“I do not see any light on the horizon for Trump”: Lincoln Project’s Rick Wilson on MAGA’s retreat

No plan survives first contact with the enemy. This is especially true if one ends up fighting an enemy they did not prepare for.

Donald Trump and his campaign developed a strategy specifically to defeat President Biden in the 2024 Election. Once Biden was defeated Trump would become the country’s first dictator and systematically destroy multiracial pluralistic democracy. As detailed in Project 2025, Agenda 47, and elsewhere, Donald Trump and his regime are very well-prepared to accomplish that goal.

Their plan was working. Trump was leading or tied with President Biden in the polls, both nationally and in the key battleground states. Trump continued to bypass or smash through the obstacles in his path and to turn the (incorrect) conventional wisdom on its head about how “the walls were closing in” and that “the rule of law,” “the institutions,” and “American decency” would stop him and the MAGA movement.

President Biden and the Democrats were not mounting an effective defense—never mind a counterattack. The one direct confrontation between President Biden and Donald Trump during the first debate went horribly. Biden imploded and appeared to be impotent before Trump’s barrage of lies and manic energy.

Sensing imminent defeat, President Biden made the wise decision to step aside and allow Kamala Harris to become the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee. Donald Trump and his campaign’s strategy is now falling apart, nullified and frustrated by an enemy they did not plan for. Trump’s leadership is also being tested. At this point, he is failing the test.

Kamala Harris is now tied with or leading Trump in the national polls and key battleground states. The Democratic Party’s base is energized. Fundraising has increased dramatically. With the selection of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her vice-presidential running mate, Harris has infused the party (and campaign) with a type of populist energy and vibrance it has lacked for a long time.

It has only been three weeks since Kamala Harris became the Democratic Party’s presumptive presidential nominee. In that very short time, Donald Trump appears to be experiencing one of the greatest reversals in political momentum in recent American history.

In an attempt to gain a better perspective on these whiplash-like changes, I recently spoke with Rick Wilson. He is a co-founder of The Lincoln Project, a former leading Republican strategist, and the author of two books, “Everything Trump Touches Dies” and “Running Against the Devil: A Plot to Save America from Trump – and Democrats from Themselves.”

In this conversation, Wilson explains how and why Donald Trump’s campaign has lost momentum and focus so quickly. He also details the advantages that Kamala Harris possesses against Donald Trump — advantages that may be very difficult for the corrupt felon ex-president to counter.

Wilson warns that Donald Trump and his campaign will attempt to use racism and misogyny against Kamala Harris in ways that will likely shock many members of the public — but that such a tactic may actually backfire.

At the end of this conversation, Wilson cautions against premature celebrations and the bandwagon effect because the 2024 election will be a long one and a Kamala Harris victory, at this early stage, is far from guaranteed.

These last few weeks have been a whirlwind. How are you feeling? How are you managing this torrent? 

I’m doing alright. Donald Trump laid a trap to try to beat Joe Biden, and that trap was to tell every American that the old man couldn’t hack it, and now Trump is the old man who can’t hack it in the race. We’re in a much different and better position than we were in a few weeks ago. Here at the Lincoln project, we’ve had a remarkable run of communicating to the voters we’re trying to persuade. Over the last few weeks, we’ve seen a lot of movement in the polling. The 2024 election is fundamentally changed. This is not Donald Trump’s race anymore. Trump no longer controls the narrative. He doesn’t have control of the flow of information, and it’s really hurting Trump. 

Given your decades of experience in American politics at the highest levels, have you experienced anything like these twists and turns these last few weeks in the story that is the Age of Trump?

Both the frequency and the amplitude of the changes are increasing. We are seeing an election that has really been shaken up and redefined in a way that has not occurred in a political campaign in my lifetime. We are in a moment where the politics of the country are demanding that we pay attention every day. Our team at the Lincoln Project is very seasoned at this point. They’ve been around this fight for four years. Our staff is now very accustomed to the cadence and the work and the pace that we maintain. That is great. But we try to emphasize balance here. People need time to rest and to take a breather. This is going to be a long fight. 

When people email me seeking guidance about what to do about the election and just trying to make sense of the Age of Trump and its misery and how to manage it, I tell them it is going to be a long war and not a fight. I also counsel that they must fight small battles each day. 

There will be good days and bad days for Vice President Harris and her campaign from here to Election Day in November. One of the lessons that I emphasize with my colleagues is that “perspective in politics is a weapon.” It’s a superpower. Knowing how to manage your own expectations for what good days and bad days look like is really important. Donald Trump had a period of time which were, to be frank, the best six weeks I’ve ever seen in politics. Those six weeks culminated with a coronation at the Republican National Convention. Some broke that night when Trump took the stage. Guess what? Vice President Harris has had three amazing weeks where she has consolidated the Democratic Party base, won over a cohort of Republican women voters who are pro-choice, and has made a ton of progress in redefining not only what the Democratic Party can look like for Americans, but also in what people should expect from a campaign. The hope and optimism element of her campaign is driving the Republicans crazy. Why? Because the Republicans view campaigns as reductive and negative, and they’re really having trouble processing how to counter that. 

After the assassination attempt when Trump rose from the ground and pumped his fist in the air while saying “fight! fight! fight!”, I watched that iconic moment and said aloud that is the next president of the United States. Then Trump is elevated as some type of fascist god king at the Republican National Convention and what should have been something out of “Triumph of the Will” and Hitler and the Nazis was something more somnolent and akin to a tired premier giving a speech before the Supreme Soviet.

Now, Harris is leading Trump, and the momentum is decidedly hers. How did things go so wrong so quickly for Donald Trump and his campaign? 

Donald Trump has no one but himself to blame for his political fortunes right now and how he has lost the momentum so fast. I will say this about the assassination attempt. There was an attempt by the Trump campaign, smartly to show or to say that this was part of a larger conversation in America, and this was about hatred of Donald Trump, and the overall tone of our politics in the country right now. But it turned out we very quickly learned it was about a sick young man who like a lot of other lost young men in this country, has easy access to guns but does not have friends. They have the internet but no real meaningful relationships. This young man went out to shoot a famous person.

The narrative that Trump and his people were trying to impose on this horrible event did not match up to what the motivation turned out to really be. And then Trump himself turned it into a clown show, with the huge bandage on his ear. The drama Trump tried to create around the assassination attempt did not work. Trump himself has conditioned Americans to change the subject and he has conditioned Americans over and over again, to believe and to know that everything’s going to change. The American people know that Trump is going to change his mind. He is going to change his message. That is not going to change. Trump’s own temperament and behavior redounded against him in this case because he wanted everybody to think of him as a glorious martyr. He isn’t. 

Earlier in our conversation, you said that Donald Trump has a “superpower” and that he also built his own trap. Trump is a character in a story that he is writing in his own mind in real-time where he is the hero. How did he lose control of his own story? 

You have to maintain pressure on Donald Trump all the time. Trump is like trying to give a cat a bath. You’re going to have to make sure that you are prepared to get cut up and scratched and bitten. You have to be sure you are never going to take your hand off the scruff of that cat’s neck until you get it into the bathtub. Trump will fight and scrap and twist and turn and do everything he can to get out of trouble. Once you deliver a message about Donald Trump, you have to keep hammering that message home. You can never give Donald Trump even 10 seconds to come up off the mat. You can never give Trump a break or a breather or grace or any respite. The assassination attempt on Trump’s life does not change that fact. That event changed nothing about him and how we should approach defeating him. Donald Trump is still exactly who and what he’s always been. Period. 

Kamala Harris’s campaign is very different in terms of style, messaging, and tone. To this point, it is much more effective than was President Biden’s. Where was this approach from President Biden and his campaign team? 

Every campaign is an organic creation. Every campaign is its own thing. This means that every campaign reflects the person leading the campaign, the candidate. Right now, this campaign is reflecting Vice President Harris pretty well. Her campaign is giving the public a look at who she really is. She is not the same sort of institutionalist figure that President Biden is. I don’t mean that as a critique of President Biden. Not at all. Kamala Harris is just a different person. She is also of a different generation. She has a different energy, pose and stature. Kamala Harris has a different kind of delivery. That presentation as somebody who is younger, sharper, more and more connected to pop culture and the world as it exists now is going to be the focus of how she is presented to the American people. She’s a different candidate than Biden which means that we are going to see a very different type of campaign. 

The New York Times recently reported that Trump has been “triggered” by Kamala Harris and the early success of her campaign. There is other reporting about how Trump’s campaign is in tumult, and he is raging and lashing out. What is your assessment of Trump’s behavior and reaction to Harris?

Donald Trump is shook. He’s not happy. Trump is particularly upset about how on paper, the 2024 election looked like it was in the proverbial bag for him already. And when that didn’t work out, as it is slipping away, Trump’s reaction has been extremely ugly internally. All of Trump’s people are leaking information to the press now. That is a sign of a bad campaign, one that is in real trouble. Everybody’s trying to defend themselves; they’re trying to blame shift. Kamala Harris is taking the lead in the swing state polls. That has really upset Donald Trump. He really thought he had a campaign that was absolutely perfect for this, for this moment and targeting Joe Biden. Now that is all thrown out the window. 

Donald Trump and his agents, especially JD Vance, are already launching racist and sexist attacks on Kamala Harris. What they are going to try to do to Kamala Harris will make Birtherism look kind. This is going to be some old school racism and white supremacy and hatred of Black women. I have been trying to warn people that what Trump’s campaign is going to do will be Willie Horton 2.0—if not worse. How does Trump’s campaign balance those types of racist and sexist attacks on Harris with not turning off larger portions of the American electorate?

When the Willie Horton ad was put out, that was the late 1980s, the average voter was much more likely to be older and more suburban and rural and whiter. We are in a very different time now. That was also an era where it was harder to fact check, and harder to vet and verify the claims being made in political ads. You could get away with stuff back then that you in no way could get away with now. 

There are plenty of ways where the countervailing messages to push back on Trump’s use of racism and sexism can become very painful for him and his campaign. I have no doubt they are going to try some Willie Horton old school racism attacks. Trump and his people in the media and elsewhere are going to do everything but say the N-word in public by the time this is over. I 100% believe in private that Trump is saying such things. We’re in a moment where the desperation on their side is showing. You can see it in their communications. You can see it in the media coverage. You can see it in Trump’s behavior on social media. You can see it in the campaign’s press releases and statements. Donald Trump does not know how to get out of this. Kamala Harris’s rise is a dark moment for him. I do not see any light on the horizon for Trump. Yet, we’ve got a long way to go. The vice president has moved up in the surveys by some three to seven points, depending on the state. The Democratic National Convention in Chicago is going to be unified and happy and raucous and fun. That’s going to help her win a few more points here and there. I won’t say the whole race is stacked against Trump right now. But it sure is not built for him.

How do you assess the matchup between Tim Walz and JD Vance?

Walz connects with ordinary people. He gives a lot of moderate sort of midwestern north central American Republicans a way to go. I know that guy. Yeah, maybe he’s a Democrat, but he knows about ice fishing and he is of their culture. Vance is weird. That is obvious. But he is playing that part, almost like a stereotype, every day. I am deeply amused by Vance’s inability to connect with regular people.

What are the public opinion polls, which are a snapshot in time, indicating about the 2024 Election at this point?

What I find most surprising is all the growth that’s left is in the middle. Harris is solidifying the Democratic base at a breakneck pace, Trump has not been able to solidify more moderate Republicans, those Nikki Haley voters, those non-Trump voters, and I don’t think he can at this point. When the Republicans do a post-mortem of this era, if they are being honest with themselves, they will see that the Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade was the most fatal political moment in their party’s modern history. 

I am very concerned about how too many members of the news media and pundit class (and general public) are leaping to far too early conclusions about Harris and her momentum being somehow determinant of a victory over Trump in November. The lesson from history I keep coming back to is how Michael Dukakis was way ahead of George H.W. Bush and then lost to him in the election.

That was my first big campaign, 1988. At this point in the election contest, Dukakis was ahead by 17 points. Here are the lessons from that defeat. Don’t ever take anything for granted. Run through the tape. Never take your foot off the pedal. It’s a simple and what should be an inviolate rule. You have to run all the way through. You have to fight all the way down. You can never, ever, take a break from the campaign at this early point. You’ve got to drive through the tape.

One of the things we have to watch for here is that Trump can beat Trump. Harris can beat Trump. Trump I do not believe can beat Harris with the popular vote. But Trump could beat Harris because of the Electoral College.

How is your hope tank doing as compared to a few weeks ago? What about your worry tank?

My worry tank is diminished meaningfully. My hope tank is on three-quarters, but I’m going to stop for gas again soon before Election Day in November.