With 60 days until the 2020 elections, a group of former elite Republican strategists and consultants known publicly as The Lincoln Project gather in Park City, Utah to save democracy. We meet Steve Schmidt, the de facto leader of the pack, and Reed Galen, the glue holding the group together along with Rick Wilson, Mike Madrid and Sarah Lenti. With sophisticated data analytics and voter targeting operations, will it be enough to swing the election?
The Lincoln Project is the fastest-growing super PAC in America, and The New Yorker comes out to profile them. It’s all smiles for the cameras - but behind the scenes, the newfound attention is beginning to cause friction among the team. When the article appears and Mike and the data team aren’t even mentioned, resentments surface amid accusations that other staffers are stealing credit.
A barrage of hate mail targets all members of the team and violent rhetoric in the country is reaching a boiling point. Still The Lincoln Project pushes on – working with team members across the country to reach every last vote as founders contact Trump-supporting family members to make a final pitch to try and change their minds. As the country braces itself for the most divisive election in living memory, The Lincoln Project enters election night a house divided but determined to keep on fighting.
The election is called for Biden, but all is not well in The Lincoln Project. As battle lines are drawn, the junior staff back home are out of the loop and unsure of what their role will be. All the while Trump is denouncing the election as a sham and playing on the paranoia of his followers to drum up support in his efforts to overturn the result.
In the aftermath of the insurrection on the US Capitol, it’s clear that The Lincoln Project has a lot of work left to accomplish. But as they struggle to reset following internal upheaval, a sexual harassment scandal that has been brewing for months finally erupts into the public arena. Despite their best efforts, cracks in their organization widen and embittered and disillusioned colleagues start to resign and speak out. Is this The Lincoln Project’s final hour?
