LINCOLN PROJECT FOUNDER MELTS DOWN, PART 348913:
The latest drama began over the weekend amid news that Meghan McCain’s book Bad Republican hadn’t even managed to sell 300 copies. Schmidt joined in the Twitter pile-on, accusing McCain of “14 years of abuse and attacks” and being a “raging, screaming, crying” baby on the 2008 campaign trail. “The tantrums were beyond anything I have ever witnessed from any other human being,” Schmidt said.
Given that rumors have long swirled about McCain’s difficult behavior when she was a co-host on The View, Cockburn isn’t dismissing this accusation out of hand. But Schmidt then turned his fire on a once-unthinkable target: John McCain, a man he’d long claimed to admire. Schmidt claimed that McCain had privately admitted that he’d had an affair with a Washington lobbyist named Vicki Iseman, an allegation that surfaced in 2008 but that both McCain and Iseman denied.
Schmidt also said McCain was scared of his own veep nominee, Sarah Palin. “The bravest man that I had ever met turned out to be terrified of the creature that he had created,” Schmidt lamented. He then let out a wail of agony and tore at his shirt with his own fingernails.
Cockburn notes that if there’s a messier bitch in all of Washington, then he has yet to emerge.
More details of Schmidt’s lengthy Twitter bender at Fox News: Steve Schmidt unloads on NY Times, NY Mag, AP, claims reporting on Lincoln Project will be ‘discredited.’
Lincoln Project co-founder Steve Schmidt guaranteed that stories from multiple mainstream media outlets outlining dysfunction and scandal at his organization would be “discredited” on Thursday.
“By the time the sun sets on the West Coast of the United States of America the below stories will all be discredited. I will be asking @nytimes, @NYMag @AP for FULL-THROATED CORRECTIONS,” he tweeted.
Schmidt, who says he no longer has involvement with the disgraced PAC known as much for its anti-Trump exploits as its myriad of scandals and public fiascos, assailed the New York Times (“21 Men Accuse Lincoln Project Co-Founder of Online Harassment”), New York Magazine (“The Predator in the Lincoln Project”), and the Associated Press (“How a leading anti-Trump group ignored a crisis in its ranks”) over their stories in 2021 about fellow co-founder John Weaver’s online harassment of young, gay men.
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As of Friday afternoon, no corrections or addendums to the stories Schmidt targeted have been added. Spokespersons for the New York Times and AP didn’t respond to requests for comment. A spokesperson for Vox Media, which owns New York Magazine, backed up its report.
“We stand by this story; we have not been made aware of anything requiring a correction,” Vox Media spokesperson Laura Coates told Fox News Digital.
Schmidt’s online rage over the stories is the latest odd turn in the saga of the Lincoln Project, which raised nearly $90 million in 2020 but was later consumed by Weaver’s scandal, as well as reports of financial self-dealing, bitter in-fighting, a toxic work environment, and calls by even its own former members to shut down.
It remains in operation today, but it’s viewed warily even by some Democrats. For instance, Democratic Ohio Senate candidate Tim Ryan’s campaign recently urged it not to assist in his race against Republican J.D. Vance.
And finally, a question asked and answered: Who was ever dumb enough to make Steve Schmidt famous?
The media’s janitor, that’s who:
UPDATE: Former John McCain Campaign Manager Steve Schmidt Says He Didn’t Vote for Him. “He also told us something he’s never revealed before: his disillusionment with McCain was so deep by the end of the 2008 campaign that he didn’t think McCain should be in the White House. ‘The only conceivable conclusion that you could get to after watching his conduct in this campaign was that he’s completely unfit to be president,’ Schmidt told us. ‘Truth is, I didn’t vote for him either.’ He left the presidential line on his 2008 ballot blank.”
(Updated and bumped.)