Rick Wilson: Trump's Post-Conviction Reaction

Ken Harbaugh:

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Rick Wilson:

All the bluster on their part about how great this is for his polling is a lie. Their own polling is making them very concerned. It's got Chris LaCivita and his pollster worrying a lot about Trump's path to electability now.

They know the conviction is like radioactive waste. It's going to linger, it's going to be around, it's going to cause damage stretched out over time.

Ken Harbaugh:

I'm Ken Harbaugh, and this is Burn the Boats. My guest today is Rick Wilson, a former Republican and political strategist and co-founder of The Lincoln Project and Resolute Square.

He's a vocal critic of Donald Trump and now hosts The Enemies List, a podcast about the threats to American democracy.

Rick, welcome to Burn the Boats.

Rick Wilson:

Hey, Ken, thanks for having me back.

Ken Harbaugh:

I don't think that intro was necessary for most of this audience. I'm pretty sure we know who you are, and we know what The Lincoln Project does. You guys have been crushing it. I'm wondering, post-conviction, what kind of reaction are you getting from Trump world?

Rick Wilson:

Well, look, the internal sources that we have in Trump world … and I tell people this all the time, I'm very honest about it. In 2020, we had intelligence coming to us from the very top levels of Trump's universe. We talked to people there in the White House and in the campaign at a very high level.

And our sources this time are not as good. Those folks sort of fled the Trump scene after January 6th. We've got a few people though, in Trump world still who reach out and some other people who talk to friends of ours. And what we know is two things.

One, all the bluster on their part about how great this is for his polling is a lie. Their own polling is making them very concerned. It's got Chris LaCivita and his pollster worrying a lot about Trump's path to electability now.

They know the conviction is like radioactive waste. It's going to linger, it's going to be around, it's going to cause damage stretched out over time.

The second thing we know is that Trump is not responding well to this internally. He is bouncing off the walls. He's furious with all of his attorneys.

He spent a day last week apparently screaming at people, or this earlier this week, excuse me, screaming at people that he needs the best attorneys and needs them right now. And why have they betrayed him by not giving him the best attorneys?

And the answer is, of course, that you won't pay them Donald, so you're not going to get good attorneys. But he is not doing well from this. And I'm happy about that.

And we know from some polling we're seeing both internally and externally, that with independent voters, with women voters and particularly the women voters inside The Lincoln Project's targeted coalition we call the Bannon Line, this is a big deal.

It's a bigger deal than people are thinking, and it's a bigger deal, particularly than a lot of our friends in the mainstream media are thinking. There's a sort of cynicism in the media, like, “Ah, it's all baked in the cake. Everybody knows this about Trump.” They really don't.

And the thing about the case was it reminded people of stuff they'd forgotten or didn't know about his behavior toward women.

And so, all in all, the whole thing has sort of added up and added up this week and last week to a very bad stretch for Trump. And he's showing it too on the campaign trail, man. The guy is not doing well.

Ken Harbaugh:

How important is his personal reaction to things like this? Because in a typical presidential campaign, you've got a machine around the candidate. Obviously, their temperament matters. But in the case of Trump world, he is the machine. He’s everything and all things.

And his personal emotional state on any given day sets the tone for the entire campaign. And maybe I'm answering the question for you, but it feels like this is a special case where if you get to the principle, you undermine the entire machine.

Rick Wilson:

It's one of the things that at The Lincoln Project we're known for. And there are people that are critical of, like, “Why do you only try to get in Trump's head?” Well, we don't only do that. We do a lot of other things as well, like talking to these swing voters.

But one of the things we do that is unparalleled, and I'm not going to be falsely modest here, we are the people that are best equipped to fuck with Trump's brain among anybody else.

We know how to do the kind of advertising that makes him stay up at night. Listen, we monitor the guy's phone. We know from the advertising data, like who's watching this at Mar-a-Lago, who around him.

And so, we run these ads against him to have psychological warfare going on 24 hours a day with this guy. And he doesn't want to see himself in a orange jumpsuit on an advertisement, so that's why I'll do it.

And Trump's personal behavior, as you said correctly, Ken, there is nothing else except Trump. The machine is all Trump top to bottom.

And the more he bounces off the walls, the more he goes out and just says, “Revenge, revenge, revenge, revenge.” You know what he is not doing?

He's not going out there and saying, “Okay, here's how I'm going to fix inflation. Here's how I'm going to fix the cost of things at the grocery store.” He's not going out there and giving people anything beyond, “I'm your God.” Cult to personality sort of stuff. “I'm your retribution.”

Beyond that, there's nothing on the positive appeal of Trump. It's all a negative appeal. “I will take revenge on the people you hate. I will send the brown people home. I will go back in time where cops knew how to treat people.” I mean, we know what that's code for.

And all of it sort of accumulates in this very negative pitch of Trump and Trumpism. Every day he goes on television somewhere and these conservative hosts are trying to bail him out. Like, “You don't really mean you're going to take revenge on people, do you, Mr. President?” And he goes, “No, I am taking revenge.” I mean, and it's so counterproductive.

And I look, Ken, he's being advised by a group of people at the senior level this time who are much more serious people than they were in 2020. This is not the Kellyanne clown show, and Corey Lewandowski, and Steve Bannon, all those idiots.

Guys like Chris LaCivita, and Susie Wiles, and Tony Fabrizio, they are serious people and they can't control him. And they know that their campaign every day hangs by a thread because Trump is going to go out one day and say some shit that even his people can't stomach.

And as this post-conviction window has continued, his behavior is driving away the people in the center of the Republican Party then they're still there. It's not the majority of the party, it's not even a plurality of the party, but it's 30% now of Republicans who are like, “Oh God, I can't handle this crap anymore.”

Why are they still voting for Nikki Haley? She's been out of the race three months, and she's endorsed Trump. They're still voting for Nikki Haley. It's crazy. And the more he hurts himself with this behavior, the more people believe that the only thing that matters to Trump is Trump.

Ken Harbaugh:

Can you describe his inner circle for us? Because you said your old contacts, or most of them fled after January 6th. I'm wondering, who's left? What's the glue? Is it pure opportunism? Are there true believers, which is scarier? Who's around Trump-

Rick Wilson:

The three people I described Tony Fabrizio, Chris LaCivita, and Susie Wiles. Those three people are operators. They are opportunists. They are there to run a presidential gig. They all believe they could be White House chief of staff.

Well, Tony doesn't, but Susie and Chris both think they could be White House chief of staff. They want the power and the access and the money. They're all making very, very, very good money.

And it's the big show, man. It's the World Series. If you get a presidential race, and you're a consultant, you're going to run to that presidential race.

Like Chris LaCivita could do 10 US Senate races and make a lot more money than he is making right now. But he wants the power and the downstream wealth that Trump will bring him. So, those are the operators in the inner circle.

Then there are the sycophants defense, the Trump world ask kisser types, and that's the Kash Patels, and Stephen Millers, and Steve Bannons who have an ideological agenda of this nationalist white nationalism, or blood and soil nationalism, or whatever you want to call it.

And those people, they have a vision of the world they want to implement and execute and they think Donald Trump is the only way they'll get there.

I mean, Steve Bannon is a white ethnonationalist. He is a guy who really believes in that this country needs to go back, not to the 1950s, but the 1850s. He wants to reverse a century of American progress in every regard and go back to a model that looks a lot more like the pre-Civil Rights, pre women's franchise, all these things.

Because he thinks — and it's an actual (I use the term very, very loosely) intellectual movement inside of the MAGA world that thinks that women voting and minorities voting are bad things in this country. And that white property men without debt should be the ones who vote. That's really a scary vision.

And you peel it back, they have this sort of little cult they call the Red-Caesar Cult. They think Trump is an idiot, but useful to them. They think he may be a fool, but if he's their Red Caesar who will overturn the constitution and overturn the rule of law, then he can execute on these weird ideological fantasies they all have.

And that's sort of where the dictator for one day thing comes in. They think they only have to do one set of definitive actions to take power indefinitely in the country.

Ken Harbaugh:

How much does Christian nationalism play into this? Because it used to be that the evangelical movement saw Trump as a useful idiot. Now, more and more, we're beginning to see signs that they see him as anointed.

Rick Wilson:

Yeah. My friend, Ben Howe, who produces a lot of our ads at Lincoln Project, wrote a great book about evangelicals and Trump a few years ago. And I think he wrote it four or five years ago now.

I went back and read it, and there were still evangelicals then, who acknowledged, they're like, “Oh, he's our Cyrus. We know he's flawed, but we need him because he'll pull down the temple.”

And now, it is transformed into something much different and much darker. And that transformation does include a lot of people thinking and saying outright, “No, no, he's now, the voice of God. He's the anointed of God. He is our Jesus.”

And I'm not an evangelical. Never have been. Raised in a much different religious environment.

But the evangelical movement has been searching for a political end to their religious intent for a long time. And Trump is telling them that that is what he will do for them. They want to hear that.

They don't want to hear, you have to go out and work hearts and minds. They don't want to hear you have to go out into the world and persuade, and proselytize, and evangelize anymore.

They want the law giver to come down from the mountain and say, “This is what we're going to do. Abortion is banned. Women are back in the home.” I mean, the Christian nationalist movement in the country is very powerful, it's very broad.

And it ranges in intensity from those highly politicized types who are around Trump to the lower end of the intensity scale with those evangelicals. They feel like, “Oh, the Democrats are hostile atheist, communists. And so, I'm stuck with Trump. Maybe God will guide him.”

But some of them really believe now that they have received some sort of religious imprimatur on Trump that makes him a direct line to God.

When I say that, Ken, I know how crazy it sounds. But as an anthropologist of this movement, I am never shocked anymore by how intense that merger of traditional faith and republican politics has become.

Ken Harbaugh:

So, Rick, this is something we are seeing again and again, this pivot away from Trump as the Cyrus figure, the useful idiot, if you will, to a figure chosen by God to lead this beleaguered movement.

I mean, that's another thing altogether, the idea that it's tough to be a Christian in America, right? That's part of the [crosstalk 00:14:26].

Rick Wilson:

Oh, yes. White evangelical Christians, they have a hard time getting housing, the right to vote, education. This country's just so brutal to them. It's so awful. They're basically living under the wrath of Pharaoh for fuck’s sake.

Ken Harbaugh:

Yeah. We've had Kristin Du Mez, and Angela Denker, and Tim Alberta taking that apart. I want your take on the politics because it doesn't seem like that grievance-based message can grow.

I mean, it is not an inclusive movement in any way. It's a radicalizing movement that I think can work in the short term in terms of turning out that core base. But do you see a future in this kind of politics?

Rick Wilson:

No, no, I really don't. There's a tactical nature to this that I think we shouldn't underestimate its tactical utility, but it is also, bounded because of that in a way that I think doesn't reflect a modern American culture and society that exists in the world.

It reflects this nostalgia, this hostility to modernity and progress. And I'm not a guy who wants to live in a concrete architectural nightmare and put up a silver pole at Christmas.

I say that as somebody who thinks that religious faith has a big role to play in American life, but not in American political life. Not in determining whether you put your personal religious beliefs above the law and the Constitution.

That's where the Constitution put in a firewall. And it's interesting because a lot of the Christian nationalists five years ago were also like, “I'm a strict constitutionalist.”

Well, up until you want the Constitution to be put aside so that your religious intent is embedded in our law and constitutional understanding of the world.

So, it really is a movement that is post American and post constitutional. And I think that should scare the hell out of them, but it doesn't.

They really believe they're in this apocalyptic moment. They have to race to the finish line. They have to do this stuff because any minute now, we're all going to be minorities, or gay, or Muslim, or whatever fantasy they have about the demographic alteration of American culture and society. It drives them to believe that they have to do this now, now, now.

And that's why they're willing to exceed any kind of constitutional boundaries and willing or trying to run past the goalposts on altering the constitution to let them act by fiat, to overturn laws they don't like, and to stack the courts in a way that if they can't just overturn them, they're going to get friendly court decisions.

And look, they've done a pretty good job in the last 40 years of building a court environment in the country that they wanted. The Federalist Society whether the love them or hate them, you got to respect them. They did the work they said they would do.

And that's the secret of this, Ken. The MAGA movement and the Republican Party, and especially these Christian Nats, always tell you what they're going to do. They can't help it. They brag about it. They talk about it. They always tell you their agenda.

And when they tell you we're going to have a white Christian nation, that's what they mean to accomplish. That is their goal. And their avatar in that is Donald Trump.

Ken Harbaugh:

In some ways, their paranoia is justified if you understand their fear as fear of a disrupted power structure in which they're no longer calling all the shots. If they were being really honest about it, that's what they're fighting to preserve.

And they don't have much time left, which I celebrate, which most Americans should celebrate. But you said they're going fighting to go back to the 1950s or 1850s. And they don't have much time to cross the finish line before they are dead and gone.

Rick Wilson:

They have to execute on this in the next decade. Now, look, I don't want to let folks just think, “Oh, this is an easy fight.” It's not an easy fight.

This is a fight where they are going to use every bit of power they have, where they're going to use every bit of money that they … and they're hugely funded. Hugely, insanely well-funded.

The idea that they have about a decade to go demographically, that means that's where the center of the boomer cohort has died out. That's where they anticipate that the millennial cohort will, as it has traditionally done, become much more conservative. Or Gen X cohort, excuse me.

And that the millennial cohort will be becoming more conservative. But that they understand though, that after the millennials and Gen Z hit the center of the American political demographic, they're effed. They're in deep water.

Gen Z in particular, they are far … Gen Z is an interesting amalgam because they have some libertarian economic beliefs, and they think the system right now, is stacked against them. Not in the traditional liberal like, oh … but they've seen it.

They grew up after 9/11, and they saw 2008 screw their families over. And now, they saw the last 10 years of the world becoming less affordable, less amenable.

When those people hit the scene, they are far, far, far to the left on social issues. On abortion, on LGBT matters, on individual liberty matters writ large.

And so, the big bulk, the cohort of Christian nationalists, they come from the late boomers, through Gen X and a taste of millennial, but not as intently. Those people will be leaving the scene in 10, 20, 30 years.

And so, they have to hurry. They have to rush. They believe that it's going to be harder and harder every day to win these battles. And they want to reshape society.

And I say this advisedly, but you have to admire the sweep of their ambition. Democrats are like, “We want to reduce carbon in the atmosphere from 450 to 325. We want a 7 day waiting period for a handgun. We want electric vehicles.”

These people are like, “I want to burn down the entire world and reshape society into a Christian patriarchal model that resembles medieval England.”

Oh, well, at least they've got scale. At least they have like the ambition for their movement. They tell you what they're going to do, and they're proud of it.

Ken Harbaugh:

Does this help explain (because I've been trying to understand this for a while now, I just got back from Ukraine) their affinity for Russia and-

Rick Wilson:

Absolutely.

Ken Harbaugh:

Okay, good. Run with it.

Rick Wilson:

Okay. The adoration of Putin, the adoration of Russia, the idea that that is some sort of a role model. Now, look, you and I both know Russia and Eastern Europe better than the average fanboy of Vladimir Putin. We understand what it really is.

But their image of it is that Putin is a strong, heterosexual, manly man leader. And that in Russia, women are beautiful and in their place and submissive, and there are no gays. And that the church is in the center of the state.

And yes, it's all a horseshit illusion. It's all propaganda, it's all boob bait for these people who are falling for it in the same way the American left used to fall for the workers' paradise bullshit in Soviet Russia. And the American left took that hook, line, and sinker in the ‘50s, ‘60s, and ‘70s.

They thought, “Oh, Russian people are all equal, and they all work together to …” Oh, come on. But this is the modern version of that, and it's targeted on the right instead of the left. And it works. It works at scale.

These people are convinced that Vladimir Putin is this bold, visionary leader, and that he leads a country of white Christian heterosexual directly tied to the church men. And they love it. They love it.

They have this impression in their minds that … and again, it's like they think Slavic women are all beautiful and submissive. Slavic men are all strong, blonde, handsome, blue-eyed, and Christian.

Now, look, the majority of the patchwork nation Vladimir Putin rules are not that. The majority are dark-haired, dark-eyed Asians. A meaningful fraction, about 25%, a larger percentage than in America are Muslim.

This is an illusion that has been crafted. Look, it's a shit hole, third world country with a second world military, but a first world best in class propaganda and intelligence system. And they've been fooled by it. They've been tricked by it.

Now, part of the operational gift that Putin has been given is that Donald Trump buys this illusion more than anybody else. Now, Trump was attracted to Putin because he's like, “He's a strong man. He's strong and manly.”

And when Republicans follow Trump into the ditch on this, they now, find themselves in a moment where Vladimir Putin, they have to excuse the invasion of Ukraine. They have to pretend that they only care now, about ending the war because of Vladimir Putin will launch nuclear weapons if we don't immediately cooperate with him.

And look, in my old line of work at the Defense Department, I can tell you there's a long, long, long, long, long history folks for 70 years of the Russians saying, “If you don't do X, we will nuke you.” It's never stopped. It always a drumbeat out there. It never stops.

Cuban missile crisis, you have Czechoslovakia. It goes back all the way to the moment the Russians got nuclear weapons until today.

None of this is going to happen. He's not going to use a nuclear weapon. He's not going to do it. He understands that's the end of the world if he does it. He understands that's the end of Russia if he does it.

Ken Harbaugh:

More importantly, yes, he understands he's done if he does it.

Rick Wilson:

He understands. And look, why is Putin putting so much into this? Why is this so important right now? Because Vladimir Putin, if Donald Trump loses, is going to fall out a window the next day. He understands that Trump is existential for his own individual physical survival.

So, he's going to pour it on as much as he can. And he's got a lot of useful idiots in this country. Elon Musk, and David Sachs, Steve Bannon.

And a whole bunch of these other fools who believe that the successor to the Soviet Union, a former KGB officer who is currently slaughtering civilians in Ukraine with bombing civilian targets, is a better role model and a better ally, and a better person, and a better leader than Zelenskyy in Ukraine who’s fighting for his life.

And they've made this into the hill they're going to die on. I think a lot of them are going to die on it politically, because there are a lot of Republicans out there. We've identified them in our polling, we call them Red Dawn conservatives. They don't buy into this idea that Vladimir Putin is the good guy.

And a lot of these people are Trump voters in every other respect. But they're like, “What is this that about? Putin, what? Russia, what?”

Ken Harbaugh:

What do we need to do to communicate to those voters and others the simple fact that the three world leaders who most want Donald Trump to win are Kim Jong Un Xi and Vladimir Putin. If they just that-

Rick Wilson:

Oh, and the Iranians, by the way. The Iranians wanted that too. Look, it is a constant drumbeat. And one thing we've learned at Lincoln and I've sort of known from writing about him even before Lincoln, you have to be persistent in the attack.

You cannot stop. You must continue with the attack at all times. You have to make the case, and then make the case, then make the case, then make the case, then make the case again.

Because Trump is a specialist at throwing up bullshit into the atmosphere, screaming, running around causing trouble, lighting up the room with whatever outrage of the day. And it distracts people. He's a mastermind at it.

We can't imagine that we can win a battle for the hearts and minds of those people by saying, “Oh, here's one ad. Here you go.”

I mean, and we've been advertising for the last couple months in Arizona and Wisconsin. Arizona started first, Wisconsin we've layered it in. We'll be up on the air in those places for the rest of the campaign.

And by I say up in the air, I mean digitally, where we're target targeting our individual pool of voters that we've identified in the voter file. We know who we're talking to.

In Arizona, we're talking to them about abortion because it's the big killer app in Arizona. In Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and other places, Ukraine is a very compelling message. Showing people what side we are on versus what side Donald Trump is on is a very compelling message.

And I think that the persistence of it, the consistency of it is really the heart of the argument. You can't just say it or do it once. You have to be on it, on it, on it, on it all the time.

Ken Harbaugh:

Thanks for watching everyone. I have been so humbled by the support of this audience and the speed at which this show has grown. You are why I and the whole team here do this.

If you're interested in bonus content, check out my Patreon page. It's free to sign up, and there's an option to donate as well. The link is right there and in the show notes. Thanks again.

Data is obviously a key part of how you make ads and how you target them, especially even when it comes to your audience of one Trump and knowing where he is and when, and what he's watching either in Bedminster or at Mar-a-Lago. You get a lot of credit for that.

But the other piece of it is your Republican sensibilities. A lot of you, most of you are former Republicans. You understand the mindset. How does that come into play?

Rick Wilson:

I mean, look, Stuart Stevens and I have been around the block and other folks in our team, Trygve Olson, and Reed. And I mean, everybody that's had anything to do with The Lincoln Project in the last four years almost always came from a Republican background.

And we understand our people. We talk to them. We used to communicate with them a lot all the time.

Now, we understand too that that audience has changed somewhat. But the pool of voters we're addressing, they haven't changed. They're still Reagan Republicans, they're still George HW Bush Republicans. They're still Republicans who believe in conservative principles. They haven't transformed into the MAGA monkey weird cult of we worship the great God Donald.

And our understanding of them is pretty intense. It's pretty peerless. And we study them a lot. We're in the field right now, studying not only our voter file study, which we've had running since 2020 or ‘19, really. But we're focus grouping a bunch of stuff right now.

We don't focus group our ads like a lot of people do because we know what we're doing. But we study the audience and the environment very, very intently and we always have.

We've never made a big deal out of it. But this is an organization driven by an awful lot of data, an awful lot of statistical rigor goes into … and I'm a philosophy major and a Soviet studies major, so I was told there would be no math, but here we are.

But I have people who do math. And we really have parsed down the key voters who were addressable and reachable in these states. And we had a very solid model.

And I will tell you, we got a little bit of, I don’t know if you would call it good news or bad news. With Nikki Haley continuing to overperform in all these states, it has caused a real disruption in the force. And that disruption has come down to an expanded number of our voters we need to talk to.

So, we didn't know as many of them were out there as we thought. So, in 2020, depending on the state, our pool was between 3 and 8% of those Republican voters. That's not many.

In 2022, it expanded between 7 and 11%. Now, it's between about 12 and 17% of these Republican voters. And that is very largely because of the Nikki Haley effect inside the Republican primary pool.

Once a person cast a vote for Nikki Haley in our internal scoring mechanism, they moved toward us about 50% closer to where they were even in 2022.

So, it's a fascinating development, and it's an optimistic development overall. It just means we have to do more work. And we don't have all the data on them that we have about our audience we've tracked since 2020.

Ken Harbaugh:

How are you getting to them? Because one of the things the right has done so well, way better than the left, is information discipline, creating those seemingly impenetrable silos. Maybe not Fox News, because you can still get ads on there, but for the folks who are limiting themselves to OAN and Newsmax-

Rick Wilson:

The optimistic part of that is a lot of the people in the pool we're looking at, they are not stuck in the fox silo. They watch Fox, but they're not — Sean Hannity said it, therefore, it's the word of God. Look, you have to reach them these days digitally.

I'm probably never going to run another ad on broadcast TV in my career. It doesn't work, it's inefficient, it's a stupid waste of donor resources where I can go and say, okay, I need 10,000 people in this county, and do I have their cell phones? Do I know how to drop an ad onto YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, wherever else for these people?

So, the digital advertising paradigm has fully arrived. And the core of that is doing two things. You have to target them brilliantly. And that means your people have to know how to use all the tools that the ad systems have developed. We've got people that do that really smartly.

But you also, have to produce compelling emotional content that doesn't look like every other political ad. And that's something I'm very proud of my production team for doing for the last four years.

They have taken these ideas that we come up with and turned them into the best ads in the business. And that's not just me bragging about it. We test them, score them. They have a powerful impact on the emotional state of people.

And one of the things we talk to this audience about all the time is a question. We don't always articulate the question in the ad, but the question is always, is this who you are? Is this who you want your children to become? Is this really what you believe?

And by pushing out into their emotional center ideas about Donald Trump, where you know no father wants his daughter to be around a man like Donald Trump. No mother wants her son to grow up treating women like Donald Trump. No businessman wants his partners to be as unethical as Donald Trump.

And so, we find a lot of ways to touch those emotional buttons with people and to remind them that this is a political choice, but it's also, a moral choice, an aesthetic choice, a religious choice that is beyond just the R versus D politics.

And look, Republicans, you're right, they're great at information discipline, they're great at information warfare, they're great at staying on one topic until it is beat to death. But so are we. And we're applying the Republican model against the MAGA party.

Ken Harbaugh:

I'm glad you said that because I was going to ask, is the foil always Donald Trump or do you have to undermine Fox and his-

Rick Wilson:

Yeah, you do. You have to beat around the entire perimeter of this situation. So, you have Donald Trump, you have the social media platforms that have now, weaponized themselves and become weaponized for Trump.

You've got the Fox, Newsmax, OAN media complex, which by the way, every time they scream about, “The mainstream media is liberal,” the Fox media complex, the MAGA media complex, vastly outnumbers in audience, viewers, money, everything else, MSNBC, CNN, all the networks by far, by an order of magnitude. Well, maybe not an order of magnitude, but very, very significantly.

Ken Harbaugh:

I mean, I use the truck stop test, just drive across America what's playing in (this is very tongue in cheek) real America, right?

Rick Wilson:

Yep. Every day.

Ken Harbaugh:

What's playing in squadron ward rooms on military bases across the country? And enough about the dominance of the liberal media. Get out there, you'll see.

Rick Wilson:

Rachel Maddow. Oh my God. Okay, well, then you've got Sean Hannity with three times the audience in the average week.

It's a 360-degree operation on their side where they have built this amazing edifice of communications. And unless you are approaching it all, one side may collapse a little bit, but the other side will shore it back up. So, what did you see this week? Heere’s a perfect example.

Donald Trump gets convicted. Rupert Murdoch calls the Wall Street Journal and says, “Write a story that Joe Biden is a senile, mentally ill old man.” Sure enough, at the respectable pages of Rupert Murdoch's Wall Street Journal, you have that story.

Within a minute every single part of that MAGA Media enterprise is doing the same exact thing. They are so good and so fast at coordinating their message.

And look, I used to be on those calls. I used to be on those Slack channels. I used to be on those email distros of what are we saying today?

You can watch it ramify out through the system every single day. You can watch their message of the day spreading out. And by the time it's mid-afternoon, every jackass on Facebook and Twitter is writing their own version of the story and spreading it, and spreading it and spreading it. They're very, very good at it.

So, look, I think we have an algorithmic problem at Twitter and Facebook that we cannot easily overcome because on the hand of Elon Musk, he wants Trump to win. His thumb is on the scale.

On the hand of Martin Zuckerberg, he wants to make a gazillion dollars at Facebook. He's very good at that. And so, his thumb is on the scale.

They have seen before that the spend will come from the right. What are you going to do? But you have to also, understand and treat them in a way that Democrats hesitate on a lot.

You have to treat these people like the hostile combatants in the political war that they are. These folks are not here as rational actors. This is no longer a, “I'm a conservative low tax Republican, and you're a liberal high tax democrat.” It is now, existential.

These people aren't coming to beat you on policy votes in Congress. They're coming to wreck the world as we know it.

And it's something that I've encouraged my democratic friends to get out of this policy model, stop talking about policy all the time, and get into the psychology, the emotion, the connectivity to American values.

It's like Democrats who were hesitant about flying the American flag because we don't want to offend anybody. What?

You can't seed any of the symbols, the signifiers, the history of this country to these people, or they will repurpose it into their own weird, dark, sick, MAGA fantasy of what America is. So, you got to fight in 360.

Ken Harbaugh:

I'm with you. Obviously, they can't own that, the flag that I wore on my shoulder for nine years as a Navy pilot.

But I do want to, I guess, indulge in a little self-criticism in the time we have left. I'm thinking about this incredible interview you did, it was a while ago with Brian Stelter, who distilled the problem with Fox News.

And at least in his argument to you, said that they became so successful because they found out how to pit Americans against each other. That's what they did.

Rick Wilson:

100%.

Ken Harbaugh:

How do we not fall into the same trap? I understand between now, and November, we have to win, we have to beat Trump, but how do we do it in a way that when the dust settles, we are not squared off against another camp of Americans?

Rick Wilson:

I have to tell you, Ken, it's a tough problem because we are in a gunfight with these people politically, that they don't mind seeing everything on the other side of the political equation destroyed.

And there is an idea of America that we always come to a compromise, that we always work it out. And that's the thing they hate the most.

That's the thing inside the Republican Party, the political schism in the house and the Senate has long been a cohort of people in the Tea Party era that became the MAGA Party era, who believe that it's better to lose than to compromise, that it's better to burn it all down than to make a deal.

And there are very few Republicans in Washington left who understand that. I mean, look, I'm not a Mitch McConnell fanboy, but he's been the only thing holding back the dam of these people who want to burn down Ukraine.

These people that want to burn down, shut down the government, these people that want to put this country into a recession for political ends. There are a lot of bad actors on that side. And so, as much as you don't want to pit Americans against one another, it's already happened.

They've already done it on the other side of the equation. That doesn't mean we have to emulate them exactly, but we have to do everything we can to break down that machine that would do that in an ongoing basis, because they have now, convinced half of Americans that the other half of Americans are satanic, pedophile cannibals.

And I say that without a single laugh in my voice or a smile on my face. They really have convinced millions of their people that if you're a Democrat, you are a satanist, a communist, a pedophile, that you hate the police, that you hate the military, that you hate America.

And it's the kind of attack that's hard to come back with a rational set of answers. Because if you say, that's absurd they go, “Ah, he said it was absurd. It proves that all of my points.”

So, you have to teach them through the one thing in politics that really teaches people lessons. And that's pain. Pain is the only teacher in politics. You have to break them and beat them at the ballot box over and over and over and over and over again.

Look, there was a time when McCarthyism was a winning political strategy at the ballot box, it became poisonous for a long time. These sort of movements are beatable. There was a time when Klansmen ran for Congress proudly, as, “I'm the grand wizard of the imperial lodge of this or that city.” That became unacceptable.

There are ways to do this to make it politically unacceptable to raise the political cost of being in this movement of authoritarianism, and statism, and Christian nationalism, where it becomes so painful politically that you stop doing it.

That's really the sort of post-Trump broader goal that we … in 2020 after Trump was defeated, believe me, Ken, all I wanted to do was go write more books and retire and watch my kids have kids. It's all I wanted to do. I'd worked for 35 years in politics. At that point, I'm tired. I was ready to go home.

But on January 6th we realized this movement and this darkness is not going to go away even when Trump dies off. It's a fight we're going to have to have for a long time because there are a lot of people who've gained great political and financial power because of it.

So, it's going to be a rough battle but here we are. They're going to end up carrying me out feet first, I guess.

Ken Harbaugh:

And the honest Republicans out there (and you're a former Republican) will tell you that the only way to save the party is to crush it in the next few cycles. To send that message of pain that forces reform from within. Rick, great talking to you as always.

Rick Wilson:

As always, Ken, a delight to be with you.

Ken Harbaugh:

Thanks.

Thanks for listening to Burn the Boats. If you have any feedback, please email the team at [email protected]. We're always looking to improve the show.

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Burn the Boats is a production of Evergreen Podcasts. Our producer is Declan Rohrs, and Sean Rule-Hoffman is our audio engineer. Special thanks to Evergreen executive producers, Joan Andrews, Michael DeAloia, and David Moss.

I'm Ken Harbaugh, and this is Burn the Boats, a podcast about big decisions.