Lincoln Project struggles to stay relevant during Trump’s second term

Remember when a Lincoln Project ad dropping felt like an event? Cable news would clear space for it, reporters would tweet it out breathlessly, and for about eighteen months in 2020 these guys were treated like the moral conscience of the Republican Party they'd already left behind. Now the checks have slowed, the bookers stopped calling, and the group that once raised tens of millions off pure Trump hatred is reduced to wondering out loud why nobody's listening anymore. Turns out the business model had an expiration date.

The honest answer is that the Lincoln Project was never actually selling conservatism. It was selling access to liberal donors and cable green rooms who wanted Republican-shaped validation for opinions they already held. That's a fine racket while the enemy is in office and the outrage is fresh, but it doesn't survive four years of Biden, a second Trump term nobody thought would happen, and a base that's moved on to bigger fights. You can't build a durable institution on being professionally furious at one man.

There's also the matter of what actually happened to some of these guys personally, the scandals and infighting that never got the same breathless coverage as the ads did. Groups built entirely around opposition rather than any actual governing vision tend to rot from the inside once the spotlight moves. That's what's happening here.

None of this is a tragedy. It's just what happens when the product was outrage and the market for that particular outrage dried up. The Lincoln Project didn't lose relevance because Trump won. It lost relevance because it never had anything to offer once the ratings stopped justifying the performance.