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

Judd Leck, the writer of the independent newsletter popular information. Before that,

he found a think progress and worked on the 2008 Hillary Clinton for President campaign

as research director. Judd, thanks for joining me today. Thanks for having me.

You know, one of the things that we've been talking about really since January 6th was

this idea of corporate accountability and keeping track of those companies that said, you know,

in the wake of the insurrection, you know, some said we're not going to give to anybody,

right, for the time being. Others said we're not going to give specifically to those members

of Congress, Republican members of Congress and the House and Senate who voted not to

certify the 2020 election. But now we're seeing a lot of backsliding. And so talk to me about first,

a does that surprise you and b, what does that say more about how you think that, you know,

corporate America is really seeing where we are in the context of our politics today?

Well, I think it shows that for a number of corporations, what happened in January 6th was really a PR

problem. And they put out a statement to try to solve that PR problem at that moment. And

they've been taking the pulse. And for some of them, as soon as they thought an appropriate

amount of time had passed, they've gone back basically to business as usual. So I think

that's the case for some of the corporations. And I think it reflects the reality that

although the dollar figures aren't that big when you go into it, because they're limited

under the law, it's an essential part of the way DC works. You give that check. You have

the contact you can get the meeting if you want to. And I think one thing that people maybe

don't appreciate about the money is how easy it is compared to some of the alternative

ways you have to go about getting this money, which is getting on the phone and trying

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