Daily Archives: July 12, 2020

"I'm going to Walter Reed to see some of our great soldiers who have been injured," said Trump on Thursday. "Badly injured. And also see some of our Covid workers, people who have such a great job. And I expect to be wearing a mask when I go into Walter Reed. You're in a hospital so I think it's a very appropriate thing."

"Trump -- who has stubbornly refused to wear a mask in public, ridiculed those who have and done little to encourage his supporters to embrace the common sense public health measure -- has said he will wear a mask during a visit to Walter Reed National Medical Center on Saturday.

"He is also expected to be photographed wearing it, a photo opportunity that some of the President's aides practically begged him to agree to and hope will encourage skeptical Trump supporters to do the same."

It might be too late -- from both a public health perspective and a political one.

"Sometimes, American politics is complicated. Right now, it's extremely simple: the public has reached a harshly negative judgment of the president's handling of the most important issue facing the country, and the issue is so paramount that there's little room to wiggle out of it."

What's remarkable about where Trump finds himself now is that it's almost entirely due to his own personal vanity.

"Cloth face coverings are recommended as a simple barrier to help prevent respiratory droplets from traveling into the air and onto other people when the person wearing the cloth face covering coughs, sneezes, talks, or raises their voice. This is called source control. This recommendation is based on what we know about the role respiratory droplets play in the spread of the virus that causes COVID-19, paired with emerging evidence from clinical and laboratory studies that shows cloth face coverings reduce the spray of droplets when worn over the nose and mouth. COVID-19 spreads mainly among people who are in close contact with one another (within about 6 feet), so the use of cloth face coverings is particularly important in settings where people are close to each other or where social distancing is difficult to maintain."

Given that, why hasn't Trump been wearing a mask? Because he thinks it makes him look weak and/or bad. Not kidding.

What, exactly, do you make of that Trump quote other than that he isn't going to wear a mask because of vanity?

"Wearing a face mask as I greet presidents, prime ministers, dictators, kings, queens -- I just don't see it," he said. Why not? Because, based on the science, what an American president would be saying by wearing a mask when meeting with foreign leaders is that he is following best practices to keep himself -- and those around him -- safe.

But of course, that's now how Trump sees mask-wearing. He sees it as a sign of weakness or lack of masculinity.

"He makes a speech and he walks onto the stage wearing this massive mask ... and then he takes it off, he likes to have it hang off usually the left ear. I think it makes him feel good, frankly. He's got the largest mask I think I've ever seen. It covers up a big proportion of his face. And I think he feels he looks good that way."

So, yeah. Because he thinks that masks make him (and people generally) look bad or not manly or tough or something, Trump has resisted wearing one in public for months on end. Which has had a deeply deleterious effect on public health and his own political prospects.

Excerpt from:

How Donald Trump's vanity may have doomed his reelection bid - CNN

Mary, on the other hand, gives us an early glimpse that the adult Donald is no more dedicated a reader than he was when he was younger and allegedly paid someone else to take his SAT exams for him. As someone who has written books for Random house, I particularly enjoyed the scene when Trumps Random House editor takes her out to lunch to fire her as her uncle's underpaid ghostwriter, and the following exchange occurs.

Donald told me he likes what Ive done so far, I said. The editor looked at me as if Id just proven his point for him. Donald hasnt read any of it, he said.

Mary is relieved to be fired, Bolton expresses a similar sentiment as he hands in his resignation letter. Its like the only thing worse than being fired by the guy with the youre fired catch phrase is having to work for him.

The fundamental patheticness of the guy who pretended to be his own press secretary, the tacky guy with showy hotels begging the world to love him is in full display in both books. Bolton talks about how Trump would "in effect, give personal favors to dictators he liked, in order to further curry favor with them. For Trump the difference between a fascist dictator and a celebrity he wanted to befriend was nothing at all.

Here is how Mary describes her uncle: Besides being driven around Manhattan by a chauffeur whose salary his fathers company paid, in a Cadillac his fathers company leased to 'scope out properties,' Donald's job description seemed to have included lying about his 'accomplishments' and allegedly refusing to rent apartments to black people.

Both books show a president with no moral compass, in Boltons massive opus of self-justification, he chronicles President Trump encouraging President Xi of china to build concentration camps "According to our interpreter," Mr. Bolton wrote, "Trump said that Xi should go ahead with building the camps, which Trump thought was exactly the right thing to do." Yes, Bolton alleges that Trump signed off on the concentration camps and hoped that Xi would help him with his reelection.

Mary Trump notes that His pathologies have rendered him so simple-minded that it takes nothing more than repeating to him the things he say to and about himself dozens of times a dayhe's the smartest, the greatest, the bestto get him him to do whatever they want, whether it imprisoning children in concentration camps, betraying allies, implementing economy-crushing tax cuts, or degrading every instruction thats contributed to the united states rise and flourishing of liberal democracy.

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John Bolton and Mary Trump Seem to Agree on One Thing: Donald Trump Should Not Be in the White House - Vogue

On Friday, Donald Trump signed an executive order, On Building and Rebuilding Monuments to American Heroes. It is a snapshot of his view of the world and his place in it, but unlike some of his other executive orders, it isnt explicitly cruel and vengeful, or empty and threatening; it is, rather, the creation of a theme park. At the moment, he feels that he is losing his grasp on Trumps America, so he wants to build it in stone and fence it off, perhaps so that he can live there when all is lost.

Americans, in the largest protest movement in this countrys history, have been toppling monuments. When nations topple monuments, they often place them in parksor, more often, in unmarked and unlandscaped spaces that are gradually reconfigured as parks after they are suddenly decorated with statuary. New Delhi didnt start toppling its colonial monuments until a decade after independence; in the nineteen-sixties, a number of British nobles likenesses were transported to a vast, empty space that became known as the graveyard of statues. There they lay for another thirty years, decaying, as birds defecated on them and visitors marked them up. In the nineteen-nineties, local authorities decided to transform the space into a park designed to celebrate Indias triumph over its fallen rulers. The plan never came to fruition, though, and the park is now unfinished and overgrown, a ruin.

In Moscow, when a hard-line coup failed in August, 1991, bringing down the Soviet state, monuments to a variety of Soviet leaders, from the founder of the secret police to the first education minister to Stalin himself, were toppledor, in the case of Stalin, dug up, for this particular monument had been buried in a sculptors yard for three decadesand hauled to what was then an empty lot opposite Gorky Park. Bolsheviks in bronze, granite, and plaster lay on the grass for a number of years. People jumped and climbed and drew all over them. As Russia began to grow nostalgic for its Soviet past, the lot transformed: the formerly fallen leaders were set upright, then cleaned of graffiti, then restored to their pedestals, and finally fenced off, viewable only from a distance, which made them seem grand again. By the time Vladimir Putin officially assumed the office of the Presidency for the third time, in 2012, the formerly empty space, which by then was called the Sculpture Park and charged admission, had become a theme park of Soviet glory.

Trump seems to want to leap over a process that took Russia twenty years and proceed directly to creating a theme park of American grandeur. On June 26th, he signed an executive order that painted demonstrators protesting Confederate and other monuments as a violent mob of Marxists intent on destroying American history itself. It directed the federal government to step in and prosecute people who damage monuments and to withhold federal funds from jurisdictions that permit the desecration of monuments, memorials, or statues. A week later came the executive order on building and rebuilding, which puts the story told in the first order in loftier words: My Administration will not abide an assault on our collective national memory. To preserve this memory, the order creates a task force charged with establishing a statuary park named the National Garden of American Heroes (National Garden).

The garden, which has a planned opening for before July 4, 2026, is intended to house statues of American heroes, some of whom are listed in the order: John Adams, Susan B. Anthony, Clara Barton, Daniel Boone, Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, Henry Clay, Davy Crockett, Frederick Douglass, Amelia Earhart, Benjamin Franklin, Billy Graham, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, Martin Luther King, Jr., Abraham Lincoln, Douglas MacArthur, Dolley Madison, James Madison, Christa McAuliffe, Audie Murphy, George S. Patton, Jr., Ronald Reagan, Jackie Robinson, Betsy Ross, Antonin Scalia, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Harriet Tubman, Booker T. Washington, George Washington, and Orville and Wilbur Wright. The list suggests a Trumpian view of what constitutes American greatness. The Presidency is represented by Washington, Adams, Madison, Jefferson, Lincolnand Reagan. The First Lady singled out for inclusion in the park is Dolley Madison. No F.D.R., no J.F.K., no Eleanor Roosevelt. The twentieth century is represented by two generals, a soldier, a pilot, an astronaut, the inventors of the airplane, a baseball player, a conservative Supreme Court Justice, two members of the clergy (Graham and King), and Reagan. There are no artists or scientists on this list. The only writer is Stowe, the author of Uncle Toms Cabin. This is America as Trump sees it: a skeletal, heroic history, with a lot of shooting, a lot of flying, and very little government. Excluded from this history entirely are Native Americans; this is made explicit in Section 7, which defines the term historically significant American as an American citizen or someone who lived prior to or during the American Revolution and were not American citizens, but who made substantive historical contributions to the discovery, development, or independence of the future United States. The proposed park, in other words, is one of settler-colonialist history.

The executive order also dictates aesthetics: All statues in the National Garden should be lifelike or realistic representations of the persons they depict, not abstract or modernist representations. This passage appears twice. It is as though Trump is stomping his foot in the order, to make it clear, once and for all, that he wants his past comfortable and easy to read. The author of the document really seems to hate the few existing American monuments that are modernist or abstract, such as the Wall of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. In the history that the National Garden will tell, there is no modern or contemporary art, and there are no social movements that such art may represent.

Earlier this year, the White House considered issuing an executive order that would have instituted a unified style for federal architecture, dictating that the classical architectural style shall be the preferred and default style. The American Institute of Architects, among others, objected, and the order appears to have been shelved. But, as Trump often does, he has returned with the same desire expressed in a different package. The aesthetic represents Trump well: classical architecture in the twenty-first century is always an imitation, an act of plagiarism performed artlessly, as when Melania Trump borrowed the words of a Michelle Obama speech, or when Inauguration bakers copied the design of Obamas cakeas though the Trumps just thought that this was what power looks like. Even the name of the executive order betrays this aspiration-free view of human achievement: building and rebuilding stand in parallel, as though they are in effect the same thing. The original and its hollow, mass-produced copy do look the same from a distance. The gold curtains that Trump hung in the Oval Office and the gilded cherubs that litter his apartment belong in the same category; we might call it kitsch, if we thought Trump capable of play or irony.

For all its hand-wringing and foot stomping, the executive order is also a gesture of retreat, or at least retrenchment. In the face of a changing history and a country in uprising, Trump wants to create a landa gardenin which he can walk among the statues of men whom he imagines to have been great. There would probably be a fence. This is a territorial cordoning off of history, which is what the entire Trumpian project has been.

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A Theme Park of Donald Trumps Dreams - The New Yorker

Washington While presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden vows to restore the Bears Ears National Monument in Utah and curtail oil and gas leasing on public lands, President Donald Trumps son says his dads efforts to open up access to federal tracts and fix up national parks is a better selling point for reelection.

The Democrats have been able to spin the Bears Ears notion as, Oh, my God, theyre getting rid of a national monument, Donald Trump Jr. said on a conference call Friday with regional news outlets.

It just couldnt be further from the truth, he continued. The Trump administration is getting rid of belt-and-suspenders-type regulations to allow people access to be able to enjoy these monuments and to be able to do it for everyone to enjoy their public lands.

So this administration has gone above and beyond opening up more access to public lands, I believe [more than] anyone since [President Teddy] Roosevelt, you know, when they started the whole public parks program.

The president's eldest son was answering a question by The Salt Lake Tribune about Biden's stance on Bears Ears but didn't mention Biden in doing so.

The presumptive Democratic nominee has previously announced that if elected his administration would protect Americas natural treasures by permanently protecting the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and other areas impacted by President Trumps attack on federal lands and waters, and establishing national parks and monuments that reflect Americas natural heritage, including reversing President Trumps proclamation on Bears Ears.

Biden said he'll reverse the changes to Bears Ears and also ban new oil and gas drilling on public lands and waters and increase royalties for existing mineral development.

The president's son said tossing out the Obama monument declaration allowed more access by the public to public lands.

This is a big issue for people in Utah as well as all of those out in the West, he said. The Trump administration has opened, as of Sept. 1, its going to be like 4.8 million new acres of public access that was previously inaccessible for sportsmen/women, for those who are, you know, recreational outdoorsman and women. So this administration has created access for Americans to their public lands.

Separately, Trump Jr. declined to weigh in on whether Utah Gov. Gary Herbert should mandate mask wearing amid a spike of coronavirus cases in the state.

Despite the cries of, you know, Donald Trump is a dictator, hes a dictator,' you know, hes let the states make these sort of decisions, the presidents son said. And so he trusts that those governors will make the right decision with the information on the ground. So if there is a spike in Utah, then maybe you know thats up to the governor to decide.

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Donald Trump Jr. touts the shrinking of Utah's Bears Ears as opening land to public - Salt Lake Tribune

Our nation is witnessing a merciless campaign to wipe out our history, defame our heroes, erase our values, and indoctrinate our children, Donald Trump said in his pre-Independence Day rally in front of Mount Rushmore. He reprised the same themes on the White House lawn the following day. In the midst of a national catharsis on race and social justice, in front of a monument to great American leaders, and then on the lawn of the iconic symbol of American leadership, Trump chose a dog whistle message to stoke the us vs. them that has become his stock in trade.

It wasnt a new message, just new venues. At his last rally in Tulsa, Trump used similar rhetoricThey want to demolish our heritageto describe the ongoing debate over removing statues to Confederate figures. This time he doubled down. In the first quote above, he made four specific assertions that he attributed to a left-wing cultural revolution. Lets look at each of those claims, especially as they relate to the matter that continues to haunt the nation: the symbolism of Confederate statues and the naming of military bases for Confederate figures.

Wipe out our history. The statues of Confederate soldiers may be part of our history, but not in the way Donald Trump sees that history. These men were traitors, and their celebration is a reminder to Black Americans that the oppression for which they fought is still alive.

A few years ago, I was making a presentation in a former slaveholding state based on my book Leadership Lessons of the Civil War. When I referred to those who fought for the Confederacy as traitors, you could feel the air being sucked from the room. Afterward, some who had been in the audience confronted me over the statement.

But the judgment is unassailable. To take up arms against your country is a traitorous act. Erecting statues is just a way to obfuscate that reality while celebrating what caused it. In a similar manner, naming American military bases for generals who fought against America helps keep that traitorous tradition alive.

Defame our heroes. Donald Trumps least favorite word, it would seem, is loser. He frequently weaponizes it against those with whom he disagrees. It is particularly strange, therefore, that the heroes he seeks to aggrandize are the losers of the Civil War.

The veneration of those who led the insurrection we call the Civil War is the exception to the old rule that history is written by the winners. And that was exactly why the statues were erected: to rewrite that history and send a message that the cause that drove the treason continued.

You do not find statues of Erwin Rommel in Germany. On the battlefield, he was a strategic genius on par with Confederate generals Robert E. Lee and Thomas Stonewall Jackson (whom he studied). Recognizing the rotten core of Nazism, Rommel participated in the attempted assassination of Hitler (which cost him his life). But statues are not erected to celebrate national shames. Even if the individual may have been a genius, using that genius for the wrong purpose is nothing to memorialize.

Erase our values. The values celebrated by the memorials whose loss Trump mourns are not those of bravery or strategic brilliance, but of continuing oppression. According to the American Historical Association, the Confederate monuments erected in the Jim Crow era of the late 19th and early 20th century were part and parcel of the initiation of legally mandated segregation and widespread disenfranchisement across the South. The monuments were symbols of white supremacy whose purpose was intimidation, a reminder that the so-called Lost Cause was not over and a reiteration of the racial oppression that it was all about.

The Civil War wasnt about slavery, the refrain of Lost Cause supporters goes, it was about states rights. That state right was the perpetuation of human bondage.

Indoctrinate our children. I have written two books about the Civil War. One was about the Great Emancipator, Abraham Lincoln, the other about the battlefield leaders on both sides. Without a doubt, until President Lincoln finally found the general he deserved in Ulysses S. Grant, the South had the best battlefield leaders. Their battlefield behavior was often brilliant. The cause for which they fought, however, was despicable.

So, how do we rationalize that contradiction? It is the nuance of this conversation that our children need to understand. The purpose of history is to tell the story of previous decisionsincluding their imperfectionsin order to inform our lives today. The tactical skills of the generals on the battlefield is worthy of study. The decision that put them on that battlefield, however, forever stains their memory.

It is historys relevance to today that must be understood. History is the story of how humans, when confronted with challenge, acted imperfectly. It is precisely this multifaceted and imperfect history that our children should learn. We owe the next generation an appreciation of what it means for ordinary citizens to rise to hero statusas well as how to define hero status.

It was particularly telling that on his way to Mount Rushmore, Donald Trump helicoptered over Native American demonstrators. The Original Americans were protesting what was happening on their sacred land.

Had Trump truly cared about history as something more than a campaign stunt, there was another message he could have delivered. It could have been an inclusive message. It could have been a message to challenge us, rather than divide us. It could have been the story of Robert E. Lees surrender at Appomattox on April 9, 1865.

Accompanying General Grant was his aide, Lt. Col. Ely S. Parker, who was a Seneca Indian. When Lee entered the McLean house for the surrender, he saw Parker and commented, I am glad to see one real American here. Lt. Col. Parker responded, We are all Americans. It is a message that is as valid today as it was then, but it is lost on a man who wants to use history to divide us.

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Donald Trump fakes history in order to divide us - Brookings Institution

From Chinas standpoint, Trump is not so much tougher as he is different. Previous presidents tried to pressure China within the rules of the current global order; Trump prefers to act outside of that system. For instance, his predecessors turned to the World Trade Organization to challenge Chinas unfair trade practices, filing 21 complaints between 2004 and early 2017 (with a strong record of success). The Trump administration, openly disparaging of the WTO, has submitted only two complaints, one of which was a response to Chinas retaliation against Trumps own tariffs. Whereas previous presidents have sought to win over other powers, notably in Europe and East Asia, with similar interests in forcing China to play by the rules, this White House has alienated much of the European Union by threatening hefty tariffs, criticized NATO, and launched personal attacks on some of the Wests most influential leaders. In Asia, meanwhile, he withdrew from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a pact aimed at solidifying American ties to its allies.

In that sense, a president with a more normal American foreign policyin which Washington works closely with its friends and stands behind international norms and institutionsisnt good for China. The Democratic nominee, Joe Biden, has already vowed to forge a coalition of countries to isolate and confront China. When we join together with fellow democracies, our strength more than doubles, Biden argued. China cant afford to ignore more than half the global economy. That, and not Trump, is the stuff of Chinese nightmares.

Whoever wins in November, policy toward China isnt likely to soften. A near consensus has formed in Washington, across the political aisle, that China is a strategic threat to the U.S., and there may be no way to turn back the clock to the more halcyon days of patient American engagement. There are far fewer doves left, even on the left, Poling, of the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative, said. A Democrat who comes in now is not going to be an Obama Democrat when it comes to China. That is no longer politically possible.

Claremont McKennas Pei speculated that some in Beijing may still prefer a Biden victory, if only hoping for a pause in tensions as the Democrats, at least at first, focus on their domestic priorities. But the Chinese, he said, might also come to regret it. The Trump people believe that the U.S. alone can deal China a fatal blow, Pei said. Democrats would likely reach out to allies to form a much more united front against China. If the Democrats succeed, China would be in a much more difficult situation in the long run.

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Why China Wants Donald Trump to Win - The Atlantic

Jennifer Horn, former chair of the New Hampshire Republican party, helped co-found The Lincoln ... [+] Project.

In an op-ed published in the New Hampshire Union Leader, Republican mainstay Jennifer Horn painted a damning picture of Donald Trump.

She repeatedly slammed him as unpresidential, warning he was unable to stop himself from spouting outrageous comments and concluding that, as a country, We are looking for a commander in chief, someone who can be the leader of the free world, not a reality show character with an attitude.

Her words might seem especially damaging coming from someone inside the Republican Party, but perhaps more surprising than who wrote it, is when: 2011, almost a decade ago and more than 5 years before President Trump was elected.

I go back and re-read that op-ed sometimes and every single line, every single concern, has come to fruition, Horn said.

I essentially said, If the Republican Party takes this guy seriously, they deserve what they get.

Today, Horns words seem almost prescient. They certainly echo those of countless Democrats and some moderate members of the GOP, as President Trump gears up for an uphill reelection effort that shows him trailing presumptive Democratic nominee and former Vice President Joe Biden by double digits in multiple polls.

Now Horn, a former chairman of the New Hampshire Republican Party and Republican Congressional candidate, has cofounded The Lincoln Project, a PAC deadset on publicly condemning Trump's actions. Created in December 2019, the group consists of current and former Republicans working to prevent Trump from being re-elected - something Horn never thought she'd have to do when she entered politics 12 years ago.

It became clear there was no effort, or candidate campaign out there, that was getting any traction or would be at all effective in protecting America from a second term of Donald Trump, Horn said.

The day after the election, Republicans and Democrats will have plenty of philosophical and policy issues to continue to debate. But until that time comes, we have to put it aside. We have to come together. Its imperative. We must do this for the preservation of the republic.

Jennifer Horn and her family.

At 44, Horn, who was a stay-at-home mom, had a laundry list of accomplishments. She had a thriving newspaper column, a radio talk show, and she was involved in several nonprofit efforts.

But there was one thing the wife, mother of five and grandmother wasn't involved in: politics.

Then came 2008. Horn decided to run for congress in New Hampshire's 2nd Congressional District, becoming the first woman nominated by the Republican Party in the states 232-year history.

"I won the nomination. Barack Obama won the White House, and I won nothing," Horn said, laughing.

But running for office in New Hampshire, where Horn spent 18 years of her life and raised her family, opened the door to politics. She never looked back.

"Everything I have ever done in politics has been motivated, I would say, by the same thing that has motivated me in almost everything I have done, and that's being a mom," Horn said. "I know for some people that sounds hoaky, but that's it."

In 2013, Horn was elected as the chairman of the New Hampshire Republican Party, where she served for two terms, until January 2017. She also served as co-chair of the New Hampshire Log Cabin Republicans for two years and on the Log Cabin Republican National Board of Directors. She advocated for removing anti-LGBTQ language from the New Hampshire and National GOP platforms. Her goal was always to bring leadership and a clear, principled voice to the party and to preserve and protect American ideals for her children and grandchildren's future. She says, working in politics to her, is an "extension of parenting."

But in the year leading up to the election of Donald Trump, everything changed.

At the time, Horn was still chairman of the New Hampshire Republican Party, a position that requires neutrality through by-laws, during a primary election.

Jennifer Horn and Senator Marco Rubio.

"Repeatedly throughout that cycle, I was forced into this position of having to choose between defending Donald Trump or defending what I thought were the Republican principles of our party," Horn explained.

"Every time I defended the principles of our party. I defended John McCain; I defended the women. That didn't get me a lot of friends."

Horn recounted a moment during the 2016 election when one of "the top guys" in Trump's New Hampshire campaign approached her. He also happened to be a long-time friend of Horn's, someone she admired and who helped her during her campaigns. She said he wanted to talk about the incident involving Billy Bush, who was heard on an "Access Hollywood" tape laughing with the future President, as he bragged about groping women. He called her to ensure she wouldnt say anything publicly about the situation.

"I said, 'Of course I am going to say something. I've already said something.' He said, 'Why? Why do you have to do that? Our teams are working together so well now, and the election is almost over. Can't you just let it go?'

I think my exact words to him were, 'I promised myself a long time ago that I would never say or do anything I can't defend to my children. I can't be silent now.'"

Jennifer Horn and fellow Lincoln Project co-founders.

In 2019, as politicians and political leaders began planning for the 2020 U.S. presidential election, a group of current and former Republican leaders were making plans, too.

But they weren't focusing on how to help re-elect President Trump - they were working to create an initiative to take him down from the right side of the aisle.

Reed Galen, John Weaver, Rick Wilson, Steve Schmidt, all lifelong republicans and political strategists, began talking about what they could do to ensure Trump's defeat in 2020. Their experience within the party varied - some had worked for President George W. Bush, Senator John McCain, and Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. They were all on similar paths since the 2016 presidential election, committed to speaking out against Trump.

They decided to team up and recruit other Republican leaders to assist. Horn was one of the first people they reached out to, because of her party politics and understanding of what moves Republican voters from a state that consistently has a rough and tumble primary at the presidential level.

"Jennifer has a depth and breadth of experience, and she has taken on the president publicly as a party chair in a very important state like New Hampshire," Galen said.

"From our perspective, she is someone who has the courage to take on the president directly, when so many in the party, at this moment, have refused to do so."

When approached, Horn immediately jumped on board and became a cofounder of The Lincoln Project; she is also the only woman in the pack.

In only a few months, The Lincoln Project has gone from new-to-the-game PAC to social media juggernaut. Since it publicly launched and joined Twitter in December, it has garnered more than 1.2 million followers, an average of 170,000 a month. The founders cite President Trump as a clear and present danger to the American Constitution and Republic, describing him as a racist and narcissist who is destructive and dangerous to the country and world. They also denounce him as a Republican and say he doesn't understand or respect actual GOP ideals and principles.

The groups mission statement, plastered front and center on its website, is just as unambiguous and unapologetic.

Our many policy differences with national Democrats remain, it reads in part. However, the priority for all patriotic Americans must be a shared fidelity to the Constitution and a commitment to defeat those candidates who have abandoned their constitutional oaths, regardless of party.

It concludes, Electing Democrats who support the Constitution over Republicans who do not is a worthy effort.

On the night of June 20, President Trump boarded Air Force One and left Tulsa, Oklahoma, after fronting a rally largely considered to be a disappointment. Prior to the event, Trump boasted on social media that close to a million people registered to attend. The Tulsa Fire Department later put official attendance at around 6,200, less than a third of the arenas capacity of 19,000.

An ad from The Lincoln Project circulated less than 24 hours later mocking the president for the rallys turnout and equating it to his dwindling popularity. Entitled Shrinking, the 45-second video opens with a shot of a lone Trump supporter sitting in a sea of more than 120 empty seats in the BOK Center in Tulsa. As it ends, the ads female narrator addresses Trump directly while intercutting shots of yawning rallygoers and Trump appearing dejected as he steps off Air Force One. You talk a big game...and cant deliver, she says. Sad, weak, low energy. Just like your presidency. Just like you.

Two weeks later, the ad has close to 6 million views on Twitter alone.

The Lincoln Project is blanketing broadcast stations and social media with critical, oftentimes devastating ads like these, and doing so with remarkable turnaround speeds. Their digital efforts increased after COVID-19 derailed many of their plans to travel and be on the ground in states leading up to Election Day.

The close to 50 videos they've released undermine Trump and describe what they call his presidential failures. Horn says its all in an effort to convince Republicans and Independents who lean Republican to vote against President Trump in November. They measure their effectiveness in a variety of ways.

"We know we're effective when they [the President and his team] respond to us, she said.

The President is tweeting at us at one in the morning."

One such tweet from President Trump falsely accuses Horn of being thrown out of the New Hampshire Republican Party.

Horn says they know they've struck a chord when Trump is talking about the Lincoln Project's videos instead of campaigning.

One example she cites was an advertisement they did showing Trump making his commencement speech at West Point and accusing him of being unwell. The footage showed the President appearing to have trouble walking down a ramp and picking up a glass.

"What does the President do the next week when he is in Tulsa? He spends 25 minutes explaining his walk down the ramp," Horn said. And proving to the crowd he could lift a glass and drink out of it."

"So the President spent 25 minutes at his first campaign rally since the coronavirus restrictions were implemented, not talking about anything that would move voters to vote for him. I think we were effective, and I checked it off as a success."

The Trump Campaign did not respond to multiple requests for a comment.

The Lincoln Project also measures success by merely looking at Trump's approval numbers and loss of support from some of his base, from white working-class women to Evangelicals. The latest Pew Research Center national poll shows a disheartened American public and Trump trailing Biden on "most personal traits and major issues."

The poll also shows those who are satisfied with how things are going in America has plummeted from 31% in April to just 12% at the end of June.

It also states if the election were held today, 54% of registered voters say they would support Biden vs. 44% for Trump.

The Lincoln Project isnt just targeting President Trump.

Several ads have gone after GOP senators seen as too close to Trump, in battleground states like Arizona, Colorado and North Carolina - efforts that could prove fruitful for Democrats trying to take back senate control for the first time in years. Democratic candidates are either tied or leading in polls for several competitive senate races against Republican incumbents. (If Biden wins in November, Democrats need to flip three seats; if Trump wins, theyll need to flip four.)

"If you don't defeat the people who empowered him the last four years, then Trumpism continues," Horn said.

One such ad, bluntly called Martha McSally is a Trump Hack, accuses the Arizona senator of going full Trump and concludes by proclaiming, Youll be remembered as just another Trump hack, if youre remembered at all.

The group is also using their platform to show support for Democratic candidate Joe Biden, even going so far as to create a sub-project called "Republicans and Independents for Biden." Horn says she and her team are going to be hyper-focused in coordinating efforts to organize and persuade Republicans and right-leaning independents to vote on Election Day for the former vice president. She acknowledges it won't be easy for some to do.

"Part of what we do at The Lincoln Project is make it OK. We want to make sure the message is clear: you are not alone. There are millions of other Republicans and Independents just like you who are not going to vote for this guy in November," Horn said.

While Horn and her Lincoln Project counterparts encourage Biden voters, they want to make sure the public knows that clear policy and philosophical differences with Democrats remain.

"You want to make sure that there is a clear path in 2024 for a Republican presidential candidate who can run against Trump," Horn said.

"Because you know there will be plenty coming forward saying, 'I'm the continuation of Trump in America' and we want to make sure there is a voice there that says, We defeated him in 2020, let's make sure Trumpism is buried and gone."

Since The Lincoln Project began, the founders have heard from both Democratic and GOP politicians.

At first, Horn says, many Democrats didnt understand or trust The Lincoln Projects intentions, but that has quickly changed. She says she hears often how unhappy some Republican politicians are with their decision to seemingly turn against the party. Horn says they often tell her its her responsibility to protect the party. Horn disagrees.

"I need to protect the country. I need to protect the constitution. I need to make sure that when I am dead and gone and when my children are talking about me to my grandchildren, that they stand up and say mom did the right thing."

Some are going so far as to call Horn and The Lincoln Project Trump's toughest opponents, because of the influence they have as Republicans going against a Republican incumbent.

"I am a woman trying to take down Donald Trump. Yes!" said Horn.

"I never imagined I'd ever be a part of such an effort," Horn said. "But I never, for a moment imagined, that all of these people in my party who I had so much respect and affection for, would elect Donald Trump to the White House."

Horn is just as much of a Republican as she was when she first ran for office 12 years ago. After Barack Obama was elected in 2008, Horn spent eight years campaigning against him. She disagreed with his policies, and regardless of his intentions, she says, he missed the boat repeatedly.

But there is one moment from his presidency that stands out to her: when he spontaneously sang Amazing Grace at the eulogy for Rev. Clementa Pinckney, one of nine African Americans killed in the Charleston Church shooting of 2015.

"That was an extraordinary moment where the President of the United States felt the pain of the American people and reacted in a decent, compassionate, comforting way that touched me as a leader of the opposition party."

"We must have presidents who can do that, whether they are from your party or not. If my party doesn't understand that anymore and can't produce that, this moment in time, then I have to support the other guy."

That's why she's voting for Biden this November, and even went so far as to resign from her GOP group, the Log Cabin Republicans, who endorsed Trump last summer.

"I'm voting for decency and constitutional leadership and for a return to checks and balances and separate but co-equal branches of government. I'm voting for a return to the constitutional institutions that have made America unique amongst all the countries in the world," Horn said.

"If you vote for Donald Trump, regardless of your reasons why, you are also voting for a man who is a racist, a narcissist who is destructive and dangerous to the country, and to the world, that future generations will live in. That's yours to make peace with."

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She Sounded The Alarm On Donald Trump A Decade Ago. Now, Shes A Cofounder Of The Lincoln Project. - Forbes