Lincoln Project’s Rick Wilson Reacts to Wednesday’s Riot

HARI SREENIVASAN: Christiane, thanks. Rick Wilson, you have worked with the Lincoln project for years now to get to this point where Donald Trump would leave office. And the other day, when you were watching TV and you saw essentially an insurrection, anything surprise you?

RICK WILSON, CO-FOUNDER, LINCOLN PROJECT: Sadly, Hari, no. Sadly the idea of armed and violent insurrectionists, charging the US Capitol seizing our legislative seat of governance, at the direction of the president and the encouragement of his allies in the Senate, particularly in the house, did not shock me. This is a point where we have declined so far, from the norms of American exceptionalism and become essentially, poised on the verge of the collapse of those norms at the behest Donald Trump. It doesn’t surprise me. You know, I meant it sort of flippantly when the first time I said it five years ago, I said everything Trump touches dies, but it is becoming increasingly evident that everything that he has corrupted and reduced over the last four years in, in our governance, has come home to roost. And it is a painful lesson, that institutions are fragile.

SREENIVASAN: There was a recent economist YouGov poll that showed even after the attack on the Capitol, about 40+ percent of people who say the Republicans were the answered the survey say, yeah, um, I’m fine with that. I’m fine with the protesters. I’m fine with Donald Trump. And interestingly, that’s almost the same proportion of members of Congress who were voting on January 6th or were intended to vote on January 6th to obstruct the results.

WILSON: Trumpism is a cultural problem Hari. Okay. And, and that culture is defiant of not only reality, but of tradition and of morality. It’s a fundamentally unconservative, culture. They are not believers in limited government, the rule of law and the constitution, they believe in Trump. And if he says something or does something, that’s what they believe. If Donald Trump tomorrow said, I’m in favor of child sacrifice, they would say, well, we got to reconsider child sacrifice because that is the power he has over them. It is the most is the most astounding diversion from what American politicians have traditionally been. They have traditionally — even powerful charismatic American politicians — have traditionally still been a —  in response to people. These are people in response to a leader. This is, you know, he is a perfect authoritarian, um, figure, in the, in terms of the charisma, the control, the almost religious devotion to him.

 SREENIVASAN: How much does the death of Officer Brian Sicknick — I apologize if I’m saying his name wrong — how much does that change this equation?

WILSON: Well, as you saw immediately on the night, it was announced that he had passed, you know, Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley were suddenly appalled and shaken and, Oh, it was terrible. Actions have consequences. Aactions have consequences. Their actions have consequences. So Marsha Blackburn and Ted Cruz, and Josh Holly and Ron Johnson, they have blood on their hands in this. They were encouraging these people that — Ted Cruz over the weekend was out doing a speech on the hood of a car screaming and waving his fist around. And we’ll fight back. We’ll fight to the last man, et cetera. Rudy Giuliani is out there saying let’s have trial by combat. Well, the death of a, of a Capitol police officer, who I don’t mean to be grizzly about this was beaten to death with a fire extinguisher at the hands of a mob motivated by Donald Trump and his Senate and house allies. They should have a moral responsibility and culpability for this. They, I pray some in some capacity, the family of this officer is going to pursue their legal remedies against the people that encourage and caused this. And it’s, it’s not just the guy that, that, that beat him to death. It’s the people that, that pushed him to do that. It’s people that motivated him to do that. I promise you this, whoever beat him to death with the fire extinguisher is a frequent Fox viewer. And is in a million Facebook groups telling him that everyone’s out to get him. And that the world is the world is a dark place in Antifa is everywhere and conspiracies are real. And, you know, five people died in this, in this, on this day. And it is, I mean, the tragedy of it is enhanced by the, by the, by the place it took, it occurred. And the tragedy of it is enhanced by, by the fact that, that the rhetoric of the people who supposedly serve the American populace, revved those people up into a fever pitch.

SREENIVASAN: Should the people who were speaking and riling these folks up — what charges can or should the department of justice bring? I mean –

WILSON: I’m not an attorney and I don’t pretend to be one, but to go back to the black lives matter analogy, if a, if a, if a leader in black lives matter was standing on a podium somewhere screaming that we have to charge Capitol Hill and take back our election and take back what’s ours, that person would be in jail this minute. They would have been arrested and put in jail immediately. They would have been in for conspiracy or what have you. I, again, I’m not an attorney, but there is a sense in this country where, where moral accountability for political actions needs to be restored.

SREENIVASAN: There’s also the possibility of impeachment or calling on the 25th amendment, but given the clock, should these actions be taken even in a symbolic manner, even if they can’t be completed?

WILSON: Absolutely, absolutely. Look, the cabinet is falling apart right now. So the 20th amendment is a very long shot, but the 25th amendment has a four day clock. Where, where if the cabinet 51% of the cabinet goes in and says, Hey, this guy is not capable of fulfilling. The duties of president goes to Congress for after four days, they could do it two or three times between now and the end and, and keep him from the worst excesses. I think that is a vastly remote possibility. There’s too, too many people in the cabinet who were utterly loyal to Donald Trump. I think we should repeat. Sorry, go ahead. She did. She did. She did, but there are still too many people and the people they’ll replace them with will be junior loyalists of the, of the first, you know, the first water. I think that, that he should be impeached today. They should expedite the process, take it directly to the floor. There’s a methodology by which they skip the committee BS, take it directly to the floor. He should be impeached today. And the reason he should be impeached is that as a moment where it forces the Republicans in the Senate to take it up or down, vote on whether or not they think this rhetoric and behavior and the outcomes that they’re facing in the chamber in which they will be standing as it was the besmirched and vandalized by Trump supporters, if they think that that is a viable position to have. I’d love to have them on the record doing it. I’d love to have them on the record. They won’t, but I’d love to have them on the record.

SREENIVASAN: Given your involvement with the party, I’m sure you’ve read the long reports after the Republicans lose an election they go off on a retreat —

WILSON: I’ve helped write some of them.

SREENIVASAN: That’s right, you’ve helped some of them. So if they go on another retreat after this, first of all, should they be careful who they invite that is a Republican. And two, what, what, what are the revelations that the party needs to come to grips with?

WILSON: Here’s the, here’s the shocking and terrible thing Hari. Not one of them gives a damn. They made a political calculus that for at least the next 20 years, there are still enough angry, white people, angry white dudes, 55 and older, to sustain them. And at least a functional party — even though it won’t be a national party any longer — they’re going to be able to hold onto enough red seats, red districts, and red States to call themselves a party. And they are, they’re not interested in expansion. They’re not interested in viability. They are interested in the very short term. Do I keep my seat? Do I win? And so some of them will try to back away from Trumpism. Some of them will try to run it through the car wash, as I like to say and pretend it never happened. But a lot of them have embraced it. (17:17)  You don’t go back from this. You don’t go back if you’re Ted Cruz and say suddenly, Oh, I’m a constitutional conservative again. And so this is not a scenario where these guys get to easily undo this, or wind back the clock and say, ah, I’m a regular Republican. What? Donald who? They don’t get to do that.

SREENIVASAN: You’ve said your three goals for the Lincoln project were 1) to oust Donald Trump. 2) Then you were going to pursue his enablers essentially to the far corners of the earth. 3) And then you are going to do everything possible to eliminate Trumpism. How long does that take and how do you hold people accountable?

WILSON: Well, you hold people accountable by using the power of media, the power of political action, the power of advocacy, which we become very strong at. We have become very good at that. We drove three law firms away from the president after the election, we made them quit. We pressured them. We are not constrained by the old Washington rules. None of us are lobbyists. None of us give a damn about whether we’re invited to the winter party meeting. None of that stuff matters to us. But we have built an audience we’ve built a constituency that is interested in, in pushing back on the people who have enabled Donald Trump. Now that is a long road, but ‘22 and ‘24 are looming. And we plan to play a role in both of those campaigns. Trumpism is a more complicated problem. And, you know, we came to realize it wasn’t merely political fairly early in the process after forming the Lincoln project. It is a cultural problem. It is a moral problem. It’s a civic problem. It’s an educational problem. So we’re going to have to pursue some other angles into that. We’re not really sure where that is yet, but we know that that’s a long battle, because if we exist in a country where there are people who believe in authoritarianism, who believe in nationalism and statism in that model that Steve Bannon and other folks around Trump have proposed, we think this country is in deep trouble. We don’t think it’s a survivable philosophy for a governing party in this country to embrace ethno-nationalism and statism and authoritarianism.

SREENIVASAN: Oh, so how does Mitch McConnell, how do Lindsey Graham, how are they held accountable? They — Lindsey Graham survived a rather close election.

WILSON: He did, you know, look and Lindsey lives in a very, very red state. And Mitch McConnell was in one of the reddest of States. And so it’s hard to hold them politically accountable, but what you can do is make their lives painful, which you can do is reduce the size of their majority. What you can do is get them into the minority politically, because being in the minority, isn’t being 50% less than being in the majority if you’re, if you’re Mitch McConnell. It’s a hundred percent less. You go from unlimited power to almost none. And you know, he’s still got some positional power because the rules in the Senate, but he is, you reduce their, you reduce their ability to have political impact. You reduce their ability to elect more people. You cause the pain level with their donors and their supporters and the people that lobby them and the corporations that support them. You increase the pain level with those people. So look right now, if you’re a corporate supporter of Josh Holly, somebody is knocking on your door right now saying there’s a dead cop in part, because Josh Holly was telling people that he was out there giving the high five and the, and the, and the raised fist to, to these people that were riding and invading the Capitol. So, you know, there, there are ways to, there are ways to hold them accountable. Elections are part of that. You know, we, we lost in this country for a long time, a sense of shame politically. And it was just like, uh, okay, we’re, we’re, we’re owning the libs. We’re we’re causing a ruckus. We’re trolling effectively. We’ve got to change the way society looks at that kind of political behavior. It’s a long road Hari.

SREENIVASAN: What does Joe Biden have to do?

WILSON: Fix COVID. Honest answer. That’s the number one thing Joe Biden has to do. He doesn’t have to do the green new deal or, or gun control or, or, or anything else. He has to fix COVID. This administration, the fate of his administration will be decided in the first 18 to 24 months. If he gets the vaccination program in place and gets the economy on track, he will be considered one of the greatest of our presidents because the death toll is rising and will continue to rise. It’s the biggest possible issue. If he does that, people will see that government can be competent and sane and honorable and decent, and doesn’t have to be a performance art reality TV show every day.

SREENIVASAN: Look fixing COVID would be great in a vacuum but what is the potential for him having to deal with rising domestic terrorism, from people who just don’t actually find him to be the legitimate president?

WILSON: It’s enormous, it’s enormous. And, and I will tell you, there are two people who need to be held accountable. If that domestic terrorism continues to rise. Rupert Murdoch, whose network is the wellspring of all the misinformation in the universe and Mark Zuckerberg, whose platform amplifies it and tells Donald Trump’s supporters that there’s a conspiracy against them. That the, that the election is fake, that Joe Biden isn’t legitimate, that violence is a political option. Those two people have a vast influence on the political culture of this country on the right that cannot be overestimated.

SREENIVASAN: Should the attorney general, if he’s confirmed Merrick Garland, go after Donald Trump.

WILSON: Absolutely. Absolutely. He encouraged sedition. He encouraged sedition. He has attempted to overthrow the results of a legitimate American election. And look Donald Trump’s life is about to become a burning hell, a misery of unparalleled scope, because the New York AG is going to go after him on tax fraud and bank fraud. He is never going to escape court for the rest of his life. And it is important, I think, as a message from the, from the attorney general, that, that everyone is accountable, that everyone is under the law. Donald Trump had an Attorney General in Bill Barr for two years, who said that he was above the law and, and immune to any sort of accountability. I think it would be important, in, in this world to see, uh, Merrick Garland or whoever becomes the attorney general, pursue charges against Trump and his administration, and to pursue things that aren’t just about this particular incident this week, there’s a, of an endemic corruption of this administration has been influenced peddling. There’s been cash for pardons. All these things need to be looked into and and Congress has a role to play as well. I mean, when four Americans were killed in Benghazi, we had hundreds and hundreds of hours of hearings in Congress. Well, five Americans just died on the Capitol. I think it’s incumbent upon us to go through this, tear it apart, tease it out, find out what’s underneath it, get to the truth and hold people accountable.

SREENIVASAN: Rick Wilson of the Lincoln project. Thanks so much.