Friend,

It has been a busy few months for the Lincoln Project and I wanted to share a few campaign updates on some of our critical work and my take on Virginia’s elections in just a few short weeks.

Virginia is close. Within the margin of error by most polls. Too close for comfort. The biggest reason is that Glenn Youngkin is skating by and successfully pretending that he isn’t a Trumpist. (He is.)

Youngkin has to walk a very difficult line, forcing him to lie to two separate groups of voters at once: he has to show independents in Northern Virginia that he's moderate (he is not); and he has to prove to the Trumpist voters in the rest of the state that he's fascist enough to pick up the mantle of Trump and earn their support. 

So when you hear about a Youngkin rally where they say the Pledge of Allegiance to a flag carried at the January 6th riots, the picture begins to sharpen. You see what he is trying to do and the number of lies he has to tell. Two-faced does not begin to describe it.

Is he too extreme or not extreme enough? We think the answer is both. He’s trying to be all things to all people and that ain’t going to cut it in Virginia. He's too extreme for Virginia but he is not the second coming of Trump the mob wants him to be. 

We’re calling him out on his lies. We're proving who Youngkin really is to Virginia voters right now with several hard-hitting ads like only we can make. The rest of the establishment can’t go where we can go or talk to the voters we can talk to. This is our task.

We keep talking about all the races we need to focus on next year to beat the Trumpist mob. But if we lose Virginia after it going for Biden by a significant margin last year, our task next year is nearly impossible. How did it get so close in a race Democrats should be handily winning?

The answer is the message. That's where we come in because we can say things the campaigns or the establishment wouldn’t dare. We are targeting Youngkin where it hurts and we can win this race and beat back Trumpism in Virginia for the next half-decade. Or longer, if we win by enough. We have roughly 300,000 target voters who went Trump in '16 and flipped to Biden in '20 in Virginia that need to hear from us. 

Please help the Lincoln Project beat Glenn Youngkin in Virginia right now. We are running ads telling voters the truth in a way only we can do. Your support will likely mean the difference between victory or defeat. Which in turn will mean the difference between victory or defeat in 2022.

Losing Virginia means a Trumpist is in charge of Presidential certification in another 2024 swing state. The mob still believes 2020 was stolen. They’re pledging allegiance to January 6th. Can you imagine what one of their mouthpieces will do for 2024? 

The only way we are going to defeat Trumpism in 2024 is to stamp it out soundly at the ballot box every chance we get. We are in hand-to-hand combat at the margins right now. And of course, Virginia is not the only front where we are fighting. Ask Greg Abbott, Doug Ducey, and Ron DeSantis. They are only the first.

In addition to the Lincoln Project’s electoral work, the other massive campaign we are waging is against those who are funding the Trumpist mob. Right now we are holding to account one of the behemoths in corporate America, AT&T. Ever wonder how OAN, one of the pre-eminent mouthpieces for the fascist mob, got its funding?

You guessed it: AT&T. A recent report exposed that 90% of OAN’s revenue came from a contract with AT&T-owned television platform DirecTV. OAN's founder said that without that contract, OAN's value would be "zero." 

With your help, we have been taking on the conservative echo chamber -- calling out FOX, Tucker Carlson and the rest of them for killing Americans with vaccine lies -- and AT&T has been funding one of the leading sources of vaccine disinformation and seditionist propaganda right under our noses.

AT&T has spent millions propping up seditionists and supporting right-wing drivel like OAN. We will continue calling for Americans who care about democracy to #HangUpOnATT. We have to hit them in the only place they really understand: their pocketbooks.

It may seem like the work we are taking on is like trying to fight a Hydra with many different heads. This is true. But that's why we are continuing to build a coalition unlike anything American politics has ever seen. A true pro-democracy coalition.

Reed, Rick and the team will have a few other updates on our work for you shortly. More corporate responsibility campaigns are coming. In a few short weeks our focus will shift from Virginia to the next battlefields for 2022.

In the meantime, we all have our roles to play. You have made all of this possible. 

Please help us win Virginia and keep holding AT&T's feet to the fire now. We can't do it without you.

Thank you for keeping us in the fight.

- Joe