Stuart Stevens and Rick Wilson

John Heilemann welcomes Lincoln Project co-founder and board member Rick Wilson and senior advisor Stuart Stevens to the pod. They discuss the looming threat that Donald Trump and his MAGA enablers pose to democracy; the fear that many Republicans have of crossing Trump and their resultant willingness to lie for him to protect their jobs and their physical safety; the strategies Democrats should take advantage of to defeat their Republican opponents in the upcoming midterm elections; why Trump will almost certainly run for president in 2024 and the possibility that Ron DeSantis will end up being his running mate; the Republican Party's open embrace of fascism and its playbook to collapse the pillars of civil society to replace democracy with autocracy; and the Lincoln Project's efforts to thwart the candidacies of DeSantis, Kari Lake, and Herschel Walker. Stuart and Rick also talk about both the controversies surrounding the Lincoln Project, including the investigation into allegations of sexual misconduct by co-founder John Weaver, and its many successes, as one of the nation's most prominent political action committees.