Re-release of Brian Tyler Cohen
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You may not realize it, but every minute of every day, you're enjoying the most important freedom. The freedom that's brought to you by the First Amendment. You can speak your mind, vote how you choose, wear what you want, get your opinions out there for free, even if it's unpopular. You can put a sign on your front lawn that says, vote for Bigfoot, someone you can believe in. You can pray to the God of your choice or don't.

You have the right to be with the people that think like you do. You have the right to tell the government what you think about its policies, whether you love them or hate them. They are freedoms that let you be you, and they're all brought to you by the First Amendment. Learn more at freedomforum.org. Hello, Lincoln Project listeners. My name is Whitney.

And I am Rick's right hand at the organization, as well as the executive producer of the Lincoln Project podcast. I'm on the other side of the table today because Rick is out sick and we are re-releasing an episode that is incredibly topical and applies to everything you saw and heard this week with all of the hearings.

We are re-releasing an episode with the fabulous Brian Tyler Cohen, and it hits on the glaring hypocrisy between the GOP's patriotic talk and their counterintuitive actions. So please listen to the episode and enjoy and look forward to Rick being back in the saddle next week. Thanks so much. Your enemy is well-trained, well-equipped, and battle-hardened. There is not a liberal America, any conservative America...

Hey folks, 82 days till the election. Let's get to it.

Good night and good luck.

And shameless is a word that applies to today's MAGA GOP better than almost any other. So, Brian, with that, I'm so glad to have you on the podcast. Tell us about the I always ask this question. What's the origin story? Are you writing this book and tell us about it?

So I think the thing that was most important for me was we hear so much, whether it's through polling, whether it's through Republicans themselves, about all these virtues that they have. We still hear that they're the party of family values, that they're the responsible stewards of the economy.

Yet none of the actual metrics, none of the reality actually backs any of that up. So I wanted to write a book exposing how they've used their historical branding as the party of family values, of fiscal responsibility, of the constitution, of law and order, of the military, of law enforcement, of states' rights, and kind of expose how

All of that is completely baseless, but they've relied on that to give themselves cover to behave in a way that's completely antithetical to that while still getting all the credit, right? They still take all the credit from the Reagan days, but they're not behaving themselves in a way that would actually align with any of those things. And so that's in large part why I wanted to write this book.

And it became a broader exploration of not just that, but how the media, both sides' media, has helped them get away with this farce. And finally, what Democrats should and must do to rebalance the political landscape. I think your point there is so well taken, is that even when the party of Reagan and my old boss, Herbert Walker Bush, even when they failed to live up to those aspirations, they did have –

aspirations that a lot of Americans, including a lot of Democrats agree with, you know, fiscal responsibility, strong national security, all those things that were out there as goals, at least, have completely disappeared from today's GOP. It's now, what does Trump want?

And that's the rest of the story. In fact, far from disappeared, they actually do the complete opposite. They say they want fiscal responsibility. They add $7.8 trillion to the debt. They say that they want to show some adherence to the Constitution, that they're textualists and originalists. What did Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito just do? They just decided that a president is akin to a king in this country. Their party is responsible for not –

of staying true to the peaceful transfer of power for the first time in over 200 years in this country. So on issue after issue, not only do they not follow their professed values, but they kind of completely turn them on their heads. I think that's such an important point because the branding, as you point out, survived, but the rest of it is completely detached. And I think in some ways, that's what's shocking Republicans right now is that

Vice President Harris has jumped into this race and she has taken back the flag, taken back patriotism. You know, Republicans, when they hear Democrats at a rally chanting USA, USA. I was just going to say. It chills their blood down to freezing. Totally.

They have gotten away for so long with co-opting all of these images of American patriotism with all the words, with all the – again, the imagery. And now to see Democrats taking those things back because –

the Democrats are the only party that's actually fighting to protect any of those things, to protect the Constitution and the flag and our democracy. It leaves them scrambling. And Donald Trump's behavior right now is a testament to that, where he goes on stage and starts denying the biraciality of Kamala Harris, where he goes to his Mar-a-Lago press conference and decides that what he's going to do to really curry favor with the black community even further is claim that his January 6th

insurrection crowd was bigger than Martin Luther King Jr.'s I Have a Dream speech crowd. What could go wrong? A plus. A plus work. No, no, it's Donald. Just kiss, Donald. That's right. So, you know, as you talk about, you know, giving Democrats advice on how to reset the political balance in the country, right now, it is looking increasingly likely the Democrats will take back the House. Those numbers are moving into position. But

There are even a couple of scenarios, if Vice President Harris's numbers are sustained, that looks like the Democrats could get to the point where the Senate is a bit more secure.

than it is right now rather than losing it. I don't know where that's going to end up yet. That's still a big X factor. Yeah. John Tester's race is going to be a big question mark right here. It's going to be insanity. Yeah, it really is. It really is. Although I will say, you know, Arizona is off of the watch list in a lot of ways or moving off of the watch list because Kerry Lake is just Kerry Lake.

Yeah. Well, I mean, it was super nice of them to allow her to run for two positions at once. You know, most states don't allow that. And Arizona is just very flexible about that. Very flexible. You have to give them props for it. So when you talk about for Democrats resetting the political landscape, what is your vision of that as they move forward?

I think that at least in the messaging front, and that's the part that I'm mostly concerned with. That's what you guys do at the Lincoln Project. I think that in large part, the battleground on where this election is going to be won and lost is in the messaging wars. The Harris campaign is performing exactly as they should right now. And they're learning a lot of the lessons, not to give them too much credit, but a lot of the lessons that

that Donald Trump did really well, which was, you know, how many times did we hear, "Make America great again, build the wall, drain the swamp, lock her up," these short, impactful, powerful messages that he would repeat over and over until they were seared into our brains for better or for worse.

for worse. But Kamala Harris now is going to these rallies and we hear, you know, when we fight, we win. We're not going back. You have Tim Wall saying, mind your damn business and just hitting these messages over and over. And these are impactful now. And now Donald Trump's messages are the tired ones, especially when you consider the fact that one of his messages is lock her up. And now he's running against a prosecutor and he is a 34 time convicted felon.

You know, I think one of the biggest things here that in this frame is the trap that Trump and his campaign team built for themselves. Joe Biden, for three years before Joe Biden dropped out, the Republican machine said he's old, he's senile, he's crazy, he has lost it. And now, and that was never true, by the way, but we ended up in a position where a very bad night and some very bad coverage ended up framing it out. So he was stuck.

But now it's Trump who's displaying all the metrics and the behaviors that the Republicans said were completely unacceptable as for a president. We're...

Where do you see the Harris campaign being able to play off of those things and how far should they push those things? I think they can push them to the max, really. I mean, you know, it's to your point, it's Trump himself who has groomed this country into believing that we can't have a president who's too old and we can't have a president who is in the throes of cognitive decline. And Donald Trump is both of those things. He would be

in his 80s by the time he would leave office. And the guy right now thinks that Hannibal Lecter is, you know, advocating for Hannibal Lecter is a great part of his stump speech. He goes off about windmills dying, about water pressure in his toilets, about sharks and magnets, and this idea that World War II hasn't happened yet, that Jeb Bush got us involved in the war in the Middle East, that Nikki Haley was in charge of security at the Capitol on January 6th. I mean, we could do an entire show on just the stupid shit that he said over and over and over. And it

And that's the important part, is he repeats this stuff. Even after he proves himself out to be an abject moron, he keeps repeating it because in his addled brain, he thinks some of this actually redounds to his benefit to keep talking about an imaginary cannibal. So he's done all the work for us. He's already groomed the entire country into believing that the two things that he is, which are too old and too stupid, are disqualifying, and he's just proving that he fits that bill perfectly.

You know, it is a campaign being run for Trump by people who would love him to be anything else but what he is. Yeah. But Trump is what he is. He does not change. There's no better iteration of Trump. There's no better version of Trump. There's no – Rick, you don't believe that we're going to get some new tone any day now? Because I keep being told by the media. The new tone is rolling in hot, Brian. I mean I am super stoked for the new tone. I think part of this that really comes down to it is –

And, you know, look, I'll take whatever tiny fractional credit, you know, having having left the Republican Party and told Democrats for a long time. And it took a long time for them to not be resentful about it. Like, here is how they beat you. I'm not judging you. I'm just telling you, if I was still a Republican, here's what I do. And typically the two or three things I tell them that they're going to do, they do.

And the Democrats took a while to understand that. Do you see the party? I do. But do you see the party as being ready to reflect on how to campaign a little more than they have been in the past? Because, man, there was a long time where it was like the focus group says prescription drug coverage is the only issue.

It's an important issue, right, by the way. But then they'd go out and they'd get their heads cut off by Republicans like, well, what happened? Why did that happen? It happened because you didn't connect to people. Yeah. I think right now there are a few instances where I think that Democrats are absolutely learning that lesson. First of all, the campaign is very nimble and they're responding very quick to stuff, which is usually we look at like – we look at a Democratic presidential campaign and it turns the way an ocean liner does.

And they're the last people to respond. And the onus was on us, basically, in the media to pick up the slack because they just couldn't be fast enough to respond to any of this stuff. Now the campaign is way quicker. And so I think that's a good point, first of all. Then when you have someone like Tim Wallace, for example, who's able to speak in a way that's relatable. Kamala Harris is doing the exact same thing. There's no...

flowery, ornate, haughty, democratic language. We're not diving into the intricacies like we did in 2010 about Medicare Part D as a way to promote Obamacare. But it's simple language. It's language that is relatable to people across the country, and they're hammering away at this stuff. Everybody understands prosecutor versus felon. Everybody understands

abortion rights champion versus abortion rights opponent. Everybody understands, here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna make sure that you have affordable healthcare. We're gonna make sure that you have housing that is affordable as well. We're gonna make sure that kids are safe in schools, that there are common sense gun safety reforms. Tim Walz himself said, I'm a gun owner. I support the Second Amendment, but like 90% of Americans, I support...

universal background checks. So they are taking stances on these positions that not only the vast majority of Americans agree with, but that are just easy to understand, easy to connect with people, and that are the issues that people have already shown they care about. You know, in a weird counterfactual world, in 2020, 2019, let's say, when Elizabeth Warren was running well ahead of the field, there were people that were telling me on the Democratic side, like, oh, she's going to have all these great policies and Trump can't do that. I'm like,

Oh, no, please stop. Please. Policies kill you. It's not the details of the policies. It's that you think people are going to read a 600-page climate plan. That may be a very meritorious climate plan, but they don't read it. Which, by the way, there are still inklings. There are still trappings of Democrats who do that. And I hear a lot, like when Democrats talk about Project 2025, and they say, go read the plan. And I say, no, don't tell people to go read the plan. Tell them what the plan is. Tell them what's in it. They're not going to go

Google something. That is our job as messengers to tell them what's in the plan, not to send them somewhere. You're like us, read the 800 pages of terror in the Project 2025. Everybody else should just know it's fucking terrifying. Yeah. So as you see the party sort of reshaping the connection to the country, where do you think – where do you see the role of the culture playing into this? I have a – just to call me crazy, but –

I look at it and think I'll take Charlie XCX and Megan, the stallion, and maybe Taylor Swift over, uh, you know, a 1980s wrestlers, Lee Greenwood and kid rock.

You don't think Scott Baio is going to capture the heart of the nation? Man, you know, Scott Baio, he is out there. He's ready to do debate prep for Donald Trump, man. You know what's crazy about that? Scott Baio was on Fox News, I believe, a week ago, and he was begging Donald Trump on Fox News to stick to policy. When Scott Baio seems like the level head in the room and is begging Donald Trump to not seem so insane, I think he might have lost the plot at that point.

No, but I do think that there are a lot of folks on the right who have always been like very dismissive and ugly about, oh, Hollywood and music, they're all liberals, they're all this and that. But, you know, to say something that my Republican friends would understand, as Andrew Breitbart once said, politics is downstream of culture. And culture is –

I have rarely seen it, except maybe for Obama. Like the popular culture connection to this campaign has surprised me how quickly it has become the thing and how much it's going to impact. I think, you know, 18 to 30 voters is a, the old cliche about 18 to 30 voters was that they're not voters. They don't really vote. I mean, Rocky Bird's been around for 35 years and the numbers basically, with a few exceptions, stayed very close to where it's been.

I think that we may be ending up in a situation where the combination of abortion, the creepy LGBT attacks from J.D. Vance, Project 2025, et cetera, and popular culture actually does generate a surge in younger voters.

Yeah, I absolutely agree with that. I actually think that the generation that's most impacted by what we're seeing right now are expressly the young people. These elections aren't really about tax reform and earned benefits in the same way that they were before. Now, when you look at abortion rights, that

is inherently going to impact young people way more than it's going to impact older folks. When you look at, for example, book bans, when you look at gun violence in schools, when you look at healthcare, a lot of this stuff impacts young people to a way higher degree than it does older people in this country. And I think they're finally recognizing that. It's also way easier to see, to your exact point, the

the cultural phenomenon of just having weird people in charge that you wouldn't even want to, you know, like you, you wouldn't even want to like be near in a restaurant, right? Like if they were in the next booth and you heard the people, if you heard people saying what JD Vans and Donald Trump have said about ending abortion and calling rape inconvenient, these are things

that young people can very clearly see. And they're connected in a way, thanks to TikTok, Instagram and all that stuff, in a way that they weren't before. And I think that the pushback that we're seeing is a testament to that. You know, being a 60-year-old guy, I have to ask this question of someone younger than me. Trump has switched his position on TikTok and is now like, I'm going to save TikTok. Is that in any way resonant with these younger voters? I don't think it offsets. I'm just curious, because Trump has a certain...

like animal cunning sometimes on where an issue is. And I think he might have detected that, like something percolated through his very slow brain that TikTok good for the youths. Yeah, I do think that that's a point of concern for us. Luckily, Kamala Harris doesn't shoulder the same burden

degree of blame that Joe Biden would, this would be Biden's policy. And he would, he would have, you know, Kamala Harris would have to come in and figure out how she's going to navigate this issue, but she's not getting blamed for it in the way that Joe Biden is also carrying the burden of Israel, Gaza, of inflation and Donald Trump.

you know, to his dismay is not running against Biden anymore, even though he tries to his best degree desperately to just manifest this old reality. The guy is, the guy is fantasizing in broad daylight, the extent to which he wants to run against Joe Biden, but he's not. So I don't know what Kamala Harris's take on the issue of TikTok is going to be, but right now I feel like at least for the moment, look, I'm on TikTok on a daily basis. I haven't seen anything about it. So

there's not some wave of resentment against anybody right now on the issue of TikTok. It's kind of gone away as we await the end of this waiting period where it would either be on ByteDance to divest or not. So I think it's not going to be an issue in this election as far as I can tell because the immediacy of it is gone. So tell me some of the lessons you learned in writing this book. What surprised you as you reported out this book? What were the things that made you

that made you go, wow. I hadn't, I hadn't, when you approach the whole thing, what were like some of the revelation moments for you in this book?

Easily, the extent to which Republicans have laid out their plans that are bearing fruit right now in the past. So going back to Lewis Powell and the Powell memo, going back to Roger Ailes and the Ailes memo that would ultimately turn into Fox News, Project Red Map in 2010, which was in the immediate aftermath of Barack Obama, Republicans decided to gerrymander the entire country and they would ultimately win almost 900 state legislative seats. They would just...

cut in half, the trifectas that Republicans had. So all of these were plans that were laid out decades ago and to their credit, even to this day, it's the one thing I think that they deserve the most credit for, is they are good at laying the foundation for their plans and just seeing them through over the course of decades and decades, as long as it takes.

And unfortunately for us, a lot of them are bearing fruit at this exact moment. So for example, with the Ailes memo and Fox News, I mean, they looked at what happened at Richard Nixon and with Watergate and they said, "This can never happen again." And now Donald Trump has done something leagues worse and far from seeking his excommunication from the party, they have rallied behind him again

unilaterally, exclusively, and made him once again the Republican nominee for president. So right wing media, led by Fox News, has done its job and will not let what happens to Richard Nixon happen to a Republican president again. And of course gerrymandering, I'm sure everybody listening and watching knows about the extent to which gerrymandering has benefited Republicans right now, that Democrats have to win by two, three, four points to even get to even, much less to actually have an advantage.

In any of these districts across the country. So Republicans are very good at laying these plans and seeing them through to fruition. It is something that, you know, when Dobbs came down, a Democratic friend of mine, she called me. She's in tears. She goes, I can't believe this. I can't believe how they put this together so fast. I'm like, so fast? I said, this is a 40-year plan. They said it 40 years ago. They were going to overturn Roe.

They started doing this 40 years ago. They said it all the time. How are you surprised by that? How are you shocked by that? Because you're right. There is – it's also important, I think, to bifurcate for people. Like don't believe that because the boat parade weirdos with the weird T-shirts and the funny hats are out there on TV all the time that the Republican Party is full of very smart consultants. Right. Who are very determined. Right.

Right, because by the way, their incomes, their tax rates depend on it. And so they're happy to use those people to get to the rubes who believe the rest of the Republicans in the base. But at the top of the party, they know that their interests, their financial interests, which are first and foremost, are going to be taken care of by these people in office, just like they were by Trump in 2017 with his tax cut. You know, the Democrats, it strikes me, you know, you talk about the Ailes memo, and I knew Roger when I was a young Republican operator. And

And when he built out Fox, there were a lot of skeptics, even in the conservative movement, like, oh, why would we do this? We should find another way to reach people. And yet it became this powerful war machine that is still operating at a very high key, at a very high degree of effectiveness. Two questions for you on that. Do you see anything on the horizon for the Democrats that even gets close to rivaling that? Because MSNBC is still a news network, right?

even though it has a more progressive evening lineup than Fox does, they still have a connection and a adherence to journalism. Fox has nothing like that. Do you see anything on the left or the center left or anywhere, or the progressive left, that is on the horizon that can rival that journalism

Or is looking for another network the wrong way to go? Is there some other way to break that communications juggernaut of Fox? I actually think, to answer both of those questions at once, I think progressive –

or left-wing independent media is absolutely able to rival Fox in terms of what we're able to do in this space. Look, more people are online, YouTube has surpassed linear TV in terms of viewership, and for the first time it looks like left of center political media is actually finally organized. The thing that killed me for my entire career in political media

is, is while Democrats were doing messaging by, by like scattershot messages left and right. And you don't, and it felt like everybody was just kind of picking their own thing that they wanted to talk about. It felt like Republicans went into the morning meeting every day and came out with completely coordinated talking points. Every day we would see the same thing. And then those would get repeated on Fox news, OAN, Newsmax, Daily Wire, uh,

uh, Steve Bannon show, everything would go out all at once and they would be, they would all just be completely coordinated. Democrats weren't for the first time. We're seeing that, that trend actually reverse where Democrats are hitting Republicans on the same thing over and over. JD Vance's weirdness is a testament to that. Donald Trump's dissembling is a testament to that. And, and so there is very clearly power in not just a growing burgeoning, uh,

left of center media ecosystem, but one that can actually organize and coordinate with each other so that we make sure that the messaging that we do put out isn't just scattershot messaging, but messaging that actually sticks.

I think that's a really good point, Brian. And I think this idea of coordination, it started, I can tell you, it started actually because some folks in the Republican Party looked at the way the Defense Department back in the 80s and 90s communicated. And they said, how does it all stay on the same track? And, you know, it was explained to them that

There's a morning meeting. We pick the issues that are going to be talked about. We do the following things. And that became a part of the culture inside the GOP's communication world where, you know, there are always two rules in the Republican Party. Just win, baby.

And stay on message. And if you're confused about rule one, see rule two. If you're confused about rule two, see rule one. Those things have been a really fundamental part of the GOP forever. And I do think you're right. I do think there was a scattershot kind of idea with a lot of Democrats where it didn't quite work.

cohere until recently. I mean, Democrats always have been on the right side of the issues as far as the popularity of those issues with the American people, whether it's climate change, whether it's healthcare, whether it's gun safety reforms. They were on the right side of these abortion rights, reproductive rights, but they just didn't know where to land. And so you'd have

people coming out every day saying, look, we're going to protect our own benefits, but we're also going to protect healthcare. We also have to make sure that there's gun safety. We also have to make sure that kids are safe in schools. We have to make sure families are protected. We have to make sure that we have a living wage and childcare and paid family leave. There was so much that by virtue of having everything, you really had nothing. I think now, focusing on just a few issues that are especially potent, which is the danger of Donald Trump and that we're not going back, the

The focus on reproductive rights and mind your own damn business. Every slogan, by the way, seems to go back to one specific thing that is an especially potent issue in this campaign. I do think that retaking the high ground on issues like choice and retaking the high ground on a

an almost, I mean, Tim Walz sounds like a damn libertarian to a lot of people. Yeah. If you looked at Tim Walz and told him a few of his issues, nine times out of 10, people would think that he was a Republican just by looking at him. The guy is, he grew up as a farmer. He is a rural American, Midwestern, supports the Second Amendment. I mean, he's Republican's nightmare when you look at him on paper. But then to have a messenger like that who can relate to people actually go out and not only just

tiptoe around progressive policy, but embrace it and show why it's good is just nightmare fuel for the right. I do think it's a great book and it's past time for Democrats to focus on these kind of things because it really is, there really is an operational benefit

to the kind of unity of message and purpose that you're describing here. And I think, folks, you should go out and get this book. It is "Shameless: Republicans' Deliberate Dysfunction and the Battle to Preserve Democracy."

Brian is a guy who understands this. He understands the vital center of how you communicate. He understands where the Republicans are strong and should be emulated from their operational technique side. You're not copying their policies. You're copying the things they do that win.

And they do a lot of things that for a long time, let's be real, have won. So Brian, tell folks where they can find you on social media. Of course, you can find me anywhere at Brian Tyler Cohen. I'm on YouTube. That's my main platform with 3 million subscribers. I'm also on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, the whole gamut of social media sites. And for the book, you can also go to briantylercohen.com slash book and you can order it there.

Excellent. Excellent. Well, Brian, I want to thank you so much for coming on the Lincoln Project podcast today. Really appreciate it. Best of luck with the book. And we will definitely have you back before the end of this election cycle, because I suspect we will have a few things to talk about. A few things to talk about. Thank you so much, Rick. And thanks for having me on. And also thanks for the work that you guys are doing. Appreciate it. Thank you.

The Lincoln Project Podcast is a Lincoln Project production. Executive produced by Whitney Hayes, Finn Howe, and Joseph Warner-Channing. Produced and edited by Whitney Hayes and Jeff Taylor. And good luck. Hey, everybody, if you'd like to get in touch, if you have suggestions for a guest or a show topic or just general questions, our email is podcast at lincolnproject.us. That's podcast at lincolnproject.us.