Rick Wilson Breaks It Down and Looks Ahead

Harry sits down with Rick Wilson, co-founder of the Lincoln Project and a former Republican political strategist who did as much as anyone to warn the country of the dangers of a Trump presidency, including creating and distributing a dazzling series of ads that brought home Trump’s essential know-nothingness, hypocrisy, and wickedness.  The two begin with a discussion of whether in retrospect the election was winnable for Harris-Walz, or whether the forces that propelled Trump’s victory were in retrospect insuperable.  Wilson analyzes the result in terms of the media ecosystem that the extreme right has constructed and made common cause with since 2008 and especially since Covid.  Penetrating that ecosystem is the chief task going forward, but it is way easier said than done.  Trump’s likely stumbles as President will provide some headway and perhaps provide openings for the Democrats to take back one of the Houses of Congress in 2026.  But the immediate and pressing issue is whether Trump will use his virtually unchecked power to move the country towards autocracy along the model of say, Turkey, in a way that history demonstrates is very hard to reverse. That leaves little choice of patriots, who might well have been looking forward to a resumption of normal life and normal politics, than to continue to fight day to day and month to month against the coming waves of abuses of governmental power.

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