The Lincoln Project just found its natural successor. And somehow it’s even less threatening.
Marjorie Taylor Greene — former congresswoman who quit her post in frustration after President Trump refused to back her foolish Senate bid — gathered a small group of fellow former MAGA types in a cabin in Maine last week. Around the table: Tucker Carlson, soon-to-be-former Rep. Thomas Massie from Kentucky, former Trump counterterrorism official Joe Kent, their spouses, and Greene’s husband Brian Glenn. Candles were lit. Matching mugs were raised. Milk and chocolate chip cookies were apparently on the menu.
“The movement has begun,” Greene announced on X.
Somewhere, the Lincoln Project’s pretend ‘Republican’ Rick Wilson is shedding a single proud tear.
The grievance animating this particular candlelit gathering is the Iran war. Trump promised no more foreign wars, Greene argues, and launching strikes against the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism — the regime that tried to kill him, that funds Hamas, that has killed American service members, that fired ballistic missiles at U.S. forces in Jordan — constitutes a betrayal of that promise.
There are legitimate debates to be had about Iran policy. Four Republicans in the House voted with Democrats on a war powers resolution this week, and their concerns about congressional authorization deserve to be engaged seriously, even if the timing and the optics were terrible. These are real constitutional questions with real stakes.
But that’s not quite what’s happening here. What’s happening here is a photo of former officeholders sitting around a table with cookies, calling themselves a movement, and apparently planning to either launch a third party — Tucker Carlson floated this idea in June — or simply apply maximum pressure on the Trump administration from the outside.
A quick look at the roster helps clarify the stakes. Greene was ousted from Congress in her primary. Massie was targeted by the Speaker and is leaving at the end of his term. Carlson was fired from Fox News and has spent the intervening period building a streaming platform and feuding with various conservatives. Kent ran for office, lost, and now appears as a political commentator.
Former this. Former that. Ex-this. Once-was-that.
For what it’s worth, Tucker Carlson is a genuinely talented communicator and Joe Kent is a serious person with a serious national security background. And the anti-war instinct they’re channeling resonates with a real constituency inside the conservative movement. Also, Gallup consistently shows roughly 60 percent of Americans saying a third party is needed. But that same polling shows only about 15 percent saying they’d be “very likely” to vote for one.
The gap between “we need a third party” and “I will actually vote for this third party led by these specific people right now” is where most political movements go to die.
The movement has begun, says the former congresswoman, over cookies in a cabin.
With 97 days until the midterms, this is the best the anti-Trump right could summon. Republicans will sleep tonight.
For the record, I’m no fan of the Iran war. But I know that it’s also very possible to agree with 90 percent of what Trump has said and done and remain an ardent supporter. On Trump’s worst day he’s 1000 times better than Kamala Harris would have been.
Why can’t these ingrates realize the same thing? What’s their real agenda?
