Anti-Trump Lincoln Project looks to use Trump to divide GOP in 2024

A Lincoln Project co-founder told CNN on Friday that the group hopes to provoke former President Donald Trump into running in 2024.  

Rick Wilson, one of the ex-Republicans who founded the anti-Trump group in 2019, was explaining why the group was running ads in Palm Beach, FL that frames Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis as the GOP’s new “it guy.”

"We want Trump to kill his own babies," Wilson said, referring to Trump’s reported jealousy about DeSantis’s surging popularity from his deft handling of COVID in the state. "We believe if we narrow the field and it's only Trump in 2024, it's an easy choice for Americans to say 'no.'"

Trump has repeatedly taken credit for DeSantis’s election as governor in 2018. DeSantis lobbied hard for Trump’s support during the Republican primary, even cutting an ad where DeSantis taught his children to say, “Make America Great Again.”   

Promoting Trump as the 2024 nominee seems at odds with the Lincoln Project’s stance that he is an authoritarian and a threat to American democracy, as well as their efforts to secure a victory for Democratic Presidential nominee Joe Biden in 2020.

However, Trump has been seen by some Republicans analysts as a detriment to the party’s electoral chances, especially in suburban areas where many disliked his public conduct. Glenn Youngkin was considered by analysts to have struck the right balance in his victory in the Virginia governor’s race this year, between courting Trump’s supporters while keeping Trump himself at a distance.

The Lincoln Project has faced numerous controversies since the 2020 Presidential election. It came under fire in February after reports emerged that co-founder John Weaver, 61, had been sending unsolicited, sexually provocative messages to young men over a period of years.

Its finances have also come under scrutiny for funneling more than half of the $90 million in donations it collected in 2020 to firms controlled by its leaders.

The Lincoln Project was most recently involved in the Virginia governor’s race, in which it admitted to a failed political stunt against now Governor-elect Youngkin where its operatives posed with tiki torches to smear his supporters as white supremacists.