Shortly before 1 a.m. on Tuesday, Donald Trump erupted on Twitter over an ad attacking his “failed presidency” and coronavirus bungling that aired during one of his favorite Fox News programs, Tucker Carlson Tonight. “There’s mourning in America,” the minute-long spot begins, a flip on the famous “Morning in America” line Ronald Reagan employed in his 1984 campaign. “Under the leadership of Donald Trump, our country is weaker, and sicker, and poorer,” it continues, with somber string music reverberating in the background. “And now Americans are asking, if we have another four years like this, will there even be an America?”
Over four tweets, the president hurled personal attacks about the physical appearances and career shortcomings of the creators of the Lincoln Project, an anti-Trump PAC launched in December by high-profile GOP dissidents that paid for the spot. “A group of RINO Republicans who failed badly 12 years ago, then again 8 years ago, and then got BADLY beaten by me, a political first timer, 4 years ago, have copied (no imagination) the concept of an ad from Ronald Reagan, ‘Morning in America’, doing everything possible to…get even for all of their many failures,” he wrote in the middle of the night, calling the “so-called” Lincoln Project “a disgrace to Honest Abe” and personally swiping at George Conway, the notoriously outspoken spouse of senior White House counselor Kellyanne Conway and founding member of the PAC: “I don’t know what Kellyanne did to her deranged loser of a husband, Moonface, but it must have been really bad.” He continued by highlighting the political losses of others in the group, including former John McCain presidential campaign consultant John Weaver, who Trump derided for losing “big for [John] Kasich (to me);” Republican campaign strategist Rick Wilson, who he called “Crazed,” and a number of others, whom he claimed he refused to hire in 2016 “because they don’t know how to win.” He concluded by writing off the PAC as “all LOSERS.”
Deciding that he had not yet gotten over the ad, Trump returned to Twitter in the afternoon to accuse “the RINO losers” at the Lincoln Project of stealing money from the PAC’s donors and lining “their own pockets.” While speaking to reporters at Joint Base Andrews earlier in the day, the president mocked Conway as a “stone-cold loser” and said of the group, “They should not call it the Lincoln Project. It’s not fair to Abraham Lincoln, a great president. They should call it the losers project.”
Members of the PAC took Trump’s reaction as an in-kind endorsement. “I guess we know what keeps the president of the United States up at night. It isn’t the Americans who are dying once every 45 seconds of covid-19,” tweeted Conway. He went on to tease future Lincoln Project ads that he predicted “Orangeface” won’t like, adding, “We appreciate his support, [and if] he didn’t like this one, he’sreally not going to like what we’ve got coming for him soon and in the fall.” Wilson described the Twitter meltdown as “a display of how weak Donald Trump is as a president” during a phone call with the Hive. “He should be focused on the 70,000 dead Americans and how his incompetence led to many of their deaths, and instead he’s rage tweeting about us for 12 hours,” he continued. “Now that we know just how vulnerable he is, we found his weakness and we’re going to keep hitting it.”
Weaver wrote on Twitter that his group “won’t be intimidated“ and “are proud to partner with our Constitution loving friends on the Democratic side as we help build the Army of the Decent to route @realDonaldTrump & his enablers in the GOP.” The Lincoln Project’s Tara Setmayer, a Never Trump CNN contributor, wrote that their ad clearly “struck a nerve. Trump spent more time rage tweeting @ProjectLincoln at 1am than he has reflecting on 70k dead Americans or the heroism of front line workers.” Neoconservative pundit Bill Kristol, whose policy leanings helped steer previous Republican administrations but who is now dedicated to unseating the current one, congratulated the group “for provoking this 1:00 am Trump tweet storm! The thought of Trump up late, stewing about their ad and muttering to himself, then calling and waking a staffer to get their names and bios for his tweets, cheered me up this morning.”