Lincoln Project To Celebrate America’s 250th; Contrasts Lincoln With Trump
June 24, 2026 — This evening, while Trump is ranting, raving, and projectile vomiting UnAmerican and anti-democracy rhetoric on the National Mall, the Lincoln Project will release its first ad in a series of ads and podcasts that highlight the extraordinary moments of Lincoln’s life.
For the nation’s 250th birthday, the Lincoln Project is showing Americans a President who sacrificed and dedicated himself to the cause of liberty and democracy. Basically the opposite of everything Trump has ever said and done.
The first one https://youtu.be/Nuip2wE0-9s titled, “House Divided” is about Lincoln’s June 1858 speech accepting the Republican Senate nomination. We open with the diagnosis: a nation can’t be half democracy and half autocracy. It’s the structural argument the rest of the series rests on.
“Abraham Lincoln reinvigorated American liberty, destroyed slavery, and set the nation on a moral course that still survives today,” said Tessa Gould, Lincoln Project Executive Director. She continued, “Meanwhile, Trump is tearing down the true foundations of American success: democracy and independence.”
Rest of the schedule:
Friday, June 26 — “Better Angels”. An ad about Lincoln’s First Inaugural, on March 4, 1861. The inflection point. Lincoln could have met the moment with rage and chose reconciliation instead. We ask the viewer to make that same choice now.
Tuesday, June 30 — “Lincoln vs. Trump”. The wartime building record: Homestead Act, Morrill Act, Pacific Railroad Acts, National Academy of Sciences — all 1862–63. Lincoln built while the country bled. Trump dismantles in peacetime.
Thursday, July 2 — “Suckers and Losers”. Anchored on the Bixby letter, November 1864. The chasm between a president who wept for the fallen and one who called them suckers. This is the emotional gut-punch of the series and it lands hardest here, just before the closer.
Saturday, July 4 — “Character”. Closer. The Lincoln quotes here span his entire life rather than anchoring to a single date, which is why we have it functioning as the closer rather than the series’ opening. It ends with “Two hundred and fifty years. This is our test.” — which is the cleanest 250th close among the scripts, and the line lands on the actual 250th itself.
Podcasts
Special guests include:
- Jeffrey Toobin: Lawyer, Contributing Opinion Writer, The New York Times. Author, most recently, of “The Pardon: The Politics of Presidential Mercy.”
- Antonia Hylton: American journalist. She is a former NBC News correspondent and is currently the co-anchor of MS NOW’s The Weekend: Primetime. She’s known for her groundbreaking reporting on NBC’s Southlake, which covered critical race theory, and her debut book, Madness: Race and Insanity in a Jim Crow Asylum, about the Crownsville Hospital.
- Liz Oyer: Former DOJ Pardon Attorney. Forever a public defender. Hardwired to stand up to bullies.
- Jesse Wegman: Senior Fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice, where he writes about Supreme Court reform and constitutional amendments. His new book The Lost Founder is about James Wilson, author of the first draft of the Constitution, and how he was as important to American government as Madison or Jefferson.
- Asha Rangappa: Former FBI Special Agent, lawyer, legal contributor at ABC, CNN, and MS NOW, senior Lecturer at Yale University’s Jackson Institute for Global Affairs, legal and security analyst, and a former Associate Dean at Yale Law School.
- James Carville: Campaign Manager for President Bill Clinton’s winning 1992 campaign.
The Lincoln Project is a leading pro-democracy organization in the United States — dedicated to the preservation, protection, and defense of democracy.
To learn more about The Lincoln Project, go to lincolnproject.us.
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