Hey, everyone, it's read before we get started. It's a new year. And guys, this is going to be the year of years. Yes, I know the

2024 is an election year, but 2023 gang is where we're going to do the hard work and build the foundations from top to bottom and east to west to make sure that

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efforts. I want to say thanks to everybody for your listenership and for your support of the Lincoln Project and our mission. And now on with the show.

Welcome back to the Lincoln Project. I'm your host, Reed Gaillen. Today, I'm joined by Trick Wheels, Senior Advisor to the Lincoln Project and President of Viking Strategies

LLC, Washington DC based public affairs and political consulting for Trickbee. Welcome back. Thanks, Reed, for having me on. I'm also joined by Jeff Timmer, also Senior Advisor to the Lincoln Project,

former Executive Director of the Michigan Republican Party and host of the podcast, a Republic, if you can keep it, wherever fine shows are found. Jeff, welcome back. I'm glad to be here, Reed. All right, gang. So we're recording this a day before January 6th, but folks will listen to it on

Friday the 6th and two years, guys, since this insurrectionist mob, you know, at the behest of Donald Trump with the encouragement of at least 132 members of the current Republican conference, you know, attack the Capitol, attack the American democracy.

And before I get into sort of reflections on that, I'm reading John Meacham's new book about Abraham Lincoln called and there was light.

And in it, he relates the story of the pre-enogereal period for Lincoln in 1861 and that remember back then, the inauguration took place in March.

And so this certification vote, which is now so infamous, famous and infamous in America, took place sometime in February and John Breckerenridge, who was the vice president from South Carolina, had run against Lincoln and lost, and was responsible like Mike Pence was for counting the electoral votes.

Winfield Scott, who was commander of the Union Army at the time, or the American Army at the time, made sure that no one was going to get to the Capitol to do anything to disrupt the process.

And that he said, if anybody tried, he would strap them to a cannon and shoot them out the Capitol window.

South Carolina had already seceded, and there was a lot of talk of, you know, people storming the Capitol, people attempting to take the boxes of electoral votes as they made their way from the Senate Chamber to the House Chamber for tabulation.

You know, surrounded by cavalry troops.

So the truth is, as January 6, 2021 was not the first time that the electoral count process was threatened.

The difference was in 1861, the entire federal government was on the same side, which is we're going to count these votes.

And they did not have a president on the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, who was personally attempting to block that effort.

So I just, I thought it was an interesting sort of reminder that we have seen these kinds of things before.

Ultimately, Lincoln has inaugurated the Civil War begins and the rest as they say history.

So that was a fascinating sort of parallel in American history, Trigby.

So tell me, as you look now two years on, are we in a better place?

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