Lincoln Project video accuses Trump allies of Jim Crow racism

Ted Cruz
Targets Josh Hawley, Ted Cruz, Ron Johnson, and Kevin McCarthy.

In one of its most savage attack yet on Republican congressional allies of President Donald Trump, The Lincoln Project has released a new video that charges Sens. Josh Hawley, Ted Cruz, and Ron Johnson and Rep. Kevin McCarthy of Jim Crow-style racism.

The 60-second “Which Side” video declares the quartet who challenged the election of President-elect Joe Biden are leaders of what the Lincoln Project dubs the new “Jim Crow Caucus.” Their intent, the video contends, is to disqualify and therefore disenfranchise Black voters whose choices made big differences in the election outcomes in states like Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin.

The Lincoln Project video appeals to corporate America and other political donors, urging them to do what many corporations already have: reconsider providing financial support to such politicians.

The video only mentions Hawley of Missouri, Cruz of Texas, Johnson of Wisconsin, and McCarthy of California by name. Yet it implies broader condemnation. In an earlier video, The Lincoln Project drilled Florida’s Republican Sen. Rick Scott for being among those who voted to reject some of Biden’s Electoral College votes.

“In the 1960s, powerful White politicians tried to stop Black Americans from voting, with Jim Crow laws,” a narrator declares as historic images of 1960s Civil Rights clashes appear.

“Today the new Jim Crow Caucus is going further,” the narrator continues as the images switch to contemporary pictures of Cruz, Hawley, Johnson, and McCarthy. “They are trying to throw out millions of Black voters. … It’s a new dark chapter in American history.”

That’s when the message turns to corporate America, as images turn to various industrial locations. “Any corporation or individual who contributes to the Jim Crow Caucus is supporting racism at the highest level,” the narrator warns.

Images then turn to Selma, Ala., and the 1965 Civil Rights march that John Lewis led across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, a watershed moment in America, when the peaceful marchers were met by racist anger, vicious beatings, and arrests on what became known as “Bloody Sunday.”

“It’s a choice: Which side of the Edmund Pettus Bridge do you stand on?” the narrator asks. “America, or the Jim Crow Caucus?

In a news release, Nate Nesbitt, national press secretary for The Lincoln Project, said the video is in part a reaction to the narrative put forth by what he called “radicalized far-right propagandists” trying to draw parallels between the Jan. 6 siege and sacking of the U.S. Capitol with actions of the Black Lives Matter movement over the summer. The truer comparison, Nesbitt argued, is with Jim Crow-era racists.

“It’s time Americans hold these treasonous elected officials and the corporations and individuals who enable these cowardly men responsible,” Nesbitt stated in the release. “There is no unity or peace that can be achieved without accountability and justice.”

Scott Powers

Scott Powers is an Orlando-based political journalist with 30+ years’ experience, mostly at newspapers such as the Orlando Sentinel and the Columbus Dispatch. He covers local, state and federal politics and space news across much of Central Florida. His career earned numerous journalism awards for stories ranging from the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster to presidential elections to misplaced nuclear waste. He and his wife Connie have three grown children. Besides them, he’s into mystery and suspense books and movies, rock, blues, basketball, baseball, writing unpublished novels, and being amused. Email him at [email protected].


5 comments

  • Ponte Vedra Natalie

    January 17, 2021 at 11:10 am

    Such a truthful ad. Its become more obvious than ever that the Republican party is focused on maintaining racial division, strife, and inequity. This does nothing to strengthen America and the fact remains that Republican policies are the reason there were protesters out in the streets during the summer anyway–policies that make it easy for cops to kill unarmed citizens in broad daylight with no fear of legal consequence.

    So, supporting the GOP means you support brutal, systemic racism and sedition. It doesn’t get any simpler than that.

  • Sonja Fitch

    January 17, 2021 at 12:48 pm

    Rutherford you are one of the goptrump death cult JIM CROW caucus! We will not forget or forgive Rutherford! Rutherford you allowed yourself to be used and abused! Resign Rutherford! You are not fit to represent all Americans! Rutherford you have been completely brainwashed ! Wait Rutherford is this the real you , a racist sexist sociopath? Time will tell!

  • craig

    January 17, 2021 at 1:07 pm

    This is such Bullshit. Just the Racist left draining every last drop out of the race card. Real racism exits at hbcu’s and the dnc.

  • Ron Ogden

    January 18, 2021 at 6:48 am

    The Lincoln Project is a group of malcontents who were left out of Trump’s orbit and rely for money upon bitter old leftist cranks trying to relive Woodstock. They’re largely Democrats. Some, sadly, are ’60s Republicans from the Northeast–the Rockefeller, Lindsay, Charles Goodell types (I bet you didn’t realize that the NFL kneeler-in-chief, Roger Goodell, is the son of one of the most left wing US Senators in history)–who no longer find a place in the Republican Party of the 21st Century.

  • Sandra S Rodebaugh

    January 18, 2021 at 6:59 pm

    The Lincoln Project does not deserve the name of such a fine man. You are a bunch of back stabbing Republicans with no backbone that only want trouble in our country. I am a 67 year old Republican. I have not always been a Republican.I grew up as a Democrat. You may not have liked Trump but before this pandemic he had our country in better shape than it has been in a long time. He got things done. Millions of people in this country voted for him and he would have won had you spineless Republicans stood up for what was right and proved the fraud we all knew happened. Now you want to blame Josh Hawley,Kevin McCarthy and Ted Cruz for things they weren’t responsible for and neither was our president. Now we all know the storming of the Capitol was preplanned and the guy who planned it has been arrested. Was that paid for to make Trump look bad? It was done to blame it on him. The Republican party needs to grow up and quit turning on each other and should have backed your president no matter what you thought of him personally, because now look at the mess you got us in. We are probably looking forward to our great grandchildren growing up in a Socialist country. They won’t be able to say the Pledge of Allegiance to our flag, because they will probably get rid of that too, or express their right to freedom of religion that I grew up loving. Your Lincoln Project is not making sure the Democrats who who have committed crimes be punished. You are turning on your own party who do not! I pray every day for unity within this great party, but you have to help too

Comments are closed.


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