The Lincoln Project

With four days to Election Day, Rick Wilson reveals the "secret" of this midterm cycle: Trump never took it seriously, but the electorate cares intensely about him because of the economic, military, and corruption fallout. Rick runs through what early voting is telling him, why Republican candidates are begging Trump to stay away, and why he thinks the tariffs and the Iran war never got a course c...

It’s a doubleheader for the last episode of the Lincoln Project Podcast before the 2026 midterm election. Rick is joined by two Democrats running in deep-red territory: Stephanie Arne (D-SD) and Justin Pearson (D-TN). Stephanie Arne, a former host of “Wild Kingdom,” is running for the South Dakota House in Sioux Falls with a grassroots, door-knocking campaign that has reached thousands of her neig...

This week’s EITR is an ad from Vivek Ramaswamy's campaign that features the estranged birth mother of Democratic nominee Amy Acton. Rick has made hard-hitting negative ads for decades, and he explains why he sees a firm line between tough contrast ads and attacks on a family member who isn't a participant in the race, and why he believes this ad denies Acton's documented history of childhood abuse...

This week, it’s a Florida DOUBLE-HEADER on the Lincoln Project Podcast. First up: retired Army Brigadier General Leela Gray, the Democratic nominee running against Rep. Anna Paulina Luna in Florida's 13th District. Gray breaks down the cost-of-living crisis squeezing Pinellas County, Luna's refusal to hold town halls or debate, and the anti-corruption agenda she wants to take to Congress, includin...

With 18 DAYS to Election Day, reality is finally setting in. Republicans are watching the House slip away. Trump's supporters are staring at a visibly declining leader. And MAGA voters are learning that $5-plus diesel, lost health insurance, and data centers in their backyard WERE the deal all along. Rick's warning: don't get complacent, VOTE EARLY. Then he looks past November to a long, patient a...

Rick sits down with Oscar-winning documentarian Alex Gibney about MUSK, his four-hour film that started as a business profile and turned into something much bigger once Elon hitched his wagon to Trump. Gibney says Musk's fortune was built less on engineering genius than on MYTH-MAKING, a confidence-man playbook of gaslighting and bravado that let him buy his way into American politics. They trace...

Democrats are winning, and RICK WILSON says they have NO IDEA why. It isn't because the party's brand got better. It's because voters, including a LOT of Republicans, are done with TRUMP over tariffs, the Iran war, and corruption. Rick's warning: don't let the consultants talk you into a "big optimistic vision." Stay on affordability. Stay on corruption. Keep PUNCHING, the way Ossoff and El-Sayed...

Rick sits down with TIMOTHY SNYDER, the historian who literally wrote the book on tyranny, two of them, in fact: ON TYRANNY and ON FREEDOM. Snyder says that Trump isn't a real strongman. Compared to actual dictators like Putin, he's WEAK — and  the right response isn't fear, it's MOCKERY, organizing, and showing up in overwhelming numbers this November. They dig into what Snyder calls a "crisis of...

Rick is calling this the WORST WEEK the GOP has had in years, and the proof is in the polling. The map is getting uglier for Republicans by the day. Texas and Ohio are tightening, and David Jolly's got the edge on a flailing Byron Donalds in Florida. Meanwhile, Republicans just can’t stop making it worse for themselves. MAGA Senator Eric Schmitt tried to trap Jack Smith in a perjury gotcha and it...

Rick sits down with JACOB WEISBERG, author of PROFILES IN COWARDICE, the book that exposes the men whose lack of courage enabled Trump 2.0. Jacob and Rick go through the receipts: enfeebled Senator Mitch McConnell, who called out Trump on the Senate floor after January 6th and then folded right back into line. Blackstone CEO and billionaire Steve Schwarzman, who was SKEPTICAL of a second term and...

The Elephant in the Room: Trump's Numbers Just Cratered The polls are in, and they're a bloodbath. Trump's approval just hit a historic low, and the GOP — the party that welded itself to him — is going down with the ship and calling it strategy. This week, Rick convenes the brain trust: Senior Advisor Matthew Dowd, Executive Director Tessa Gould, Political Director Andrew Wilson, and special guest...

The Data Center Grift (with WIRED's Molly Taft) The richest companies in human history have a new hustle, and you're the mark. They're bulldozing warehouses the size of malls into towns too small to fight back, draining the reservoir dry, and torching the power grid — all to run an AI that still can't tell you how many R's are in "strawberry." The best part? They took the tax breaks, promised jobs...

Rick sits down with RABIA CHAUDRY, the attorney who helped make SERIAL a phenomenon and now runs UNDISCLOSED, the podcast that's helped get WRONGFULLY CONVICTED people OUT of prison. Rabia breaks down the patterns behind these convictions — junk forensics, coerced confessions, prosecutors with a "hero complex" who'd rather double down than admit they got it wrong — and lays out real fixes to fix a...

Rick sits down with GIL DURAN, the #1 bestselling author of THE NERD REICH: SILICON VALLEY FASCISM AND THE WAR ON DEMOCRACY, and this one goes DEEP. Gil traces how the tech world's lurch to the right didn't start with Trump — it started with San Francisco recall elections that quietly road-tested billionaire-funded populism, then Elon Musk DROPPING $277 MILLION on the 2024 election. They unpack th...

On the 25th anniversary of September 11th, Rick shares his personal reflections on that day. Loved ones lost, survivors never the same again. This is a look at what America got right in the aftermath: real unity, real international solidarity, NATO invoking Article 5 for the only time in its history. Everything bin Laden failed to break through terror on that day — our cohesion, our alliances, our...

Rick sits down with MAGGIE HABERMAN, the #1 NYT bestselling co-author (with Jonathan Swan) behind REGIME CHANGE: INSIDE THE IMPERIAL PRESIDENCY OF DONALD TRUMP, built on roughly 1,000 interviews inside this White House. Maggie breaks down the WILD delta between Trump's first and second terms — Elon Musk's chaotic run as would-be reformer, the DOGE flameout that cracked the EPSTEIN FILES fight wide...

Rick Wilson has a plan, and it's straight out of a mob prosecutor's playbook. While Mike Johnson is out there insisting Republicans will EXPAND their majority, the White House is quietly doing something very different: lawyering up, tightening ethics disclosures, and bracing for a Democratic Congress. Rick says forget impeaching Trump directly — the Senate math doesn't work. Instead, Democrats sho...

Rick sits down with BENN JORDAN, the musician-turned-security-researcher who did what Flock Safety said was impossible: he found their "unhackable" license-plate camera network wide open on the internet. Benn walks Rick through how he stumbled onto unmarked cameras near his home in ATLANTA — the most surveilled city in America — and ended up exposing passwordless feeds, a data-retention policy tha...

This week's EITR is not surprising. It’s that Trump is going to make the 2026 elections all about him, and it’s not going to work. Rick breaks down Trump's plan to spend MAGA Inc.'s war chest on a national ad campaign centered on himself rather than the vulnerable Republicans who need the help most. Rick talks about how this strategy only worked when Trump's numbers were sky-high — now that strong...

In this very special episode of the Lincoln Project Podcast, Rick sits down with HUNTER BIDEN for a conversation that pulls NO punches. Hunter makes the case that Americans are far less divided than the media wants you to believe, that AUTHENTICITY beats Trump's audacity every time, and that Democrats need to stop torching their own — from Abdul El-Sayed to Zohran Mamdani's early wins in New York....

Rick Wilson is breaking down the strangest power dynamic in Washington: NATALIE HARP, the 35-year-old former OAN host turned Trump aide who prints him flattering headlines and reportedly rode in an SUV TRUNK just to stay near him. Rick digs into the reporting — she was one of a handful of aides on the Turkey trip, she's operated for over a year WITHOUT a normal security clearance, and insiders are...

This week is special: recorded live in front of our audience at the Leicester Square Theatre in London and hosted by Byline Times @BylineTimes -- we're delivering part II of Rick's UK adventures across the pond. The Lincoln Project's Rick Wilson and Maya May sit down with The Bunker's Alex Andreou and Naomi Smith @bunkerpod.bsky.social — with a surprise appearance from Count Binface @CountBinface...

Rick Wilson and Maya May took The Lincoln Project LIVE to the Leicester Square Theatre in London, joining forces with the UK's Quiet Riot podcast (Naomi Smith and Alex Andreou @quietriotpod.bsky.social) for a no-holds-barred night hosted by Byline Times @bylinesnetwork. The question on the table: WHAT CAN BRITAIN LEARN FROM AMERICA'S AUTHORITARIAN SLIDE — before it's too late? Rick and Maya push b...

Rick Wilson just took America's authoritarian meltdown on the road, and this time the stage isn't a cable news set, it's PETER GABRIEL'S WOMAD FESTIVAL in the UK. This week Rick tells the story of his OWN journey through GOP politics — from party operative to outspoken critic — as a CAUTIONARY TALE for a world watching democracy erode in real time. He's not just talking about America anymore. He's...

This week's EITR is "Men of (Dis)honor." Republicans would rather keep an alleged domestic abuser in Congress than lose a seat — no shock when the man leading the party is a convicted felon found liable for sexual abuse. Then there's Thom Tillis and John Cornyn: on their way out the door, already torched by Trump, handed the easiest chance at honor of their careers — and they folded, voting to con...