The DNC Autopsy: Sit Down, STFU, and Listen to Rick Wilson
The Lincoln Project
The Lincoln Project
4.6 • 9.1K Ratings
🗓️ 22 May 2026
⏱️ 30 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The DNC autopsy is finally here—and it’s a brutal admission that Democrats spent 2024 fighting online culture wars while voters were worried about inflation, paychecks, rent, and the future of the country. Rick Wilson breaks down the Democrats’ redacted internal report, the consultant class cashing $40K checks to lose elections, the identity politics obsession that alienated working-class voters, and why normal Americans tuned out the party’s messaging. This is the Democratic Party’s postmortem on how they lost the economy argument, lost swing voters, and lost touch with reality.
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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.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Your task will not be an easy one. |
| 0:02.5 | Your enemy is well trained, well equipped, and battlehardt. |
| 0:06.0 | There is not a liberal America and a conservative America. |
| 0:09.9 | There is the United States of America. |
| 0:14.8 | Good night and good luck. |
| 0:16.8 | So, you guys know what the elephant in the room is this week. |
| 0:20.0 | You're thinking of yourself, oh, is it the $1.76 billion Trump's slush fund? |
| 0:24.6 | New fallout from President Trump's fund to compensate his political allies using taxpayer money. |
| 0:29.6 | A new lawsuit seeks to stop it. |
| 0:31.6 | And some congressional Republicans say they're looking for ways to put guardrails on this plan. |
| 0:36.6 | The $1.8 billion fund was |
| 0:38.7 | established as part of Trump's settlement with the IRS over the leaking of his tax returns. |
| 0:43.2 | The so-called anti-weaponization fund is complicating Republican efforts to advance their $70 billion |
| 0:49.1 | immigration enforcement bill. The fund would compensate people Trump feels were mistreated by the DOJ under the Biden administration, some of whom attacked police during the January 6th riots. Now two officers who helped protect the Capitol that day are suing to stop it. |
| 1:05.1 | We're not asking for to be compensated for this. We're asking for this to be stopped. Just to be clear, people that hurt |
| 1:11.2 | police get money all the time. Attorney General Todd Blanche has not committed to banning funds from |
| 1:18.5 | going to anyone who assaulted police. He said a commission will decide who receives those payouts. |
| 1:23.6 | No. Is it Trump's insanely new low poll numbers? He's going to crack the 30s because she's going to go into the 20s. |
| 1:30.2 | President Trump's approval rating has now dropped to the lowest level of his second term at 37%. |
| 1:35.8 | And views of the economy have dropped to their lowest level in several years. Only 29% now say the economy is good. |
| 1:43.8 | It's not. The elephant in the room is good. It's not. |
| 1:45.5 | The elephant in the room is the Democratic Party autopsy, which they desperately did not want to release. |
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