The co-founder of the Never-Trumper Lincoln Project has doubled down on the group’s much-decried decision to stage a political stunt involving fake “white supremacists” supposedly backing Virginia’s Republican gubernatorial candidate Glenn Youngkin.
When asked by CNN’s Chris Cuomo Friday if he wanted to apologize, Stuart Stevens said no.
In fact, he told Cuomo, this is why people have donated millions to the Lincoln Project – even though both liberals and conservatives have called him out for trying to smear Youngkin as racist.
“Listen,” said Stevens. “Every day I hear people pleading with the Lincoln Project to help show Democrats how to win, how to play hardball. You know, this is an example.”
The Lincoln Project organized a fake group of five people pretending to be white supremacists to stand outside Youngkin’s campaign bus Friday during an event in Charlottesville, site of the deadly “Unite the Right” rally in August 2017.
In one of the defining images of that rally, organizer Jason Kessler led a tiki torch-wielding mob on a march through the grounds of the University of Virginia in an attempt to echo Nazi torchlight parades.
President Trump later declared there were “very fine people on both sides” of the deadly rally.
Stevens called on Youngkin, who’s beating Democratic candidate Terry McAuliffe in a recent Fox News polls, to denounce former President Trump.
‘The question here is not about some guys who showed up at a rally,’ said Stevens. ‘It’s why hasn’t Glenn Youngkin denounced Donald Trump for saying that there are good people on both sides? I mean, that is absolutely outrageous. And it’s because Glenn Youngkin wants it both ways. And I think that’s the message that needs to be driven here.’