The Lincoln Project's mission is to “defeat President Trump and Trumpism at the ballot box,” according to the organization's website. Co-Founder Mike Madrid said he and the other seven founders have been determined from the get-go to “see [Trump] defeated.”

Madrid criticized Trump's COVID-19 response.

“His mismanagement, his incompetence, and his denial of what is basic sixth grade science has led to the death of over 200,000 of his countrymen,” Madrid said. “There is no other country in this world that is dealing with it at the levels that we are. His mismanagement has brought this plague onto our people directly as a result, again, of his incompetence and his denial or lack or ability or desire to protect us as a country. It’s what we’ve been saying for many, many months as a Lincoln Project, trying to warn people that this man was unfit for office and, unfortunately, he’s demonstrated exactly everything that we’ve been saying in a way that’s far better than we ever could have.”

President Trump has touted on Twitter that his response to the COVID-19 pandemic was actually effective, claiming he “hit it early and hard.”

Recently, The Lincoln Project released an ad called “Mourning in America.”

“This is the play on the famous Ronald Reagan ad that was one of the most famous ads ever in American political history," said Madrid. "We recast that ‘Morning,’ m-o-r-n-i-n-g, to a ‘Mourning,’ m-o-u-r-n-i-n-g, to talk about the country’s dealings with the coronavirus pandemic. This was the ad that Donald Trump responded to online and actually, I think, catalyzed The Lincoln Project from a group of eight consultants into a national movement."

On Twitter, Trump responded to The Lincoln Project’s ad on Twitter by calling the group of men “LOSERS.” Surprisingly, that worked in organization’s favor.

“We raised a couple million dollars within 24 hours and started using the money he was raising for us essentially to keep running the ad, and it just kind of spiraled upwards until it just became this national phenomenon,” Madrid said.

Another Lincoln Project ad is titled “Flag of Treason," which shows images of people carrying confederate flags at Trump rallies or in support of Trump. 

“This was the ad that really emblazoned Donald Trump as the defender of the confederacy and the confederate flag, and as the defender of confederate monuments,” Madrid said. “The reason why it was so important is because it really split that college-educated versus non-college-educated gap into a chasm. It just blew it up. And that’s when we started to see the collapse of his polling numbers with base Republican voters back in March.”

The Lincoln Project works to create aggressive videos that target Republicans, specifically college-educated women, Madrid explained.

"The education divide between college- and non-college-educated voters in the Republican party is the largest split that exists," he said. "That is the true chasm. That is really the break that Donald Trump has created in the Republican party: Those that are more educated have an aversion to Donald Trump, [and] those that don’t have a college degree and are less educated tend to rally behind him. So that’s the primary lens through which we’re communicating to people, but there are a couple of other key demographics. The other is what we call '65 plus:' those senior citizens that are over 65 years of age, those that have been most directly impacted by the coronavirus pandemic. And, in fact, over the last week since he contracted the virus, you have seen the polls widen greatly between his levels of support dropping and Joe Biden’s increasing.”

Madrid said it’s unprecedented to have political consultants “turn the canons inside the ship and start firing at our own party nominee.” However, he and the other co-founders cite several reasons as to why they don’t support the president.

"Donald Trump is a threat to the American Republic," he said. "We don’t see it as a betrayal to our party, as much as those that are sticking with him are betraying our country. And we take it that seriously, that viscerally, that emotionally, and we’re using all of the years of experience that we have to ensure his defeat.” 

Madrid sees The Lincoln Project as an organization that seeks to preserve conservative values.

“I want to make this very clear, I and my colleagues have not changed our position on issues one bit. We have not moved or compromised any one of our principles and values. We’re not fighting against Donald Trump because we’ve changed our conservative values. We’re fighting him because of our conservative values. He is a threat to conservatism,” Madrid said.

Madrid wants to protect the American republic and democracy. He said The Lincoln Project will criticize anyone who threatens those things, not just Trump. 

“If that threat comes from the left or the right, we will simply engage with that," he said. "What that means politically? Honestly, we don’t know yet, other than the early discussions that we have had. Again, we’re very focused on winning this race in the next three or four weeks, but the early discussions we have had have been on working to reform a lot of the loopholes essentially that we have found in our Constitution and with the executive power that has been abridged by this president. There's a whole lot of things that we never envisioned people would violate so shamelessly that clearly need to be codified and protected to preserve our institutions. And I think in the very short term, that’s something we will work on with Democrats or Republicans or anybody willing to protect our country."

Madrid said many Lincoln Project co-founders will "absolutely be opposed as individuals" to many policies that the Biden administration is likely to advance.

"Does that mean that we will be engaged in The Lincoln Project? I don’t know," he said. "I don’t think that there’s much of an appetite at this moment for that, but there’s a good chance that certainly as individuals we will be staking that position and making our voice known. We think we’ve earned that. We think we ought to be part of that process. And we think it’s part of bringing a balance between the two-party system back to the American electoral process and the system of governance at a time when Donald Trump and the Republican party have so gone off the rails and taken it so far to the extreme that they’re no longer viewed as a viable or desirous part of the governance process."

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