Welcome back to the Lincoln Project. I'm your host, Rhee Gaila. Today, I'm joined by Lincoln

Project co-founder and co-host of LPTV's The Breakdown. Rick Wilson, Rick, good to have

you here. Hey, Reed, how are you? And making his 2021 podcast debut is our new executive

director here at the Lincoln Project. Fred Wellman, Fred, glad to have you with us today.

Yeah, great of you guys. Good to see you. Great to talk to you. So today, we're going to talk

a little bit about the continuing attack on voting rights, most recently in the states

of Georgia and Iowa. And then we're going to talk about the US Chamber of Commerce backtracking

from their commitment, not to fund members of what we call the sedition caucus. We'll

get to that a little bit. But first, Fred, we want to get to know a little bit about you.

So you have come in during stormy seas and rising tides and you ran our veterans coalition

last year to great effect. But tell us a little about you. I know that you attended West

Point and you were in the military. Tell us a little bit about your career and how you

found your way to us. Ah, yes, a sort of tale. As you mentioned, I graduated from the United

States military academy at West Point. Way back in 1987, I was commissioned as an aviator.

Went off to flight school and ended up flying scout helicopters for a good chunk of my

career. Actually got a little bit of politics. And he took a break, joined the reserves

back in 1999 in Georgia of all places, ran for mayor of peachy city, Georgia. And

in the middle, the mayor's race, they threw a war when 911 hit. And so I dropped out

of the race and was mobilized in the reserves back in the army, thus ending my political

career. I started in there eight years in the army. And during that, I changed over to

public affairs and it being the spokesman for John David Betreyes and Marty Dempsey, which

was a really unique experience. Both of them went on a great claim, retired about 11 years

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