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The Lincoln Project, the crown jewel of the Never Trump movement, raised $67 million meant to swing Republicans toward the Democrats in the 2024 election. Instead, Kamala’s share of the Republican vote dropped from Hillary’s 7% and Biden’s 6% all the way down to 5%.
The Lincoln Project had been co-founded by McCain’s manager who had overseen a campaign where Obama had won 9% of Republican votes. Trump not only performed better (94%) with Republicans than McCain had (90%), but Kamala’s share of the Republican vote was a little over half what it had been under Obama despite spending $67 million on Republicans.
That $67 million was only a part of the money spent by Democrats and leftists on the Never Trump movement even though there was never any reason to think that it was working.
Defending Democracy Together, Bill Kristol’s operation, partnered with the Lincoln Project to become the largest ‘dark money’ spender in 2020 and after blowing through $35 million, had nothing to show in the exit polls except another single digit drop in Republican support for its chosen candidate. Every presidential election cycle that Never Trump has intervened in, Republican support for Democrats has not only failed to go up, but actually went down.
During 2020 and 2024, when Never Trump’s political operation was most active, CNN exit polls showed Trump’s share of the Republican vote rose from 88% in 2016 to 94%. The only thing that Never Trump seemed to accomplish was to unify Republicans around Trump.
Kristol’s Defending Democracy Together Institute and its various projects like The Bulwark and Lyceum Labs have taken in millions of dollars annually with nothing to show for it except gathering up various useless political operatives and staffers like Romney’s former counsel and policy director, a former Dick Armey staffer and Beto O’Rourke’s South Carolina staff director.
This Never Trump political cruft was funded by leftist billionaires like Persian eBay founder Pierre Omidyar and foundations, including $500,000 from the liberal Hewlett Foundation (Lyceum’s director Daniel Stid conveniently also ran Hewlett’s Democracy Program).
The Hewlett Foundation along with Soros, the Rockefeller Foundation, Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker’s family foundation, and assorted liberal foundations, also funds the Niskanen Center, a pre-Trump hub for liberal Republicans and libertarians which responded to Trump’s win by insightfully blaming it on the lack of public school integration. And it only got worse from there.
The Bulwark, the Substack magazine of Kristol’s movement, funded by Omidyar, is largely indistinguishable from Slate or MSNBC, and has nothing to offer to anyone who isn’t already obsessed with hating Trump, analyzing his connections to Vladimir Putin and fuming at the media including ABC News, the LA Times and the Wall Street Journal (WSJ Isn’t a Serious Publication Anymore. Just another Fox News!) for not being sufficiently anti-Trump.
The Bulwark’s Jonathan V. Last responded to Trump’s victory by urging that “Democrats should not try to save America from itself” and proposed that Democrats should not fight deportations of illegal aliens because Latinos voted for Trump. “Democrats should spend exactly zero political capital stopping any Trump deportation efforts,” he broadcast. “It is madness to spend capital trying to help people who are no longer a major part of your electoral coalition.”
While professional Never Trumpers shot further down the radicalization rabbit hole, Bret Stephens at the New York Times headlined his column, “Done With Never Trump” dismissing the “heavy moralizing and incessant doomsaying that typified so much of the Never Trump movement”, conceding that the Russiagate “collusion allegations were a smear” and that “Trump’s Russia policy — whether it was his opposition to the Nord Stream 2 pipeline or his covert aid to Ukraine — was much tougher” than Obama’s or Biden’s had been or would be.
Stephens wrote about the hypocrisy of Trump’s critics asking “why were the same people who demanded investigations into every corner of the Trump family’s business dealings so incurious about the Biden family’s dealings, like the curiously high prices for Hunter’s paintings?” and argued that ” as much as we fear Trump could wreck some of our institutions, whether it’s higher education or the F.B.I., many of those institutions are already broken and may need to be reconceived or replaced.”
The reactions from The Bulwark and Stephens typify the two poles of Never Trumperism.
Serious adults like Stephens proved capable of reevaluating their positions in the face of a landslide election and a major shift in public sentiment while professional Never Trumpers doubled down on trying to out-MSNBC the actual MSNBC in the fanatical fashion of past defectors from the conservative movement like Media Matters guru David Brock.
But they’re imitating a model that may be dead. MSNBC’s ratings are struggling and from the Washington Post to the Los Angeles Times, the media’s Trump-baiters are rethinking their offerings. The liberal base is tired of rants about Trump and has been tuning out. And after three election cycles of failure, the big liberal foundations may grow weary of funding the vanity projects of Never Trumpers which have never been anything other than a social club for political operatives who had found a way to use the rise of Trump to make money from his enemies.
‘Never Trump: The Revolt of the Conservative Elites’, a book funded in part by the movement, warned that Never Trump’s “funding has come from left-of-center sources including Democracy Fund Voice, an initiative solely sponsored by tech entrepreneur Pierre Omidyar, and the Hewlett Foundation.” Will the money keep on coming especially with Trump in his final term in office?
Never Trump built its movement around opposing one man who has won his last election. What are they going to do for a next act? Rebrand around opposing the next GOP candidate?
When the money dries up, the campaign consultants who were the real force behind Never Trumperism will move on and the handful of intellectuals who lent their name to this facade will have to do likewise. And that may end up happening even sooner than anyone expects.
The Lincoln Project, like the rest of the Never Trump movement, proved to be a political dead end, but enormously profitable for those connected with it. Its operatives failed to elect Kamala, but by diverting millions in Democrat funds, they may have helped to reelect Trump.
So Never-Trump was a false flag operation funded by the left. Excellent coverage Daniel!!!
The Never Trump movement is one of the few organizations that did worse the longer they bitched about Trump.
Not-so-little-anymore Billy Kristol did little more than embarrass himself since Trump came down the escalator.
I wonder how caught up in “Russia Russia Russia” and the two faux impeachments Kristol and his buddies were. The never Trump movement is as traitorous as any Leftist group working against Trump.
Perhaps Bill Kristol & Defending Democracy Together will be around in 4 years when Trump’s agenda accomplishments have thrown the Republican Establishment into the dustbin of history. Weak, feckless, & compromising Republicans are going out of fashion quickly.
Daniel’s last zinger line is a nice touch.
Totally agree on the wording. The Never Trumpers came to a dead end. They showed they lacked total common sense, and intelligence in their ways of depravity. They really tried to undermine this country and did anything to achieve their agenda…….which totally fell apart. They must have relished in Self-Destruction.
Kristol and his gang of old school Deep Staters’ sell-by date has expired and are no longer fit for human consumption.
What the heck happened to Bill Kristol? I subscribed to the Weekly Standard for a year or two way back, and I thought he was a conservative. Something about Trump’s personality and style undermined his critical thinking skills. I can understand not liking Trump, but I cannot understand considering him more dangerous than the empty-headed deep-state puppets Joe and Kamala.
Same thoughts as you about Kristol. I guess people like Kristol think of themselves as arbiters of behavior and decorum, finger sandwiches and champagne, while Trump is more direct assault, Bar-B-Q and, if he drank, a draft beer. They don’t like Trump because they feel they are better than him, and in context, better than everyone in the country that voted for him.
Here’s to Kristol and all the other RINOs fading quickly into irrelevance.
Merry Christmas to all.
From 1993 until 2016 I had maintained a subscription for the National Review. When this publication became a Never Trump bastion I ceased subscribing to it.
Those are exactly the years I subscribed. I voted for Reagan but didn’t switch to Republican until bill clinton. Couldn’t stomach even being in the same party as him and hillary. I learned a lot reading National Review in those years and found some wonderful writers. But the libertarians took over and ruined it. The legacy of the magazine would’ve been better if it had died when Buckley did.
One can only be left with the conclusion that the “conservatism” espoused by Kristol, Cheney & Co. for several decades was never authentic — just fodder to keep conservative voters within the endless trap of the Deep State. I certainly have felt betrayed by them.
Let the Never Trumpers and Not My President types go and beat their Brains out of the wall
No one should ever confuse Brett Stephens a great public intellectual with Bill Kristol who can’t hold a candle to Stephens
Never Trump seems to me to be a newly branded group that we called the Establishment. They kept re-electing the same worn out Republican water bearers spewing the same drivel election after election. Thank God for the golden age that’s coming.
I never understood why these NTs couldn’t stand Trump. I can’t think of even one clear reason given as to why they felt that way.
Maybe it was just an elitist mindset and nothing more..
They only worked for managed decline, not conservatism. I was puzzled at the time but too naive to see them for what they were. We were betrayed.
Outstanding article Daniel! Very revealing. A little of it I already knew but not to the extent which you’ve exposed in this article. Bravo!
To add my two nets worth: at the core of everything you said is money which once again proves that if you want to get to the truth of the matter, any matter, follow the money. People made money off of hating Trump but that gravy train has run its course and is now out of fuel. What new business are they going to gin up and “strike (profit from) while the iron is hot?
Never Trumpers are the enemy within. They hang on to the Republican title but their resistance to the party exposes all of them. They should identify as Dems but don’t have the guts to come out of the closet.
Both Trump presidencies are anathema to the group that believes a powerful federal government is useful. The commitment of the group to federal power is so strong as to overcome any differences they may have about the aims and outcomes of federal power. President Trump, perhaps inadvertently, aims to shrink the federal government in a way that bodes for a return to constitutional power limitations on that level of government in our republic. I believe President Trump loathes waste and truly believes that America is best when Americans are free to prosper in peace. Since the powerful federal government group incites war, demeans working Americans, and prospers from the financiaization of the economy – which entails not only profligate federal spending but also the exporting of jobs and the importing of cheap labor, they will never accept the results of a Trump presidency as good.
Trump’s manner and character cannot possibly motivate the animus this group feels toward him. He is no more despicable than Bill Clinton, no more devious than Barack Obama, and no more apt to misspeak than G. W. Bush or Joe Biden. He is vastly more successful in business than any of those men, and that may be a tough pill to swallow for those whose financial well-being hinges on favors from or suckling at the public teat.
It is shameful that we tolerate a public school and university system that produces adults willing to vote for ciphers like Bush, Obama, or Biden.
I have always wondered if the money Kristol was making off of The Bulwark was quite a bit more than he ever made from The Weekly Standard. The Bulwark has four years left to attack Trump, so Kristol lucked out where the Democrats lost.