The Lincoln Project

Trump flew to Ankara for the NATO summit and turned it into an open-mic disaster. In two days he threatened to bomb Iran again, screamed at Europe for blocking his Greenland obsession, called Spain "a terrible partner," and trashed half the alliance for skipping his war — then spread his arms and declared it all a lovefest of "tremendous love." This week's Elephant in the Room, Rick Wilson breaks...

Somewhere near you, Big Tech is quietly bolting together a windowless box the size of a stadium — and it's thirsty as hell. The AI gold rush has unleashed a wave of massive data centers that swallow staggering amounts of water and electricity, spike local utility bills, and buckle small-town grids that were never built to feed a machine that never sleeps. The trillion-dollar companies get the prof...

Let's be honest about the moment we're in: it's dark. The institutions are strained, the norms are cracking, and it's easy to look around and wonder if the whole American experiment is finally running out of road. But here's the thing the doomscrollers keep forgetting — we have been here before. We've faced worse, stared down bigger, and clawed our way out of holes that made this one look shallow....

America is 250 years old, and the fix is in — the DOJ bent to serve whoever's holding the whip, the rule of law treated like a suggestion, the guardrails quietly sawed through while everyone's distracted by the fireworks. This week Rick Wilson sits down with two people who've seen the rot up close and refuse to shut up about it: Congressman Jamie Raskin, the constitutional scholar who's spent his...

America is 250 years old and the guardrails are cracking in real time — the courts, the rule of law, the FBI, the DOJ — and the people doing the cracking are counting on you not to notice. This week Rick Wilson pulls up two of the sharpest legal minds in the country: Jeffrey Toobin, who's spent a career dissecting the Supreme Court, and Asha Rangappa, a former FBI special agent who knows exactly h...

Six men signed both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. You can probably name Franklin. You've almost certainly never heard of James Wilson — the man who did more than almost anyone to put "We the People" at the heart of American government, sat on the first Supreme Court… and then died broke, on the run from creditors, and was quietly erased from the story of the founding. As pa...

Two hundred and fifty years ago, a handful of revolutionaries bet everything on an idea no one thought would survive a decade — a country that governs itself, with no king and no crown. So how the hell did we get here ? This week, Rick Wilson sits down with legendary Democratic strategist James Carville — the Ragin' Cajun himself — for a no-holds-barred conversation about America's 250th birthday...

Two hundred and fifty years ago, a handful of revolutionaries bet everything on an idea no one thought would work: a country that governs itself, with no king and no crown. This week, Rick Wilson is joined by acclaimed presidential historian Timothy Naftali — former director of the Nixon Presidential Library and one of the sharpest minds on the American presidency — to walk the entire arc, from Ge...

Trump barged into the Senate this week to throw his weight around — and instead came UNGLUED on national television. This week's Elephant in the Room is the meltdown for the history books: Trump SCREAMING in Bill Cassidy's face, raging at his own Republicans over Iran, melting down in front of the very cowards who used to grovel at his feet. Rick Wilson torches the whole spectacle — because this w...

Trump promised to restore law and order. Instead, critics argue he’s turned the Department of Justice into a weapon of political revenge, selective accountability, and loyalty tests. This week, Rick Wilson is joined by Brendan Ballou, founder of the Public Integrity Project and author of When Companies Run the Courts, to unpack the growing concerns surrounding Trump’s DOJ—from politically motivate...

This week’s Elephant in the Room is Trump’s humiliation at Versailles. After months of threats, chest-thumping, and promises of strength against Iran, Trump arrived claiming leverage and left defending a deal that has critics asking whether America gained anything at all. Rick Wilson breaks down the symbolism of Versailles, the political fallout of Trump’s Iran reversal, the growing cracks inside...

RFK Jr. let a worm crawl into his brain and eat part of it, dumped a dead bear cub in Central Park, sawed the head off a whale and bungeed it to his car — and somehow still talked his way into running America's health agencies. This week, Rick Wilson and investigative journalist Isabel Vincent -- who has a new book out called RFK Jr.: The Rise and Fall -- trace the full deranged arc, from Camelot...

Trump promised we'd all be “sick of winning.” Well, congratulations America—we finally made it. Inflation is climbing, the economy is wobbling, tensions with Iran are escalating, Congress is spending like there's no tomorrow, and the phrase "totally not a war" is doing a lot of heavy lifting. Meanwhile, we're told the border is secure, corruption is nonexistent, the DOJ is completely independent,...

For years, MAGA Inc. has sold America a fantasy: faith, family, values, and a steady stream of lectures about how everyone else is ruining the country. Then reality shows up with a crowbar. In this explosive episode, Shy Sotomayor tells the story of her alleged nine-year, on-again, off-again relationship with a man she says she eventually realized was Bryon Noem, husband of DHS Secretary Kristi No...

The 2026 midterms are already coming into focus, and Republicans should be nervous. This week, Rick Wilson looks at what California and Iowa are telling us about November: voters care about the economy, affordability, and real-life issues—not the culture-war nonsense that dominates cable news. If Democrats can stay focused and resist the urge to wander off-message, they have a genuine opportunity...

Rich Logis once defended Trump. Now he's helping people leave MAGA behind. On this episode of The Lincoln Project Podcast, Rick Wilson sits down with the founder of Leaving MAGA to discuss the growing number of former Trump supporters who have simply had enough. From the Epstein scandal to the fallout from Trump's tariffs and the chaos surrounding Iran, the excuses are getting harder to make and t...

Trump wanted a golden age. Instead, he delivered a golden vanity project. This week’s Elephant in the Room is the accelerating collapse of the Trump presidency—politically, economically, and culturally. As Americans grapple with a struggling economy, rising corruption, and growing incompetence at the highest levels of government, Trump seems more focused on building monuments to himself, expanding...

While Washington melts down in a fog of billionaire grifters, culture-war addicts, and broken-brain politics, the real fight for America is happening at backyard parties, dance halls, and quinceañeras across South Texas. In this episode, Rick sits down with legendary Tejano musician and Texas congressional candidate Bobby Pulido to talk about the Rio Grande Valley, working-class families, quinceañ...

The DNC autopsy is finally here—and it’s a brutal admission that Democrats spent 2024 fighting online culture wars while voters were worried about inflation, paychecks, rent, and the future of the country. Rick Wilson breaks down the Democrats’ redacted internal report, the consultant class cashing $40K checks to lose elections, the identity politics obsession that alienated working-class voters,...

Trump spent years chasing the approval of America’s richest weirdos, fame-hungry celebs, and billionaire clout goblins — and now the whole MAGA celebrity ecosystem is melting down in public. Rick Wilson is joined by legendary comedian Margaret Cho to break down her Choligarchy tour, Hollywood’s transformation into a Trump validation machine, the rise of MAGA influencers and celebrity brain rot, an...

Donald Trump’s high-stakes meeting with Xi Jinping was supposed to project strength. Instead, it exposed exactly how weak, desperate, and dangerously unprepared he is for a real geopolitical showdown with China. This week, Rick's ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM breaks down Trump’s humiliating “Chyna” summit, his obsession with personal grift over American power, and why even before the cognitive decline, Tru...

Actor-turned-crypto-whistleblower Ben McKenzie joins Rick Wilson for a brutal, no-bullshit takedown of the crypto industry just as Congress barrels toward two major crypto bills hitting the floor this week on Capitol Hill. From meme coins and “decentralized finance” scams to billion-dollar rugpulls, political bribery, and money laundering dressed up in Patagonia vests and TED Talk jargon, Rick and...

The elephant in the room this week is bluffing — and Democrats still haven’t figured out Republicans only win when nobody punches back. While the GOP openly gerrymanders districts, manipulates election rules, floods the zone with outrage, and treats politics like a blood sport, Democrats keep showing up with 700-page climate white papers, polite speeches, and “norms.” Rick Wilson breaks down why 2...

The Supreme Court was meant to be the last guardrail—the final check when everything else fails—but what happens when that guardrail starts to wobble? This week, Rick Wilson sits down with legal analyst and author Sarah Isgur to break down the modern Court from the inside out: the personalities driving decisions, the growing reliance on the shadow docket, and the myth of pure judicial objectivity....

Florida’s redistricting mess isn’t just shady—it’s straight-up unconstitutional, and they did it anyway. This week’s Elephant in the Room: a map so aggressively gerrymandered it looks like it was drawn during a blackout with a Sharpie and a grudge. Rick breaks down how Florida’s leaders ignored their own state constitution, carved up districts to rig the game, and dared the courts to catch up. It’...