to

6:31

American democracy, to our Republic,

6:33

to our Constitution, and all of

6:35

our fundamental liberties. And, you

6:37

know, last night you saw I'm talking about Roe

6:39

in this very weird cavalier way, pretending he's not

6:41

the guy who is out there on the stump

6:43

every day bragging that he put the three justices

6:46

on the court that overturned Roe. He's

6:49

wrong on the numbers there, folks. He is he

6:51

is the polling is still not

6:53

the still not have him in the right spot with American

6:55

voters on this. But in

6:57

addition to all that, you got to remember

7:00

he's standing on stage last night with

7:02

a fraud, a felon, a degenerate, a

7:05

sexual assaulter, and a guy who is an enemy

7:07

as you saw this on the stage last night,

7:09

too. He's a global embarrassment because he's an enemy

7:12

of freedom and an ally of evil. And

7:15

I don't you think I'm exaggerating that fact,

7:17

but listen to what he said last night

7:20

on the stage. He was practically salivating that

7:22

Putin would take Ukraine. He was practically

7:24

giggling about it. This is

7:26

a guy who did

7:28

not change because of that debate. The

7:31

choice is now as it has always been.

7:34

This election is now as it has always been a

7:37

referendum on Donald Trump. It is a choice,

7:39

as we've said since 2000, as I've never

7:42

tired of saying it's

7:44

a choice between America or Trump. You

7:47

saw that on the debate stage last night. And

7:50

look, I can't control

7:52

what the Biden White House or the Democratic Party

7:54

does next. That is not my job. That is

7:56

not the job of the Lincoln Project. It's

7:59

not the job of... of anybody

8:01

outside that circle. The only

8:03

person who can decide to leave this race is Joe Biden. And

8:06

I'm not giving advice about it. I'm

8:09

not saying what I think about it

8:11

because it's not my place in this

8:13

organizational structure of the pro-democracy ecosystem, okay?

8:19

I have looked at my job since 2015 when

8:22

I was one of the first Republican consultants to come out

8:24

and say, I'm not voting for this guy. I'm not doing

8:26

it. Here's why, boom, boom, boom. My

8:30

reasoning does

8:33

not often hold up for nine years in a row, but it's held

8:35

up for nine years in a row. He is

8:37

an enemy of everything this country stands

8:39

for. And I mean everything. He

8:42

is a small, bigoted, hateful,

8:44

terrible, incompetent guy who has

8:46

a dark vision of America.

8:49

He doesn't have any optimism. He doesn't have any

8:51

happiness in him. He doesn't believe in the things

8:53

that have made this country truly glorious and

8:55

truly a beacon

8:57

in the world. He doesn't believe in those things. He

9:00

wants to destroy them. He says to us every day he wants

9:02

to destroy them. That didn't change on that

9:04

debate stage last night. You

9:06

know, so that's the work

9:08

I do. That's the work we do at

9:11

the Lincoln Project. And that's the work I

9:13

believe in, full stop, no conditions, no caveats.

9:15

That's the work. Defeating Trump is

9:17

the work. It is the work of our

9:19

era for anyone who believes that we live

9:21

in a constitutional republic and a

9:23

representative democracy. If you don't believe that and

9:26

you're on the side of authoritarianism and Trump,

9:28

shut off the video, go on, move, go

9:30

do your thing. Everything

9:33

about authoritarian movements that's sexy and appealing

9:35

to you is the same thing that

9:37

will eventually turn on you and crush you. So

9:40

I can't control what the Democratic Party's gonna do. I can't

9:42

control what the mainstream media's gonna do. Those

9:44

things are out of my hands, okay? In

9:46

the coming hours and days, you're gonna see

9:49

the media absolutely feast on this thing. They

9:51

are gonna tear Joe Biden apart like vultures,

9:53

okay? And they're

9:57

also gonna be joined by a lot of Democrats

9:59

who wanna seem... smart and cynical and worldly

10:01

who are going to be out there

10:03

saying, well, he must leave now because obviously

10:05

my solution is to put

10:08

who exactly, who

10:11

exactly are you going to put in there? They're

10:14

not that, but a lot of them just want to

10:17

be the Washington type. They want to be the Washington

10:19

guy. They want to be the one

10:21

who's like, I'm so world and I'm so bitter and

10:23

dark inside that I'll be the one to pull the

10:25

trigger on Joe Biden. Guys, he's

10:27

not Donald Trump. Don't

10:30

lose the focus on that continued

10:33

and fundamental truth. He's

10:35

old, not evil. He

10:38

had a bad night, but

10:40

he doesn't have a bad portfolio of ideas

10:42

that will destroy the freedoms and

10:44

liberties and constitutional protections in this country.

10:48

So I'm kind of a practicing stoic

10:50

at this point in my life, and so I'm going

10:52

to control what I can control. I'm

10:54

going to control my own emotions about this. I'm

10:56

going to control how

10:59

I calibrate the responses

11:01

I have to

11:04

these things that are meant to invoke big emotions.

11:06

I'm going to stay cool. I'm going to stay calm about

11:08

this. And I'm going to, you

11:10

know, I'm going to tell you, none

11:13

of this reduces the determination of

11:15

folks here at the Lincoln Project or me

11:17

individually, anybody on our team, about

11:20

this fight won iota. It has

11:22

always been our mission to oppose Trump

11:24

and Trumpism from 2020 till this very minute.

11:28

It has always been our our vision to

11:33

break this movement, this authoritarian movement around

11:35

him and to break him. We've done

11:37

it once in 2020 at

11:40

the presidential level. We beat 17 of

11:42

his people in 2022. We're

11:45

going to do the same thing this year with Trump. He

11:47

can still be beaten and we will. You

11:50

know, so that's the part of my stoicism is I'm

11:52

going to dismiss the things I can't control right now.

11:54

I can't control the Democrats do. I can't control the

11:56

media does. But what I can

11:58

do and what I can. Listen, there

12:02

are some things I can't do. I would like to release 400

12:05

hungry and rabid Wolverines in Mar-a-Lago, because

12:07

I think it would be fun and

12:09

funny, but I don't think I'm

12:11

going to get that wish. But look,

12:14

what I can control and what we can control

12:16

is the tempo of messages against Trump, the timing

12:18

of them, the character. We've

12:20

got a machine, and there's

12:23

a lot of other machines in the pro-democracy

12:25

space right now, and a lot

12:27

of the voices in the pro-democracy space right now, that

12:30

understand this. Whatever

12:32

happens with Joe Biden, we cannot

12:34

for a moment cease the attack

12:36

on Donald Trump. We cannot for

12:38

a moment stop kicking him in

12:40

the nuts every single minute of

12:42

the day. This is

12:44

a fight that requires messaging and

12:46

strategy and communications and social media

12:48

and ads and placement and grassroots

12:50

work and everything else. Because

12:53

if you let him have the next

12:55

two weeks, if Democrats indulge this fantasy of

12:57

replacing Joe Biden for the next two weeks

13:00

or longer, and you let

13:03

Donald Trump get an open field and a head

13:05

of steam, and you

13:07

let him begin to build

13:10

up momentum, you

13:12

will lose. So that's why the

13:14

attack can never cease on Trump. Write about it in the second

13:16

book. Once you're in the fight with him, you must never leave

13:18

the fight with him. He will always find

13:20

a way to try to make you go to sleep or

13:22

think he's dead or think he's finished, and

13:24

then he comes back over and over again.

13:26

He's political herpes. He never stops coming. So

13:29

everybody in the pro-democracy movement needs to stay in

13:31

the fight. You need to pull the oars in

13:33

this big boat in the same direction, everybody. I

13:35

mean, we can control a

13:37

lot of things that we do. We can keep

13:40

splitting off those messages for GOP voters who

13:43

are uncomfortable with Trump. There are more than there were in 2016 and more

13:45

than there were in 2020. That

13:49

number is evidenced by Nikki Haley's performance,

13:51

by the numbers we're seeing in our

13:53

focus grouping, polling, and other data research

13:55

out there. We've

13:57

got to keep splitting those people off. got

14:00

to all keep telling the truth about what Trump

14:02

did last night also. This

14:04

wasn't some triumph of rhetoric. This

14:06

wasn't some controlled guy. He told

14:08

a set of stories

14:11

that were so luridly untrue, so

14:13

insanely false over and over and

14:16

over again that an army

14:18

of fact checkers and trained linguists could spend

14:20

a month parsing all of them. It

14:23

was an insane performance. And

14:25

if Joe Biden had

14:27

had an even slightly better night, the story

14:29

narrative right now would be that Donald Trump's

14:31

office fucking rocker, that this is

14:34

a guy who is completely bonkers because the

14:36

things he was saying last night about this

14:38

country, the lies

14:40

came so hot and heavy, it

14:42

was kind of astounding. Like

14:45

I said, it's this Baron von Munchausen

14:47

fantasy world he lives in that

14:49

didn't get fact checked on the stage, that

14:52

didn't get fact checked much after,

14:55

a bit after, but post hoc

14:57

fact checking with this guy just

14:59

doesn't work the same way. And

15:02

he didn't stop lying. He never does. Let's

15:06

take the phrase that Donald Trump won the debate.

15:08

Okay. Use that phrase. Use it all

15:10

you want. Donald Trump

15:13

did not suddenly get exonerated last night of 34

15:15

felony counts. He

15:17

did not stop being a sexual assaulter last night.

15:20

He's not a better or stronger or more honorable guy

15:22

than he was yesterday. In

15:24

fact, I'd argue that he keeps

15:27

revealing to us how dark and wrong he is.

15:29

He is a felon. He's still a felon. You

15:31

can win a thousand debates. He's still going to

15:34

be a felon in a criminal. He's

15:36

still this repugnant, low, horrible

15:39

creature. And the catalog of

15:41

lies last night wasn't new. All the

15:43

stuff about immigrants, it's purely feeding the

15:46

base. Okay. And again,

15:48

if you took the color of Biden's bad performance

15:50

last night out of the picture, nothing

15:53

Donald Trump said last night was

15:56

an appeal to the voters that

15:58

Nikki Haley was winning. None of

16:00

what he said last night was an appeal to independent voters who

16:02

were out there because it was so

16:04

over the top It was so crazy and it

16:06

all came down again this

16:08

very dark pessimistic vision about this

16:11

guys Nothing about Trump changed

16:13

after last night. I want

16:15

to say this 130 days

16:17

is an absolute eternity in politics. Okay,

16:19

and I want

16:21

to give you an example of a window about about 130

16:24

days I was trying to think of it

16:26

last night it kind of percolated up and I thought about it

16:28

this morning when the dogs were Howling

16:30

and going to go outside When

16:35

the Germans invaded France,

16:37

here's your World War two history lesson when the

16:39

Germans invaded France in 1940 They

16:44

fell pretty quickly and Europe

16:47

was in shock England

16:49

was in shock. They'd been defeated and thrown

16:51

off the continent at Dunkirk a little

16:53

while before that and Winston

16:56

Churchill been in office about two months And

17:00

he gave a series of three speeches Though

17:02

first was the fight on the beaches speech, but the one I'm

17:05

going to talk about is the last of the three And

17:08

it's called the finest hour speech Because

17:12

Winston Churchill gave that speech in June

17:16

By the fall about a hundred and thirty days later The

17:19

Battle of Britain had led to the defeat of the

17:22

Luftwaffe And it

17:24

had broken Hitler's ability to invade

17:26

and destroy England Churchill

17:28

understood this he gave one it was one of those

17:30

famous speeches in history and You

17:33

know that our that world looked dark

17:35

and impossible and terrible and Churchill knew

17:38

This wasn't just a you know a

17:41

rhetorical construct. He knew that unless they

17:44

fought in that window of time between

17:47

the time that that

17:50

the shock of the fall of France had

17:52

set in and And and

17:55

the German invasion unless he knew that if they

17:57

fought didn't fight every day they would fall he

17:59

would die The country would die. So

18:02

in the finest hour speech, I'm just going to

18:04

pick two sections and I'm going to read them

18:06

to you. And I cannot imitate

18:08

Winston Churchill sufficiently, but I'm not going to

18:10

try. And

18:13

I want you to ponder these two sections as

18:16

you feel depressed and as you're worried right now, as

18:18

you think that this is all over and that Trump's

18:21

going to win. Because

18:24

this guy faced something much bigger. And

18:27

Trump may be the spiritual heir to what Winston

18:30

Churchill faced. But I want

18:32

you to take these two paragraphs

18:35

to heart. In

18:37

casting up this dread balance sheet, contemplating

18:39

our dangers with a disillusioned eye, I

18:42

see great reason for intense vigilance

18:44

and exertion, but none whatever for

18:46

panic and despair. During

18:49

the four years of the last war, the

18:51

Allies experienced nothing but disaster and disappointment and

18:54

yet at the end, their morale was higher

18:56

than that of the Germans who had moved

18:58

from one aggressive triumph to the other. During

19:01

that war, we repeatedly asked ourselves the

19:04

question, how are we going to win? And

19:06

no one was able to answer it with much

19:08

precision until at the end, quite suddenly, quite

19:11

unexpectedly, our terrible foe collapsed

19:13

before us. And

19:18

the second graph I want you to listen

19:20

to and really internalizes folks. The

19:24

whole fury and might of the enemy must very

19:26

soon be turned on us. Hitler

19:28

knows that he will have to break us in

19:31

this island or lose the war. If

19:33

we can stand up to him, all Europe may be

19:35

freed and the life of the world may

19:38

move forward into broad, somewhat uplands.

19:41

But if we fail, then the whole

19:43

world, including the United States, including all

19:45

that we have known and cared for,

19:47

will sink into an abyss of a

19:49

new dark age made more sinister and

19:51

perhaps more protracted by the lights of

19:54

perverted science. Therefore let us

19:56

brace ourselves to our duties and

19:58

so bear ourselves if If the British

20:00

Empire and its Commonwealth last for a

20:02

thousand years, men will say this was

20:05

their finest hour. Here's

20:09

the thing about finest hours, everybody. You

20:11

have to earn them. The

20:13

fight continues, and you have

20:15

to earn them. You have to wage

20:17

the war against the evil that is

20:20

Trump and his movement. And it

20:22

is evil. I'm not going to parse it. I'm

20:24

not going to spin it. I'm not going to do the

20:26

polite thing. It's just a different... No,

20:28

it's not. Okay? You

20:31

have to earn your finest hour. And I

20:33

am confident that if we wage this

20:36

war on Trump, and it must

20:38

be relentless, and it must be... It

20:40

must be unmerciful and

20:42

never leave the fight. We've

20:45

got 130 some days to go, folks. And

20:47

if we do that, our terrible

20:49

foe will collapse before us. Hey

20:53

folks, if you want to read the origin story of this

20:56

video, it's on my sub-stack. You

20:59

can find it easily there. It's today's top

21:01

story. And I also want to

21:03

say, the Lincoln Project

21:05

yesterday had one of its

21:07

biggest fundraising days in the last couple years.

21:10

Why is that? It's because grassroots

21:13

donors and large donors all understood

21:15

something. We play a unique role

21:17

in this fight. We are not

21:19

like a lot of other super PACs. We are not

21:21

the nice people. We're the black water

21:23

of the super PAC world right now. We're the

21:25

ones who will take the fight to Trump, even

21:28

on bad days, even when it's tough. We're

21:30

not going to stop. We're not going to

21:32

rest. We'd love to have your support and reach

21:34

us at LincolnProject.us slash donate. If you want to

21:36

help us out, we'd be grateful. The more we

21:39

are able to go out into the swing States

21:41

right now and keep dividing up the soft

21:44

Republican votes that we're very good at talking

21:46

to, the better. We'd appreciate

21:48

it. And we look forward to having you in

21:50

the fight with us. We'll talk to you again next time. Thanks, everybody.

22:03

Good night and good luck.