Thread by @DrewHolden360

🧵THREAD🧵

Today we learned more about how awful @ProjectLincoln is.

If you’re wondering how these guys survived for so long, it’s because tons of people in the media & beyond boosted this pack of no-good grifters.

And I’ve got the receipts to remind them.⤵️

After @ProjectLincoln got started, tons of media poured endless attention into them because they said mean things about Trump.

Places like @CNN were happy to hype the group up without pausing to consider if they might be awful.

@Acosta could’ve been confused for @ProjectLincoln press secretary there for awhile.

@ProjectLincoln got a lot of truly fawning coverage. This first story from @washingtonpost is indicative of the broader pattern.

I mean, seriously? Their plan “for preserving the union”?

The most egregious was probably this @NewYorker story from @williams_paige (it was a front page feature!) that made these guys out to be heroes.

I mean, c’mon!

It wasn’t just print. Members of @ProjectLincoln were on @MSNBC all the time. This, of course, is how grifts get normalized.

And MSNBC didn’t bother to bring up any of their scandals even after they were fully public knowledge.

Perhaps their biggest fan was @JoyAnnReid. Here’s just a smattering of her praise for the group and it’s exploits.

Which, of course, never materialized. You’ll remember that @ProjectLincoln was so effective against Susan Collins that she won in a landslide.

Hell, @60Minutes even had them on (although this interview was a little tougher than normal for @ProjectLincoln).

I wanna pause here to drive home the point that, despite raising tens of millions of dollars, @ProjectLincoln didn’t actually make any impact, based on data about the performance of the ads themselves and voting patterns for those the ads targeted.

(And I’ll also point out that I said back in October that this would end up being the case.) thedailybeast.com/the-lincoln-pr…

Okay, back to the regularly scheduled programming. Here’s a piece from @politico that just enormously missed the mark. Again, pure wishcasting.

At right was the actual review of the ads after the fact.

@NBCNews more or less ran press releases from the org in lieu of covering them.

Really makes you wonder why no one was poking around through the group’s relatively well-known misdeeds.

Even the overseas media got involved. Here’s @guardian.

Again. No evidence to suggest they did *anything* against Trump or down the ballot.

So many people desperately wanted @ProjectLincoln to be successful, so much so that they tried to wish it into existence.

Perhaps none more so than top @ProjectLincoln reply guy - you guessed it! - @JRubinBlogger.

But she wasn’t alone in her endless praise. Here we’ve got @kylegriffin1 who, like a couple outlets, was essentially a one-man PR operation for @ProjectLincoln.

Unsurprisingly, all the NeverTrump Republicans joined the bandwagon for @ProjectLincoln. Here’s @BillKristol.

Also, still cackling about the poll.

I implore all of you to read this entire piece by @MaxBoot about how great @ProjectLincoln is and why anyone worried about their finances is acting in bad faith.

That take has aged...imperfectly.
washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/…

@clairecmc was apparently a big fan.

Ditto that for @soledadobrien

Obligatory mentions of both @kurteichenwald and @SethAbramson.

I’m running out of space and patience but here are some gems from:
@AVindman (remember him?)
@SteveKerr (??)
@ananavarro (quickly becoming a thread favorite) and
@JoeNBC (go figure)

We had every reason to believe that, not only would @ProjectLincoln not succeed, but that the org was run by bad people.

Guys like @therickwilson last won an election when the biggest threat was Y2K. He got famous for being vulgar after that.

What were we expecting?

But in the cloud of Orange Man Bad, countless people in the media and among the chattering class wanted to root for a group of mean-spirited grifters and didn’t stop to consider if they were the mark.

Turns out, they were, and they fell for @ProjectLincoln - hard.

And I mean, cmon. Forget that these guys haven’t won an election for a GOP candidate since I was in diapers. They helped cheer on forever wars and built a GOP so out of touch with its base that Trump got elected in the first place.

Didn’t it seem a little too rich? Anyone?

Anyway, the lesson here should be clear: often times, collections of bad people, openly acting like bad people, are, in fact, bad - in ways you see and in many ways that you don’t see right away.

Maybe next time political grifters strike it rich we can keep that in mind.

Also, I’m sure that any big time supporter of the Lincoln Project agrees with their guilt-by-association worldview so, needless to say, it’s time to pay the toll.

Somehow I forgot screengrabs for @SteveKerr, @JoeNBC, @ananavarro and @AVindman so adding them here.

This one took off so usual disclaimer: I don’t have anything to sell or subscribe to, but your local food bank has surely been hit hard by the pandemic and needs help. For those in DC, Capital Area Food Bank does great work. capitalareafoodbank.org

Also, for those who haven’t seen it yet, @nytimes did a pretty extensive investigation into their finance and business misdealings, among other scandals. nytimes.com/2021/03/08/us/…

Not sure if @ProjectLincoln is why #ShouldHaveKnownItWasAScam is trending but I mean, I assume it is.