Video of the associated press. Thank you for joining us today for our virtual headliners newsmaker with rick wilson Steve Schmidt, cofounders of the lincoln product. We are happy to accept questions from our audience today and i will ask as many questions as time permits. To submit a question, email headliners at press. Org. We are 40 days away from election day. As in president ial campaigns past, the two candidates, President Donald Trump and democratic challenger, former Vice President joe biden are spending millions on advertising to spread their message and turned the tide in battleground states. This election is unusual, certainly the covid19 pandemic squelching the meet and greets. Then theres the Lincoln Project, a Political Action committee founded by several current informal influential republicans including attorney george conway, New Hampshire gop chair, jennifer warner, republican political strategist, mike madrid, ron and john and our guest here today, rick wilson Steve Schmidt. A republican pack hounded by a bunch of republicans doesnt sound that unusual but unlike traditional republican packs, the Lincoln Project is spending millions to defeat the republican president ial candidate and his supporters in the senate. Today, to lincoln product founders, rick wilson and Steve Schmidt will give us an update on the state of the 2020 race and the Lincoln Project homestretch strategy. But that is a political strategist in the 1988 Residential Campaign of george h. W. Bush and has since provided Strategic Counsel political candidates state parties, National Campaign committees and corporate associations and government clients. Hes the editor at large for the daily beast and frequent analyst from cnn and msnbc. The author of the 2018 number one your times selling book, everything trump touches dies. Steve is a communications and Public Affairs strategist and political analyst for msnbc and nbc news. He served as a political strategist george w. Bush, governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and senator john mccain. He calls himself a republican until june 2018 when he renounced the Republican Party as the party of trump. Welcome to the National Press club, gentlemen. Good to be with you, thank you enough for you for having us. I am so glad to have you. Since we were talking earlier before we started and steve was talking about intuition, i want to know between the two of you, when did you have the intuition or when did you realize you needed to create the lincoln product . We want to know who called who, who sent the first emails, what is the background . We were all talking to each other going back to 2018 and we almost kicked off an effort late 2018 cycle but didnt think we had the time to do it confidently so we kept talking and decided to launch it december of 19 and we were alarmed watching the democratic debates because there was a name infrequently heard, that name was trump. Hes no waldemar. We think he is the race, the first issue in the race, the second issue in the race and the next 155 after that. We have a view that what this race is about is the worst president in the history of the country. That was before covid. Now what we know is Donald Trumps lied to the country, which he sold at least 120 different occasions, which is that the virus was a hoax created by the democrats, it is, without question, the most lethal line in American History, if we had the same mortality rates in the u. S. That germany did, there would be 150,000 more americans alive today. The consequence has devastated the economy, broken 1 million dreams, shattered the American Dream for millions of small businesses, it disrupted the education for every kid in this country and it has wrecked the american way of life. Grandparents can see the grandkids being bored, christenings and baptisms in bar mitzvahs, not this year. Weddings . Tailgates, football, proms, its all gone because of donald trump. On top of it, by the time we get to the end of covid, it may be that it kills one out of 15 hundred black people in this country. Thats a staggering number, it speaks to the profound inequities that exist in society from access to medical care, to economic inequality and trump is the biggest problem the country faces in the most easy one to fix. Well be true about the 2016 election, whomever the election was about was the person losing the election. 99 of the election, is about trump until james comey made it about Hillary Clinton in the last week and by 70000 boats across three states trump won. Let me ask you, why didnt you Say Something in 2016 . Curious about that. We all did. We all tried. Unfortunately, there were two big problems. First off, all he slowly devoured and the second part of 2016 was this was running against Hillary Clinton, this role in the political psyche so we tried to reach them, id but with you guys or i voted trump against hillary. I cant not vote for hillary. Increasingly problematic, it was a moment with the parties and even all of us experience and a been around the block, to recognize for the moral and political collapse before our eyes. These are people who say they believe in the rule of law, they believe in individual liberties and all the fundamental predicates of america and what happened was it turned out to be an allusion they adopted, they easily jumped into this authoritarian personality cult of donald trump. I would just add two things. What i said in the 16 election, i was an analyst on msnbc on network but i said two things in 16, first thing i said was that the observation that in the 1930s, fascism didnt rise because it was strong but rather because democracy was weak. The second thing i said is i thought there was a real lack of imagination within the american lines about the capacity for someone like donald trump sitting behind the resolute desk in the oval office to cause a profound tragedy. I think both of those things hold true. Both rick and i were unapologetically on trump for the duration of the eckstein race. What is different between today and then as you have a lot of republican senators and governors who werent same themselves but saying keep it up, that a boy, good job. Couldnt agree more and one by one by one, what we watch for two years is the total capitulation to trump. On a four year basis, i think it is important to understand what occurred. You can understand that through the rubble been convention. What you saw was the third Oldest Political Party in the world, democrats of the first and British Labour party the second. What you saw was the Party Platform become a statement of obedience and loyalty to trump, to be republican in Good Standing requires faithfulness to a cold personality what did you see at the convention . You saw the convention, like youve never seen at any convention. Utter lawlessness, the use of taxpayer dollars in public property for political purposes, you saw the seizure of important symbols of the republic by trump who turned them into partisan totems and expressions of his authority. In essence, declaring i am the truth, i am the law, i am the state. Steve and that now we see with trump saying maybe we will have a peaceful transition of power, maybe we wont. Without much pushback, for people who called themselves conservatives been a great, so lets talk about that because obviously there is something going on in the senate right n now. What is it that you think is happening some of these traditional republicans who have not spoken up, who have not spoken out against President Trump . I can sum it up in one word, cowardice. They are afraid of the mean sweet and afraid of terms based in fox news and that fear defines the whole character now. Whether its josh or ted cruz or mike or rand paul or anyone else in the senate, these days, the one thing they care about, avoiding Donald Trumps, they have sold themselves out cheap cheaply, they can never be trusted or believed ever again because the response to a president thing peaceful transition to a power, and then he turns federal forces on Peaceful Protesters is not a bible verse being treated out or saying no i havent seen history, the response men and women of integrity and honor, they would be periods, they would be defending our freedoms and constitutions, they be standing up against abuse of executive power and they are n not, they are too afraid, too sold out to do that. So are we going to see a new justice put in place is that going to happen . We may well. Probably. But iran to Supreme Court confirmations in the Bush Administration for robert and alito and i was asked by my friend, stephanie, to be publicly supportive and obama administration, there are consequences to president ial elections, the defeat or refusal to give a duly appointed nominee of an incumbent president rendering this appointment illegitimate. We look at this moment right now, this is precisely what James Madison wrote about he talked about the danger of parties and majoritarianism. As republicans go out and say listen, we live, screw you, we are in charge now, he didnt say that. You can say listen, we made a mistake, we now realize how important these nominees are so we need to put the conservator on. I guess you could say that. What you cannot say is that is in the liquid. It is the public good. Hes endangered the sales and assault minority rights. The democrats represent a majority of the country by popular vote in a president ial election and a majority of the country by popular vote representation in the senate. This is a moment when you look at the divisions in the country, where we had moral confident political leadership, there would be an understanding its a moment for restraint. Thats what wisdom we dictate. We will see that. A tactical matter, demanding a Supreme Court nomination, stopping it is not unlike robbing a train. If you want to go into the train robbery business, the first thing you have to figure out before you can get to the safe on the train is how to stop the train how to slow it down. How to get on the train and thats what democrats have to be thinking about right now. Slow down, slow down, slow it down. Okay, choochoo. How should the democrats be perceiving the Lincoln Project . Is the Lincoln Project allies, are you allies of convenience right now or other tips you have for the Democratic Party. We are part of a Broad Coalition that you is an existential threat to the country. We do not have to agree on every single thing, we dont have to agree on every single policy, wed love to be fighting about whether the tax rate will be 38. 6 or 38. 9 , thats fantastic in a lot of ways but we are here because we have a collective set of skills, abilities and experiences that have moved voters in this country. We have identified, i wrote a book about it, the democrats often fall temple mistakes and we have kept this as a referendum on donald trump. Not an argument about, change organs or abortion or anything else, its about donald trump, he is the worst president in American History and its a choice, you want four more years of that or make a change and do Something Else . We are happy to work with and alongside people but when starting this whole process, people were behind us, beside us, ahead of us, we were had a long time but now we are on a Broad Coalition and the most interesting thing is it just the democratic side tuning up getting tighter and sharper, its also the emergence of number of republicans coming into the race and pushing the same objections to trump from the right and center we feel. I want to add a couple of points to that. We you ourselves as prodemocracy and historically, my view has always been republican and the democratic parties of the two most important institutions, not just in our countrys history but in World History for the advancement of human freedom which is why i never have and have always hated when republicans call the Democratic Party, the Democrat Party because it implies a level of disrespect for one of our greatest american institutions and the party should be called by his name, which is the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party is the only Political Party out of the two major parties we have the daughters in this moment to the ideas for the country, to american democracy. Trumpism is liberal and authoritarian wish ideology. We can the make no mistake with hostility to our freedoms, the first amendment, the elections process and all of it. We are an organization now that has several million dollars, close to half a million donors that is raising substantial resources to fight back against tropism. So when i say tropism, we mean that as a rooted ideology, something that wasnt four years ago, has become so. When republicans lose, and i think biden will win, and i think the democrats will take the senate majority, today at least but if republicans do lose, what will happen to the party to be understood what happened in the california par party, as Political Parties shrink, they are like white stars collapsing astronomically. They become smaller, denser and hotter. The Republican Party, as it shrinks, is becoming more extreme so one of the things thats always miss analyze, if that is a word, in the press, trump has 96 present report support in the Republican Party. True. However, substantially smaller than it was a year ago, two years ago, three years ago. Will happen if he loses, hes not going away. Tropism isnt going away, he will see a more extreme ideology, more candidates so in that space for a long time, they are on the side of the Liberty Party in the country. Second to that, it seems to us as a matter of principle that we need to have a new Voting Rights act in this country, civil rights act, we need to have an Election Security and foreign interference tax, fundamental ethics reform, fundamental Civil Service form, we need to see Immigration Reform and finally pass, we will be an organization that supports Vice President biden in any of these things. As an american organization, who understands we are in an hour of crisis in decline and danger in this country because of trump and the Republican Party refusing to exercise their power to put a check on him from his indecency to his abuses of pow power. Is it time for a third party in the u. S. . We take this a lot, we are not in the Party Building business right now, we are in the democracy business. We think largely that country needs Political Parties that are viable. If you have the broad argument the democrats are the Political Party or liberal, the idea of having a center right party is very appealing. We dont know what the end of the cycle looks like but youre going to be stuck with trumpism for a while, about on the right between nationalist populism, authoritarianism and racially charged politics and a party about economic liberty and individual freedom. What does that look like . I dont know. I dont think any of us really know because donald trump has fundamentally poisoned the brand of the Republican Party a champion party, they may emerge a party that looks like something we havent seen in our politics before. A Political Party in one family. Even the people who used to say the bushes have been around too long, those people all had a certain modesty about the book service they acted as servant leaders. Act as parasites and i think it is likely will see the Republican Party in 2024 will look at donald trump junior as the lead candidate for the nomination and i think it is a terrifying party. If you are part of the personality court, that sounds like a great idea. Is there time for a thirdparty . I cant say yet but i do think rogan party has taken a poison pill with donald trump. We dont have a center right party in the country anymore, we still do have a center to center left party in the country and if that collapsed, we have this authoritarian nationalist party on the right, ill come back to that in a second, you have a collapsed centerright party on the left and the socialist party versus that, then i dont know what happens. There could be an independent candidate that could win but that republican coalition, 25 27 of this country is deeply in a cu