Election 2025: Rick Wilson’s Real-Time War Room Report

The Lincoln Project

Society & Culture, News Commentary, Government, Daily News, News, Politics

4.7 • 8.4K Ratings

🗓️ 4 November 2025

⏱️ 40 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The 2025 elections aren’t just mid-cycle noise — they’re the dress rehearsal for 2026. In a very special election episode, Rick Wilson walks you through the field with his trademark mix of snark and strategic clarity: from the knife-fight in New York, the gubernatorial brawl in New Jersey, and Virginia’s bellwether races, to the California Prop-50 slugfest and the Pennsylvania Supreme Court showdown that could tilt national law for a generation. Every one of these contests is a test run for what the GOP and MAGA movement plan to unleash next year — and the stakes couldn’t be higher.

Inside the movement, the fractures are widening. Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, and Nick Fuentes are spinning off from Trump’s orbit, building rival cults of personality and turning MAGA into a circular firing squad. The “unified” right is now a live grenade rolling around its own tent. And out in the field? Keep your eyes open. Masked thugs and fake “poll watchers” are already showing up at polling places — a trial balloon for voter intimidation and a warning of what 2026 may look like if the guardrails come off.

Finally, Rick reflects on the death of Dick Cheney, the last grand strategist of the Republican old guard — a man who built the machine that Trump’s chaos now threatens to burn to the ground. His passing isn’t just news; it’s the symbolic end of an era.

It's a special day today, and whatever happens, the lessons we learn today will ready us for 2026.
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Rick Wilson is on X at @TheRickWilson, on Bluesky at @TheRickWilson.bsky.social, and you can check out Rick's Substack at therickwilson.substack.com. You can check out more of LP's work at www.lincolnproject.us and on X at @ProjectLincoln

Transcript

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0:00.0	Your task will not be an easy one. Your enemy is well trained, well equipped, and battlehardt.
0:06.2	There is not a liberal America and a conservative America. There is the United States of America.
0:14.5	Good night and good luck.
0:16.7	Hey, folks, it's a special Election Day edition of the Lincoln Project podcast.
0:21.6	I wanted to give you our quick take on where we see the races.
0:24.5	We've been mostly involved this year in Virginia, a lot of stuff behind the scenes that you're not seeing that's been, we hope, and we believe to be very influential.
0:32.9	Not really on the advertising side, but it's more on the social media and on the data side of some really
0:37.8	interesting stuff we've been doing there. We believe that Spanberger is absolutely fine.
0:43.2	We think we're going to see a meaningful number of moves in the state legislative races that
0:49.7	we've been monitoring. We also think that you might end up with the AG race still going to the Democrats
0:56.4	because the tide has been turning in Virginia pretty meaningfully against the Republican Party.
1:02.0	You've even seen that Donald Trump has not been out there cheering for Winsome Sears.
1:06.0	And there's a reason for that. Chris Las Al-Savita advised him to stay the hell away.
1:13.4	Don't get the radioactive stink of failure on yourself even further than it already is. And so he's
1:19.2	basically left her to dangle. Uh, we've heard that Sears had to pull back a lot of our
1:22.9	advertising in the last week. Um, and I think one of the most interesting lessons out of
1:27.3	Virginia and folks, you know, look, predictions are always a risky business. Believe me, I may in the last week. And I think one of the most interesting lessons out of Virginia.
1:27.8	And folks, you know, look, predictions are always a risky business.
1:31.0	Believe me, I've made plenty of wrong predictions in my life.
1:33.5	But we are looking at the race right now as something that is a very interesting moment.
1:40.5	Abigail Spanberger has not taken the bait on the one issue the Republicans seem to still want to run on in 2025, and that's the trans issue.
1:49.8	In fact, she's blown it back so hard on them and come back with such ferocity on this that the Republicans don't know what to do.
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