The Chris Cuomo Project - The Lincoln Project's Rick Wilson On What's Broken in Both Parties

Episode Date: February 25, 2025

Rick Wilson (political strategist and co-founder, The Lincoln Project) joins Chris Cuomo to break down the GOP’s ongoing identity crisis, the Democrats’ messaging failures, and the rise of independent voters reshaping the political landscape. Wilson explains why Trumpism still dominates the Republican Party, how Democrats are struggling to connect with mainstream voters, and why both parties risk alienating the public. Cuomo and Wilson debate whether America is ready for a viable third-party movement, the impact of economic anxiety on 2025 politics, and how media narratives are distorting reality in the lead-up to the next election. Follow and subscribe to The Chris Cuomo Project on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube for new episodes every Tuesday and Thursday: https://linktr.ee/cuomoproject Join Chris Ad-Free On Substack: http://thechriscuomoproject.substack.com Support our sponsors: iRestore Give yourself the gift of hair confidence this February. For a limited time only, our listeners get $625 off their iRestore Elite when you use code chris at iRestorelaser.com Select Quote Get the right life insurance for YOU, for LESS, at SELECTQUOTE.COM/CHRISC Oracle Oracle is offering to cut your current cloud bill in HALF if you move to OCI. For new US customers with minimum financial commitment. Offer ends March 31st. See if your company qualifies for this special offer at Oracle.com/CCP Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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and get started. That's selectquote.com slash Chris C. The answer is not the left. It is not the right. It's the majority in the middle. Social media is great, but it's also a great distraction from the majority of this country, which is why polls have been so off. You know who gets this? My guest today is part of a potential better place for our politics. Chris Cuomo here. Welcome to the Chris Cuomo Project. Rick Wilson, real Republican, worked for Bush, now an independent. Why? Because

the parties suck and they amplify fringe thinking and have gotten us to a terrible state. He sees opportunities. He sees the science part of political science that is indicating where people are and why and what is working and what isn't. And there's an alchemy. And you can look at Rick Wilson and just dismiss him as the Lincoln Project. He's just a never Trumper. Wrong.

Trump is a symptom of the dynamic that got us where we are. He is not indicative of what comes next. And he's really not even relevant of what comes next. And these fringes are not indicative of what comes next. Because everything in our culture is pendular. You don't get Obama, you don't get Trump. Now you have everybody's got to go. It used to be that there should be amnesty.

It's going to be in the middle. That used to be that there should be amnesty. It's going to be in the middle. That's where the pendulum always stops once there's inertia, is it settles in the middle. Where's that middle ground? That's what I'm talking to Rick Wilson about. How do we get to a better place? That's what I'm talking to Rick Wilson about.

Let's get after it. Let's get after it. Let's get after it. Let's get after it. Let's get after it. Let's get after it. Let's get after it. Let's get after it. Let's get after it. Let's get after it. Rick Wilson. Good to have you. Hey Chris.

Thanks for having me on. Uh, you still a Republican? No, I'm an independent. I like it. Yeah, no man. Listen, I, I, I've said this for a long time. 10 years ago, when I started this fight against Trump, I said, look, just because I am trying to, to, to, to break Trump and save the old party that I believed in doesn't make me a progressive.

I, I still believe in those, like those quiet things like the rule of law and individual responsibility and the constitution and all that. And, and while the Democrats are imperfect, the Trump version of the Republican Party doesn't believe in any of those things. So I think as an independent, I've got a legitimate sort of philosophical argument for the space I'm in.

Fastest growing part of the electorate is independent. First time in your lifetime in mine, we saw independents vote that way as much or more than Democrats. Now, a lot of them were probably angry at the Democratic Party and almost as many as Republicans. What do you think that says about the two parties slash uniparty culture?

Well, look, I think the Democratic Party, and this is, as I like to say, tough love is still love, but a lot of I think the Democratic Party, and you know, this is, as I like to say, you know, tough love is still love. But a lot of folks in the Democratic Party have for years and years and years been convinced of their intellectual and moral superiority. And so when they go to voters and say, shut up and read our 757 page plan on climate change, shut up and read our 168 page PowerPoint on gun control. There's an assumption that policy is going to win the day.

And in politics in this country, we've learned over and over again that the heart beats the head and that the gut beats the intellect over and over. And, you know, say what you will about Donald Trump. He is a superb manipulator of the gut and of the heart of the folks that he appeals to. And the Democrats, it's cliche not to say they have a messaging problem. They don't have a messaging problem.

They have a content problem inside their messaging. And a lot of the content they're selling to middle America does not work. It's not just middle America. It's that sounds like white guys from Iowa. That's it's the majority of Americans. I mean, we both know, I mean, it's always easy to look back.

One of the reasons I value your perspective on things is because you've worked both sides of the ball. I think a big mistake that is happening in the pod scape is people have followings in politics who have never worked in politics, who do not know what it's like to have a conversation with a campaign team that doesn't see you as media.

You know, even like an Ezra Klein who's become a beacon on the left, one, he needs to recognize that's what he is, is a lefty. Nobody sees him as a fair broker. But more importantly, these guys have never been in politics. And the idea that you can cover it without knowing it, I think is the height of ignorance. But looking back at it, we see what happened here. Democrats owned the status quo. People weren't happy about the status quo. They tried to tell people that they were wrong to feel the way they felt, and they screwed up their process. Now, when you look under the covers,

you see that the Democrats are caught in a scold cycle, and it doesn't work well for them. They have the bigger but more beautiful burden of elevating and of sweet strength. That's who their best players were, right? Clinton was great at that. Teddy Kennedy, great at that. Moynihan, great at that. My pop was great at that. Absolutely. They don't have those guys

right now. I think they have a few developing. But the idea of you would have never heard Bill Clinton or Mario Cuomo keep calling Trump a Nazi would have never happened. Never. And they don't seem to get it. They would have found ways to show voters that what Trump wants to do and has done has hurt them and that they both understand it and give a damn about it. And unfortunately, and look, I think, I think that there were a lot of issues in this campaign and a lot of externalities that, that nobody could have changed. The, the Biden process. We're going to, we're going to, we could talk for 10 days about that.

And the assassination attempt on Trump, that was a big externality that changed a lot of, to use the younger kids words, the vibe. But I think that it has been so difficult for Democrats to understand that you can communicate that Trump is a threat to democracy and a threat to, and a threat to the American system, but, but also acknowledging the fact that people were pissed off that the price of groceries was, was insane. The price of gas was up and that yes, the market was booming and employment was

booming, but it wasn't still affecting that gut level every day. And, and when people don't hear it, you know, there's an old phrase in politics, a plan beats no plan every time. Well, a lot of people never heard a plan that sounded and she, like toward the end, she almost got there on a couple of things like, like, you know, helping middle class families, but it never quite gelled. It was never quite a cohesive thing. Now, Trump had a plan. It was dumb, but it was loud. It was probably wrong, but it was easy to understand. I'm going to drill baby drill. Everything will be cheap. Day one. Trust me.

Great sales pitch and it, and it worked with a lot of people. And look, I think Chris, one of the other things we have to just recognize is, is the Republicans broke a code in American society that Democrats couldn't figure out this year. And you can always tell what works for Republicans, where they spend the money. And that's why they spent over $350 million at every level for the presidency down to local races on trans ads. The Democrats could not articulate that issue in a way that was both respectful of trans

people and respectful of the views of people who are uncomfortable with males playing sports with their daughters. It is a real thing. It's not a judgment about trans people or their validity. It's a real thing in the culture Democrats could not grapple with. And you wanna know why in a lot of our numbers that we've processed since the election, young African-American men, young Hispanic men,

and men, white men, 18 to 40. That's an issue right there. They saw that on their on over and over again on sports shows at every level from the presidency down to County commissioner. And they said, yeah, you know what? Be for me for once. Don't be for whatever this group is be for me. And as hateful as Trump can be about that,

and as difficult as that issue is for Democrats to grapple with, it worked. And you know it worked because they spent money on it, and you know it worked because you look at it in the end, and people said, that's why I voted for Trump. Yeah, I mean, look, again, something people have to learn to understand if they haven't been in politics is,

just because you think it's a bad reason doesn't mean it wasn't the winning reason. And a big problem on the left, and you can say on the right too, but still the left has this scold complex where there are too many people in this country who believe that the left will punish you for not believing what they believe.

So it's not enough that you have a problem with a very ugly and very isolated example, like a guy my size playing volleyball against your daughter in high school. Okay, they're like one case of that in the whole country, but it doesn't matter. One is too many. And what they really didn't like was, wait a minute, if I say that, you want me to lose my job. Right.

And you want to like raise all of these other wackos with blue hair to come after me until my boss says it doesn't work for him anymore. And the left loves that. That is the face of a smiling AOC. And the left has empowered people like her Because they've mistaken reach versus resonance. So they look at her and they say she's got she's got 13 million followers She's got 13 million followers. Well one all those numbers are fake two What is her?

resonance within that reach who Who does she matter to? And are those people you need to matter to you? They've gotten that wrong. They've been out of touch with the majority of Americans in this country. And now the challenge is how do they get it back? And that takes us to the next big front, which is really fucking boring, but really important.

Budgeting priorities. Oh yeah. You got Trump in a bad space. He wants his tax cuts because he loves to double down on bad ideas. And they didn't work the first time. There's no such thing as trickle down, but he's going to do it anyway because people like the words tax cut. So he wants that. The Republicans are boxing him in to make cuts of things that they've always wanted to make cuts on, specifically Medicaid.

He knows not to touch Medicare. He's not sure about Medicaid. What are the implications? What are the opportunities within that dynamic for Democrats or anybody who is against just straight MAGA principle. So look, I think that that we're already seeing some early damage to Trump's numbers from from a fact that, you know, Steve Bannon and I do not agree, agree on a lot of things, but an awful lot of MAGA voters are on Medicare.

They are a lot on social security. There are a lot on Medicaid. Oh yeah. There are a lot of MAGA voters on snap and TANF and all these other programs that, that address the fact that the inequality in this country is so extraordinary that, that if we didn't do this, we'd have people starving. And that's just a hard, brutal political fact. If he touches or lets Elon and the money guys like Russ Vaught,

who do not like Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, there's a cadre of people around him who think that the people that are on that are parasites and useless eaters and all of whatever the phrases are. If he goes too deeply into that well, there's a political backlash in this country. We've seen that rail touched a couple of times before. And, and I think that there is a real risk to not to Trump himself,

but to Republicans in the house and the Senate, um, where, where they become the people trying to kill grandma. And it reminds me of something Republicans were very good at doing back during Barack Obama. We turned the phrase death panels into absolute political radioactive waste and we hung death panels. And God knows when I was Republican, I must have done a hundred ads about it. Um, we turned death panels into something that hurt Democrats politically in the 2010 election and blew them out of the house in the 2010 election. So do these guys want to take that risk? Some of them do. Some of the crazies do. Um, but doing it at the same time as a tax cut for everybody in the country who makes over about $450,000 a year, the optics on it are extraordinarily terrible.

I know. And as much as a lot of these MAGA folks go, I pulled myself up by my boots, traps, stay out of my, don't take away my social, don't let government take my social security away. They don't get the cognitive dissonance there, but it's, it's going to shock them that they are going to be on the chopping block. Cause you know, the old Willie Sutton joke, why you rob banks? That's where the money is.

Yeah. Medicare, Medicaid, social security is where the money is. Support from the Chris Cuomo project comes from Oracle. Even if you think it's a bit overhyped, AI is a real thing and it's going to be in more and more places and having more and more of an impact. Self-driving cars, molecular medicine, you know, getting answers on the internet, business efficiency. It's going to be the new modality.

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Go to Shopify.com slash Chris C all lowercase and upgrade your selling today. Shopify.com slash Chris C. Well, but here's the problem. That they don't trust you. They don't want to hear from you as Democrats. You don't get them. You have not just called them deplorables and stupid, you mean it, and they know you mean it. And so it doesn't matter that logically you get it. I mean, I just did this whole piece about who gets Medicaid and why. I mean, if I were gonna teach a course in school, and the answer is I will never do that,

but if I were, it would just be Medicaid as a lens of what America is at its best and its worst. And the need in this country, the need for the states to keep going back to the Fed to take more and more of the burden ever since 1965, red states refusing expansion at their own peril. And the people in those states now having to have referenda to get more access to Medicaid, we have so many,

we were just talking about it here, the new word for hunger is food insecurity. We have so much of that. Use hunger people, it works better. I agree. But the people who are being persuaded Right. We have so much of that. You're so under people, it works better. I agree. But the people who are being persuaded against their own interests don't want to hear from you because they know you don't like them.

And yes, you're Tampa-backed, and you know the South, and you know the language, and you know the vibe, and that's why you're such a precious commodity of the independent movement. But most Democrats, you're not going to get AOC rolling into Kentucky and get an audience and it is not because she's a Latina. They got plenty of Latinas in their lives. They think, she thinks they are stupid and not worthy. And I don't know how Democrats get past that unless they get a new generation of leadership. And I really can only think of one and it's Wes Moore. Wes Moore is very, very good. I think when it comes to conversations

in the environment of the Republican media matrix, I think Pete Buttigieg is very good at communicating clearly and not getting swamped into all of the tropey democratic language. But look, I think there was a long period of time where the Democrats knew they were increasingly becoming a party of college educated upper income voters. And the solutions that they kept proposing, and they kept wondering, why are we losing white working class,

white middle class voters? I can, and they don't wanna hear this answer. I can tell you in the deep South why they lost college educate our non-college white voters. It was gun control. It was a huge issue. It was a huge issue. It was a huge issue. And this sense that you don't get us, you don't like us,

you don't believe in us, you don't like our faith, and you want to have a one-size-fits-all policy that fits really well on the Upper West Side of New York but doesn't work in Gwinnett County, Georgia, or in Birmingham, Alabama, or in, you know, Kissimmee, Florida. Those things, there are a lot of these moments where Democrats have intellectually understood that what they're selling isn't selling, but because it makes them feel righteous, and again, climate stuff.

And we could argue all day how much of that is, is, is necessary and urgent, but the climate discussion came across for a long time as shut up. You can't drive a pickup truck. And when you tell people in the South and Midwest, shut up, you can't drive a pickup truck, or you tell a guy building cars. You can't build gasoline cars anymore. You're going to now become a holistic solar panel installer or some crap. They don't like it. They want to live a life that reflects where they're from, who they are. And that's not all bad.

It's not all racist and it's not all homophobic and it's not all vicious and it's not all small-minded. There is a beauty in the, in the South and the West and the middle of this country that a lot of Democrats have written off to their detriment. And I'm a fifth generation Floridian. I was raised in the South in an era where that phrase from Atlanta, we're going to be the city too busy to hate, really mattered, it really meant something.

And unfortunately, some of the things the Democrats have done in the way they communicate with the South in particular, has given a license to the real shitty people in the South, to some of the real dark, and because I'm not saying it doesn't exist because it absolutely exists. It's in my, it's in my town that there are people who now have, are proud to

have clan stickers on their trucks again. And their excuses are the Democrats hate us so much. So F them. And it's a tough, it's a tough spot, but they've got to realize that not every part of the country looks like Berkeley or the Upper West Side or Cambridge. A lot of it doesn't look like that at all. And, and that's, and those people that live in those places aren't wrong or bad or evil.

A lot of them have big hearts and they care a lot about taking care of their fellow man. They may approach it differently, but you know, some respect in that space would go a long way. Well, look, and here's the proof of it, Rick. Elon Musk. Elon Musk was a denizen of the Democrats. He's the EV guy. He makes the cars that we're all forced to get.

Now he's a Trump guy. How do Trump people relate to this guy who checks every box of elitism that they're supposed to hate? And the answer is because he cares about them and what they care about. They think that. But that's all you got to do. Perception is reality in politics. So you took the guy that they hated, right? How many people on the right were making fun of Elon Musk? Autistic, all the kids, look how fat and pale he is, you know, all of those things, and they just vanished.

I'm not gonna buy one of those electric cars. That's right. And now what changed? And there's a message in that for Democrats. You can reach anybody if you're reaching them as people and not as types. And, and you can also, and look, there's a dark side to it too. You can reach a lot of people if you tell them that everything they believe is fine.

And, and, and Steve Bannon had a famous phrase. He said, I have no enemies to my left, to my right. When he was confronted one time about that, you know, there's a lot of naughty and winking to the alt right. And the, the, the, the, the racially the racial animus and the, and the, the, you know, quasi semi-hemi demi, you know, neo Nazi types and, and Elon. He's able to say to a lot of people now at, at, at scale on his platform, what you believe isn't wrong. Even if a lot of the people that believe things, you know, that they wouldn't

have said 20 years ago, um, are in fact very wrong. I mean, they're, they're, they're, I, I don't think that the validity, that they, think that the intellectual arguments of Nazis have a lot of validity. But, saying to them, you're not wrong, and you can say it around me and I'm not going to condemn you. The Nazi thing, Rick, I feel like you guys overplay that way too much. And Trump is a Nazi. Musk is a Nazi. Look, one thing that you and I both know is that people who have really hateful beliefs aren't bashful about it. Okay? And I really believe that it has hurt the Democratic Party that that is the one stick they keep swinging. Oh, look what he just said. It sounds just like 1930. Oh, look what he just did.

Mehdi Hassan is a really smart guy and I love having him in the marketplace of ideas. I think he's value added. But this idea that that's what Trump is, is a dictator in waiting, and I think it's killing you guys. I think it's killing the outside movement. I think Trump is an authoritarian. I think it's killing you guys. I think it's killing the outside. I think Trump is an authoritarian.

I think he has impulses that we're seeing play out in DC right now to control every process and aspect of government outside of our traditional constitutional system. And I think that so in a lot of ways nobody called him a Nazi in a lot of ways, Nazi doesn't sufficiently cover the modern era of authoritarianism and and oligarchical control. I mean, he's he is doing a lot of things that I think are so beyond the the pale of American constitutional and legal spec that that it is difficult to categorize it and no one should welcome it. Look, Hitler was pretty sui generis. The Nazis were pretty sui generis. They were a uniquely evil batch of people. But history is replete with evil batches of

people. And as a friend of mine made an interesting argument the other day that the reason Hitler was able to be Hitler was that he arrived at a moment of technological explosions in the ways he could communicate, organize, do logistics, manufacturing, research, all those things. And I have a great fear that we have a situation in this country right now where the authoritarian vision of a Donald Trump and this deep, deep, deep rift in our culture cannot be healed just by the Democratic Party saying you're a Nazi. But we shouldn't look away when they do things that are authoritarian, when they do things that are overtly about depriving Americans of rights, when they do things that represent something that is so far afield from what the founders intended.

Like what? And I said, as you were talking there, FDR did all that same shit that- Sure, and I used to criticize the shit out of it. But he wasn't called a Nazi. Well, look, I think we were in an actual shooting war with the Nazis at the moment, but then when he was criticized for that. But look, Trump is authoritarian in nature.

We have seen this repeatedly. He tries to destroy the restraints on executive power over and over and over again. He has done things that have earned him rightly, I believe, the harshest of criticisms and and while he is not a member of the National Socialist Party of Germany, there are things that Donald Trump has done in the last month that have resonances and echoes of the worst kind of authoritarian takeovers of formerly small-D democratic systems. So look, I don't want to carve down too finely on whether Nazi is a bad word. It should be a bad word. It should be a bad word.

It should be reserved for the worst behavior. I tend to call him an authoritarian. I think he is dictator curious. I think he has an admiration for people like Putin and Xi and Kim Jong-un that for me as an American is disturbing as hell. I think that there's a lot of what Donald Trump believes worked for him is based on racial animus in this country. I think he knows that a lot

of that coding of saying the brown people are coming to take your jobs, rape your women. Some of that stuff could have been in Dushdamer in 1936. It's word for word, Chris, some of it. And those echoes, we shouldn't look away from the power of authoritarian evil to motivate people. Whatever label you want to stick on it today, Trump is earning that label right now. I know, but here's the thing, Rick, it's hurting the cause of people who want to be an alternative to Trump. I think every time anyone who voted for Trump hears authoritarian, Nazi, Holocaust, Hitler, dictator, they roll their eyes and they say, here's the intolerant left again.

If you're not on board with them, forget it. When Biden did student loans and the judges said you really shouldn't be doing this. And he was like, fuck you. It was okay. When Obama did it with DACA, it was okay. Nobody called them authoritarians. Nobody said they were Nazis. But look, the name calling I've seen on the right, believe me, I saw Barack Obama called and I met with one exception. And I was a part of that during that era with one exception.

I was the first and only for a long time Republican strategist said, cut this shit out about the birth certificate. It's crazy. Trump was behind that too, of course. But I heard Barack Obama called a communist, a socialist, a Nazi, uh, uh, you know, a George Soros, you know, acolyte. I heard every phrase in the book about him. You know, he's the, he's a Kenyan Muslim, Islamic sleeper agent, all that shit. Yeah.

And, and look, you don't want to, you don't want to be called a Nazi. Don't do things that remind people of Nazis. It's a good, pretty good rule. And when you talk about mass deportations, when you talk about mass roundups, when you talk about using the power of the FBI to investigate your political opponents and destroy them, when you talk about weaponizing the government and it's just fucking projection, you're going to get called things that you might not like.

And if you're Donald Trump, there are plenty of simple ways not to do that. If you won't want people to say, wow, this sort of reminds me of bad things in the past, try not to remind people of the bad things in the past. Because there are a lot of things, Chris, that I am incredibly concerned about with the moves that have been made in the last month in this administration that are overtly anti small D democratic and overtly meant to suppress criticism. So, you know, canceling some student loans is not like saying, I'm going to round up 25 million people and ship them out of the country.

Yeah. But there's a different scale question. Listen, I'm with you, Rick. And look, I was raised by a guy who takes all your arguments and makes them to an exponent. Okay, so I get it. I get it. All I'm saying is you just lost and the guy won the popular vote. Now, yes, you combine people who voted for Harris

and people who didn't vote or voted for third party, he didn't win, but that's not the way we calculate it. Listen, all I care about is the electoral college. He won the electoral college. He won the electoral college. He won the electoral college, but I'm saying he won the popular vote, and I think the reason why matters. And I see this in my brother, okay?

My brother has every reason, in my opinion, to be angry as fuck an anti-democratic party. And yet, I've never seen him this way, you know, and he's not, I'm 54, he's 67. That man will listen to anyone all of a sudden. He listens and all he does, cause he used to be like, but he's like pop, you know what I mean?

My father would hit you with two jabs before you knew you were bleeding, you know? And Andrew is, no, I don't think Donald Trump is an evil guy. Don't reduce what I'm saying to that. That's not what it's about. It's about this policy. It's about this case. It's about this thing.

I don't care about Trump. It's not about Trump for me. This is what it is. I'm not judging him as a person, I don't care about his marriage. What I'm talking about is this. And I've been watching this in him around the Adams thing, okay? And remember, Andrew likes Mayor Adams, okay?

He wanted to help him. So this is not the typical thing where he sees the person who's there as a problem. He's got political problems. And the case, the Democrats say any case is a good case. Law and order. It's not how people see it. And, you know, well, you shouldn't be rounding people up. They're not here legally. Yeah, but no, you lose this. There are these 80-20 propositions.

You guys are on the 20 side of too many of them. If you're not here legally, should you stay or should you go? You wanna win that argument, you're on the go side. You should go, but should you, if you're a, should you have your birthright citizenship in the, which is wired into the constitution, revoked by an executive order? He can't do it, Rick.

You know? He can't do it, Rick. You know, should you end up with people on temporary protective status being deported after they came here under legal and are properly doing all their paperwork. A lot of this is really, again, the scale problem is one that I keep very top of mind. I am with you, but Rick, he can't get rid of birthright citizenship by himself. The fact that he's trying it just shows that that's the way he practices politics.

Everybody knows he can't do it by executive order. So why focus on his intentionality when you know it's just a bluff? It's like the tariff stuff. It's like the Doge stuff. It's like the Doge stuff. It's just theater. But the Doge stuff is having a real impact right now because they are illegally and they're abrogating Article I

and Article II of the Constitution every minute of the day that they are doing things that are approved and authorized and appropriated by Congress under law. They are violating that. So I don't think you want to live in a country, Chris, where the executive says, you know, I'm going to bluff and I'm going to do these things that I know are illegal and unconstitutional. And if I don't get caught, maybe I can get away with it. Maybe this time they'll let me do this or that.

I think that is a bad way to govern and a bad way to be led in a country that is based on a constitution and the rule of law. And because that makes people feel bad when you criticize him for that, if that means that he's going to gain a marginal political advantage in that, so be it. You got to fight the fight sometimes on principle. And I don't think that our principles in the country should be what you can get away with. I agree. I like the, I love alliteration. That's something that I took from my pop. And I do believe it is sticky when it comes to content. My line is support comes from Cozy Earth. Cozy Earth products are designed to transform your five to nine. That's the time that matters most, right?

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The Chris Cuomo project is brought to you by the audio marketing gurus at radioactive media Congratulations, you've survived 2024 now the question is how are you as a business owner or CMO, how are you going to ensure that your business continues to survive, but even more so, that it thrives? How about using something that's reliable, that's stable, especially for your marketing efforts that will allow you to tap into the power of podcast and radio? Clearly, I believe in that reach, which is why I'm in that space. But let me give you a fact. In the United States, audio reaches more than social media and

digital combined. So enter Radioactive Media. They know how to launch, optimize, and scale performance by building compelling audio campaigns and the key is they work. Why? They have a personal approach, they have knowledge, they have experience, they have a track record. They have knowledge. They have experience. They have a track record. Go to RadioActiveMedia.com or text Chris to 511-511. Text Chris to 511-511 today. Message and data rates? Of course, they apply. Felony or fine should not be the American standard. The problem is, people do believe it's the American standard. And guys like you and half of my family sound whiny,

and people believe, but this stuff isn't working, and you guys have been okay with it not working, and I want it to work, and I want the disruption, and I believe that the space is not to tell them they're wrong to want it to work and I want the disruption. And I believe that the space is not to tell them they're wrong to want it, but to show them a better way to get it. For instance, getting rid of the people, there's such an obvious opportunity here

to show what his way is going to cost and what it's going to yield, versus a way of the same way you can know who the bad hombres are, you can know who the good hombres are, and you can have a worker program that works for them and brings a ton of money in and shores up communities and use that idea to expose what's wrong with his idea as opposed to just scolding him for wanting to enforce the law. That's why Holman, who is the human equivalent of a hammer,

who sees only nails, is so fucking popular. Because he just keeps citing that 1511 section three, code two, you know, where he just says, if you enter illegally, you're illegal. And he keeps beating the AOCs of the world because, yeah, if you don't have a better idea with how to deal with it, you're going to lose this argument because you're allowing lawlessness. And I think there are better arguments.

You guys just aren't making them. Look, the idea that you're going to have a rational discussion in this country, specifically about immigration, has been beaten to death for the last, since I worked for George Bush 41. And there is a 40-year effort inside of a faction of the Republican Party that is nativist, that does not believe in any kind of presence of foreign workers or foreign individuals on our soil, legal or illegal. They do not believe in legal immigration. They do not believe in a guest worker program. A guest worker program is a crying urgent need in this country right now.

If your people are in agriculture, as my family is, if you're in construction, if you're in any number of trades, you can't hire enough Anglos. Nobody wants to go work in a chicken processing plant, but a guy from Mexico who can do a remittance under a guest worker program would absolutely go work in the chicken processing plant or doing stoop labor in orange groves or tomato fields. All of these things are impossibilities because there is a cultural element because we got to recognize it that inside the Republican Party that has used racial hatred and ethnic animus as a very effective political tool. So it's not a matter of saying, hey, Tom Homan and Donald Trump and Stephen Miller,

let's sit down and negotiate. Their negotiation is, F you, they all have to go. And right now we are seeing, again, people under legal TPS status who came here legally, who are playing by the rules, who are doing the paperwork, they're out. We're seeing people from Haiti and the DR

and Venezuela right now in Florida who are panicked because they were supporting Donald Trump and now they're being told, nope, you're going back. Yep. Yep. Fooled you. You're going back. I think it's dishonest of us to say that Donald Trump and his administration

are going to be rational actors on this, or they're going to negotiate in good faith on this because we've seen the pattern now. Look, we've known Trump for a decade. And the idea that he is somehow receptive to rationality or to a deal where everybody walks through the table with something good is completely mistaken. There's not one thing he's ever done in eight years where he sat down and said in a bipartisan way, let's fix this problem. Yeah, and yet he beat you. And what that tells you is that you left a lot of opportunity on the table. And I do believe that all the things that you just outlined are the answer on this particular issue, which is because look, I just know,

on this particular issue, which is, because look, I just know just from being on the hustings, just from all of the, even social media saturation, and I know social media is not reality. I know there's a disconnect. I get it, I get it. What I'm saying is more people believe that there's a need for immigrant labor and legal immigration than those who do not.

Is it an 80-20? No. You have to replace 80-20s with 60-40s. That is why I wanted you on the show today. Look, it's also important to remember, Chris, I am not, I don't run the DNC. No, no, DNC is not the answer. I get more shit from progressives about political strategy than I get from my former party.

Believe me. But they are part of the O'Fall, my erudite friend. They are stinky intestines. They are fringe amplified players because of social media. That's what's changed. Messaging gurus like you, Roger Ailes, David Garth, the guys that I was raised to either fear or covet were messengers to figure out how to get amplification.

Now you're here, you hire a bunch of 20 year olds and they give you 220 million people reach. So, but it's about what you're doing with it. And forget the progressives, forget the Democrats. The party's time is expiring, not Democrats, Republicans and Democrats. We have a president right now who doesn't like his own party.

He just dislikes them less than he dislikes the other one, which could change in a second if the Democrats started saying nice things to him about cutting whatever he wants to cut or tax cuts, he would take them over the Republicans. So let's put him to the side. He's a symptom of how we got here. He is not proof of how you get anywhere better.

The proof of how you get somewhere better is that you swap out the 80-20s for the 60-40s, because the 60-40s are what real mainstream life is about. College versus artisan class. Corporate responsibility of job training versus education costs on a family. Where money is spent and how that's shown. Your work with Bush 41,

the great idea that's on the table right now, that's one of the only things that's ever worked in budgeting and Bill Clinton should have named his library after the president you served, was pay as you go. Pay as you go. And to bring that back right now, if Democrats were to do that right now and say, we have to bring this back into the budgeting process,

that's a 60-40 issue. And no more do you need 230-pound guys spiking a volleyball on your 15-year-old's head. That's not the issue. No more are we gonna have people in the military getting trans operations, are we gonna pay for that? No, no, no, no, let's get away from that bullshit. I don't wanna deal with nine cases.

I wanna deal with 90 million cases, 60 40s, 60 40s. Let JD Vance say stupid shit to the Germans. Let them say it. You guys have to come up with the better. And when I say you, I'm not talking about Democrats. I'm talking about independents, about people who are progressive. Our mission of the Lincoln project in 2020 was to persuade a very small

number of Republicans to vote for Joe Biden. And we got about 4.9% of Republicans in the targeted states that we worked in. To move. We expected it would be lower than that. We really did. We didn't think we'd even get that many. Last year, we actually got more. We got it in the 5.4 or so, plus or minus, depending on the state. And the problem is you've got such a small movable fraction of Republicans,

such a small movable fraction of Democrats, and there are fewer and fewer independents right now because of social media clustering. So it really is going to take something. I think more. I think we're going to have to have an economic 2008 only with some resolution in it this time 2008. Bush and Obama both missed a chance to reset how we thought about Wall Street and money and the budget and the federal government spending in this country.

They both had a chance and they both blew it. Neither one of them was willing to say to Hank Paulson and the team, hey, we can't do it this way. And to say to Wall Street, we're going to send a bunch of MFers to jail. Yeah. I think we may have to end up in a moment where, where there's a, an economic externality that will reshape people's understanding of what the government spends and does.

And that is going to hurt. It's going to be painful. I would rather it not happen that way, but I don't know that there's a space in our politics big enough to move enough people to overcome redistricting and gerrymandering in the States, left and right, by the way, which I have no truck with and no tolerance for. That is, I don't know that there's a solution space for that, given how tight the margins are between the two parties.

I agree that the margins are tight between the parties because I believe the parties are dying. And I believe that there's a reason that independent is the fastest growing designation in the electorate. Yes, two things can be true at once and there is clustering also. I go back to this basic idea of 60 40s versus 80 20s. Social media is 80 20s all day long.

That's all it is. And that's why there's such a different- I think that's being generous. There's such a different Elon in the Oval Office versus Elon on Twitter. I liked the Elon in the Oval Office. I liked him there with his kid. I liked how he took criticisms. I liked the Elon in the Oval Office. I liked him there with his kid. I liked how he took criticisms.

I like how he said, I'm gonna make mistakes. It's good for you to call them out. I like how he said there was gonna be transparency. Then he goes back on Twitter and he's an asshole the whole time that he's there because it works. And I think- Wait, there are assholes on Twitter? The way out of that space is 6040s.

When you look at this budgeting process now, hey, don't you think we should go back to what Republicans used to do? And that set up Clinton, yes, dot com bubble also, yes. But set him up for unprecedented surpluses? Why don't we go back to that rule? Republicans don't want it, but Democrats could. They could.

They could. And look, I think it would be a brilliant approach to it. There is a thing we've seen in focus groups for the last 20 years where Republicans believe that Democrats want to spend an unlimited amount of money on everything all the time. And it's really interesting because the Clinton legacy on that of economic discipline and economic discipline even in the space where social spending was involved, it didn't blow back on anybody left or right.

Even with Lewinsky. It really was an interesting model. Even with Lewinsky, it really wasn't interesting model. Even with Lewinsky, he wound up cutting better deals while he was dying. Well, they thought when they thought he was politically done, he was making, and it gave him latitude where the, with the Democrats are like, ah, whatever. He's screwed. So why not? Why not cut some good deals?

So why not, why not cut some good deals? Look, the, the, the era crest, I think of, of ignoring, of ignoring the realities of, of families in this country. And then look for, for a generation, Republicans have said, give hedge fund guys a big tax cut, it's all going to be great. Right. said, give hedge fund guys a big tax cut. It's all going to be great. Right. And Democrats have said, we're going to, to give you new job training and magical fairy dust and free this and that.

And both sides have failed on that assignment. I, you know, I, I, I was asked by a, a Democrat one time back in 2016, what was it that hurt us the most and enabled Trump to win states like Wisconsin? I'm like, because you lied to them over and over again. You told them the job retraining was going to replace their auto industry jobs. You told them job retraining was this magical thing that was going to fix all of their problems. And it didn't, you're not going to take a guy who punches sheet metal for 30 years and teach him how to code in Python. You're just not going to do it.

Yeah. But you told him you could. And it didn't. I had a guy in a focus group in 2015 in December in Orlando, Florida, and he had moved down from Detroit and he'd been a former guy. He said, I worked in a wire harness factory in the automotive industry. And my dad worked in that factory and my grandpa worked in that factory. And my grandpa could afford to have a house up at the lake.

My dad could afford to have a house up at the lake and they both had little boats and we could take family vacations and he put us all through college. He goes, well, my son is on his third goddamn tour of Iraq. I have just had to retrain my replacement. Then we're shipping the entire factory. We're parting it out and shipping it over to Asia where they're going to build it back again and hire people for eight bucks an hour because of now I'm working in a call center and I'm mad.

Yep. This guy had voted for Obama twice. Yep. He had voted for Barack Obama two times and he was so angry and it really struck me. It's really stuck with me to this day that that Democrats promised working class voters things they better deliver and they have not done that in the way that they need to look. I think Biden Biden's economic legacy will look back on it with a little more favor than it that is being looked at right now, because there was an expansion of working class jobs

and working class wages during Biden, but it got swamped by inflation. It got crushed by inflation. So look, they have a lot of work to do in the Democratic Party. I'm gonna do what I can on the pro-democracy side of this equation, the independent side of this equation, but it's a tough hill to climb. It's the 6040s. What happened with that guy, and he exists all over the country, is once you're angry, you get pushed to culture issues.

Sure. And away from fiscal ones because you start looking at the underlying explanation of why this happened. And it's almost always winds up being a cultural implication. The independent movement is founded on priorities. It's okay that Rick Wilson and Chris Cuomo are both white males having this conversation about other groups. It would not happen on MSNBC, okay?

And that's a problem. Checking boxes because someone decided it's better to check boxes is a mistake. And you have white guys and white women all over the country who believe that Democrats think they need to disappear. And when they say anything about it, Democrats at best will go, oh, poor you,

or they'll take your job. This is an easy 60-40. I was watching the DEI stuff, and I was trying it out on the lefties in my family. And I was like, you realize that you keep saying they're against DEI. No, they're not. These are signature American values.

It's all about the how. This is about forcing people to do things no matter what the merits say, versus rewarding people for having diverse. If you reward them for doing it right, you reward them for doing it right, versus punishing them for doing it wrong, you'll win out all day. That's a 60-40 proposition.

And I think that's where the time has to be spent because you guys, and again, when I say you guys, I'm not talking about Democrats. I'm talking about people who want better than Trump. And that's how I think this country's split right now. I want better than Trump. And that's how I think this country is split right now. I want better than him. And what makes me disgusted is that I voted for him because this was so frightening and out of touch

and weird to me. That's the voter that you're going for. I can't, but I don't share anything with Trump. Listen, yeah, I wrote a chapter in my last book called Culture Wars Are Where Democrats Go to Die. Right. I wrote a chapter in my last book called Culture Wars are where Democrats go to die. Right. And the average Trump voter thinks, I don't want racial preferences in hiring,

but I don't want to get rid of Martin Luther King Day either. But right now you're seeing like, we're not going to do Black History Month. We're not going to do Holocaust Remembrance Month. We're getting rid of all the, I always have a rule in politics, Chris, that the side that overshoots is the side that loses. Yes. So right now the, the over, the overemphasis on the broad cluster of what we'll call DEI for this conversation, um, in, in business in particular and culture in particular is now getting an overshoot on the other side on politics in

particular. I mean, and they, they reversed it, but when that, when they came out and said, we're not going to teach about the Tuskegee Airmen anymore, even the Trump people said, yeah, maybe we went too far on that one. So it's going to be an interesting and difficult, it's going to be a difficult period where, where there are people on the right who don't want to mention Martin Luther King anymore. There are people on the left who want you to be punished because you, you know, use the wrong pronoun. It is not where America is on either end of that spectrum, but there are a lot of incentives

that are really effed up in our country right now for the condemnation on the one side and the erasure of history on the other. And we don't wanna be in a country with either of those extremes. I think there's opportunity in it though, because most people don't fall into them. And-

Most people don't. There's such an easy way. I mean, so many of us, I don't care where you live, okay? People have diversity in their lives and people are fine with it. They just don't want it forced on them. Every parent I know is praying for gay with their kids that they don't have to deal with a trans kid because it seems so hard and so fraught and these kids are so targeted.

People get it. People get compassion. The more you go to 60-40 propositions of DEI shouldn't be forced, trans athletes shouldn't have genetic superiority. Yeah, great. Let's get to now how money's being spent in school. What's curriculum versus what isn't? What's the state versus what's federal?

That's why Medicaid is such a great opportunity for Democrats about how you want to treat people in this country. Yeah, it is. I think that is exactly right. I just think you see the opportunities and you just lay off showing Trump for what he is because everybody knows what he is. Well, I think that there are going to be a lot of things that he does and that this administration does. If it keeps up with the pattern and the pace that we've had so far, where,

pattern and the pace that we've had so far, where, and I think this is desirable for him, he will put us in crisis after crisis after crisis, constitutionally and legally and politically and morally and internationally, that make it harder for them to make it harder for everybody who's not a Trump person to respond to it. But it is a moral responsibility to respond to it. And when you do things at 60-40, the problem, you are going in the right direction. You are turning the rudder in the right direction. That's all I'm asking, brother.

That's all I'm asking. And I'm asking for more Rick Wilson in my life because I believe, you know, I've spent a lot of time figuring out what's happening in the digital space. I've talked to a lot of people who see me as an enemy to their cause or whatever misplaced priority they have.

And I've realized that you have this one group of people who have significant followings that are gonna die off because they're really just milking opportunity. They're not, they're reached, they're not resonance. And for most of them, I feel like the crux of it is that at some point, they're gonna get punched in the nose, you know? And I kind of like dismiss it at that.

Like at some point, you'll catch me on the wrong day saying the wrong thing the wrong way and I'm gonna knock the fuck out of you. And then we'll just take it up in the courts. But they have this, there's this whole other group out there that's desperate for perspective that's just reasonable, that's not coming at it from left to right. And I think that you inhabit that space.

And I think that guys like you have to be encouraged on the basis of disagreement. It's okay to disagree. I love disagreement. I hate agreement. So boring. But it's how you learn. It's how you grow. And anything I can do to help, you know, what you're trying to do, not because of the proclivity of pro-Trump, anti-Trump,

I don't give a shit about that, but I think this space of trying to build consensus in the country is a fertile one. And I'm always happy to have you anywhere than I am, and I'm always a phone call away, Rick Wilson. Thank you. Thank you, my friend. I'll have you on the podcast soon on my end.

I appreciate your time today, and it's great being with you. Good ideas. Ideas that I disagree with. Ideas that I think need to be done differently. That's the beauty of the podcast is the exchange of ideas. The fertile ground is the ground of disagreement, not agreement, agreement is boring. You knew that coming into it. It's where do you disagree and how and why, and what do you do with that? That's where growth is.

And that's why I was happy to talk to Rick Wilson. And that's why I think there's a benefit to you in terms of food for thought. And I hope you feel the same. I'm Chris Cuomo. Thank you for being here at the Chris Cuomo Project. This is not about pushing message. It's not about blowing up provocative things and propaganda. There's enough of that. Okay. I know that's how you get a following, but it's not how you get to a better place. And for me, that's the real goal. What about you?

Thank you for subscribing and following us. See you at NewsNation 8P and 11P Eastern every weekday night. If you like the pod, don't like the ads, want to figure out how you too can lose 10 pounds, you should go to my sub stack and subscribe. 50 bucks a year, 5 bucks a month, get all the fitness stuff, all the philosophy stuff, you get the podcast ad free and you get all the stuff that I've learned about long COVID and vaccine injuries from my doctor who is on the cutting edge of it. All for five bucks a month. What value.

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