If you read Twitchy earlier today you might have read about Matt Yglesias trying to convince us the media’s uncritical lauding of Andrew Cuomo and the Lincoln Project “never happened.” As we mentioned there, there are more than a couple of Drew Holden threads demonstrating how wrong Yglesias is about Cuomo, and now Holden is gracing us with a thread about the media’s propping up of the Lincoln Project.
?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.⤵️
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) March 9, 2021
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. pic.twitter.com/TagrjIJo7N
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) March 9, 2021
@Acosta could’ve been confused for @ProjectLincoln press secretary there for awhile. pic.twitter.com/Ivn1JTg2hS
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) March 9, 2021
@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”? pic.twitter.com/rvf8zfmEWw
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) March 9, 2021
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! pic.twitter.com/RLNc2axB1x
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) March 9, 2021
A “part psyop, creativity factory, digital ground force” that lifted a bunch of content from other sources without credit.
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. pic.twitter.com/tcTYYO9DCF
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) March 9, 2021
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. pic.twitter.com/CSMSXXb35K
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) March 9, 2021
Hell, @60Minutes even had them on (although this interview was a little tougher than normal for @ProjectLincoln). pic.twitter.com/3VXAdq8KId
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) March 9, 2021
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. pic.twitter.com/NyD4xxdh3T
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) March 9, 2021
(And I’ll also point out that I said back in October that this would end up being the case.) https://t.co/hrR7Nvl1aD
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) March 9, 2021
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. pic.twitter.com/R58Qf9KAbw
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) March 9, 2021
@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. pic.twitter.com/6kudLFZGSN
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) March 9, 2021
Even the overseas media got involved. Here’s @guardian.
Again. No evidence to suggest they did *anything* against Trump or down the ballot. pic.twitter.com/d53q0dQUBF
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) March 9, 2021
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. pic.twitter.com/4npktINrT9
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) March 9, 2021
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. pic.twitter.com/SNjhmbpTco
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) March 9, 2021
Unsurprisingly, all the NeverTrump Republicans joined the bandwagon for @ProjectLincoln. Here’s @BillKristol.
Also, still cackling about the poll. pic.twitter.com/E3Ar3II7au
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) March 9, 2021
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. https://t.co/JK1S57Jwch pic.twitter.com/bFw3QlaWNr
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) March 9, 2021
@clairecmc was apparently a big fan. pic.twitter.com/bY1V6lRSE2
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) March 9, 2021
Ditto that for @soledadobrien pic.twitter.com/4y0KbDccfK
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) March 9, 2021
Obligatory mentions of both @kurteichenwald and @SethAbramson. pic.twitter.com/iloTr2ko1Q
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) March 9, 2021
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)
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) March 9, 2021
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?
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) March 9, 2021
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.
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) March 9, 2021
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?
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) March 9, 2021
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.
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) March 9, 2021
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.
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) March 9, 2021
Related:
‘You seem nervous’: Lincoln Project cofounder George Conway says his baby ‘should shut down’ over shady finances he definitely didn’t know about https://t.co/8GFZWKmOPx
— Twitchy Team (@TwitchyTeam) March 8, 2021
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