By the Lincoln Project. 7/17/2022

"The hearings are clearly working. Public opinion is moving. And yes, despite the talking heads spouting doom and gloom, I am still optimistic that we can win this fall (sound familiar?). If it feels like I'm repeating myself, I am. We can't let up.

The most important development of the week to me was not in the hearings but in the Mother Jones story leaking audio recordings of Steve Bannon. He very clearly laid out the plan in Trumpworld. The Red Mirage was going to happen because mail-in ballots would take longer to count.

"So when you wake up Wednesday morning, it’s going to be a firestorm... You’re going to have antifa, crazy. The media, crazy. The courts are crazy. And Trump’s gonna be sitting there mocking, tweeting shit out: ‘You lose. I’m the winner. I’m the king.'” -Bannon audio

This is everything you need to know about what we are up against. You might see that DeSantis might outraise Trump or lead him in a poll. But the authoritarian movement is still here, and they aren't going away until we beat them.

"I'm the king." This is the whole freaking thing right here. This is MAGA extreme gone full crazy. This is a senior adviser to the former President telling the world what the strategy was. King. You know, the thing that America was FOUNDED to resist.

George Lakoff posted something every American should consider. “Our Democracy is presently being threatened by the politics of obedience to authority, the very thing that democracy was invented to counteract.”

We were founded because we didn’t want to swear obedience to a King. It's why we embarked on this great experiment of American democracy and a democratic republic. And the crazy extremists in the name of MAGA want to junk the experiment for a King.

Bannon per usual says the quiet part out loud. We can't ignore it. We have to beat it.