BUSTED: The Lincoln Project steals tweets from little-known Twitter accounts
The Lincoln Project is stealing content directly from small progressive Twitter accounts and passing other people’s posts off as their own.
Loading the front page…
The Lincoln Project is stealing content directly from small progressive Twitter accounts and passing other people’s posts off as their own.
The Lincoln Project is stealing content directly from small progressive Twitter accounts and passing other people's posts off as their own.
Project Lincoln has been copying and pasting political commentary without crediting creators, including a teenager's US Postal Service parody video. The shared captions are almost identical caption.
Loading this lets X set cookies and collect data.
View on XThe eighteen-year-old freelance visual development artist then questioned if she could file a Digital Millennium Copyright Act takedown request, a warning before a potential infringement lawsuit.
@ScribblnTaylor added: "DOUBLE f**k these guys because they support the privatization of the mail industry. Go buy some stamps and call your representatives."
Loading this lets X set cookies and collect data.
View on XGrace Spelman, a verified comedy writer who goes by "comrade edelgard von hresvelg," was angered that Project Lincoln swiped her anti-Trump video and accompanying text overlays.
"I f**kin made this video you f**ks take that text off there," she retweeted.
Spelman wrote in a follow-up statement: "I never get mad at people stealing my sh*t on the internet bc I’ve been on here long enough to know it’s inevitable but I f**king hate the Project Lincoln republican sh*t-swamp lmao."
Loading this lets X set cookies and collect data.
View on XAn advocate for Massachusetts Sen. Ed Markey's re-election campaign, @kellyxhui, had spaced out an array of animal emojis paired with the heart envelope icon. She wrote: "they're voting by mail for ed markey."
The keyboard shortcut perpetrators simply pasted @kellyxhui's mail-in voters illustration from their clipboard and replaced the state senator with Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden.
Screenshotting a side-by-side comparison, the original composer wrote on Twitter: "i hate it here."
Loading this lets X set cookies and collect data.
View on XIn a statement to The Post Millennial, @kellyxhui wrote:
"[T]he lincoln project did not reach out to me for permission. i understand the life of a meme & how by nature it gets reproduced, but i think what is upsetting is that it was a blatant copy and paste by the lincoln project, an organization whose vision i don’t agree with—and with founders whose views & ideology i find reprehensible, frankly."
Comedian Photoshopper and video editor Vic Berger IV of Office Hours Live complained about his stolen artwork in July, accusing "the Iraqi child-killing neocons at The Lincoln Project" of cropping around Berger's altered Trump-Epstein framed photo collection. "Cowards," Berger retorted.
Loading this lets X set cookies and collect data.
View on XEven mainstream media contributors aren't safe.
The Lincoln Project suspiciously prompted the same question as Andrew Kaczynski, a reporter at CNN's K-File, both retweeting President Donald Trump and asking him, "Why do we have more deaths?"
Loading this lets X set cookies and collect data.
View on XProject Lincoln even plagiarized the Democratic Socialists of America, tweeting a verbatim response to a coronavirus testing article by The New York Times.
"The ruling class get rapid COVID tests so that they can have parties, while the working class are out at risk every day, and wait up to two weeks to get test results. This is class warfare," the communist organisation and the "Republican" group tweeted.
Loading this lets X set cookies and collect data.
View on XThe New York Times reported that the Lincoln Project engaged in an informal "amplification partnership" with Meme2020, a self-described collective of social media influences "on a mission to make memes that matter."
Before Super Tuesday, Meme2020 posted a flurry of sponsored content in Mike Bloomberg’s failed 2020 presidential run. Now, it has launched a new vote-by-mail registration campaign aimed at targeting young voters and preventing Trump's re-election—an alignment with Project Lincoln's Never-Trump agenda.
The group will reportedly be disseminating more memes this summer and throughout the fall. It has taken steps to register as a super political action committee, Meme America, to financially support candidates who “understand the unique challenges facing millennials and Gen Z,” Ryan Patrick Kelley, chief of staff for Meme2020, told The New York Times.
Meme America PAC was filed on Aug. 29 and has not yet submitted a full financial report for the current cycle, according to .
Libby’s Desk
Commentary and must-reads from Libby’s desk, straight to your inbox.
TPM Newsletter
The Post Millennial’s top stories, delivered to your inbox.
“It's no secret that the Lincoln Project has been just an absolute juggernaut in this area,” Kelley told The Hill.
“The Lincoln Project is resonating all over America because we speak to conservatives and independents in a way they‘ll understand," said Sarah Lenti, executive director of the Lincoln Project. "Meme2020 works much the same way: we’re using the language of the internet to speak to younger voters.
Meme2020 is led by Mick Purzycki, also the CEO of the unaffiliated meme aggregator and notorious scammer Jerry Media.
Jerry Media's "F**kjerry" Instagram account has been infamously cited in social media circles for profiting off others' jokes and promoting the fraudulent 2017 Fyre Festival, which stranded attendees—who paid up to $12,000 per ticket—on an island without proper accommodations.
The Lincoln Project was founded in 2019 by former "Republican operatives" who oppose their own party and propagate liberal propaganda across platforms.
As if the hacks weren't already disingenuous, Project Lincoln's "mic drop" moments have pointed to their familiarity with the cut, copy, and paste commands.
Perhaps this is all just proof that the Left can't meme.
The Post Millennial reached out to the Lincoln Project and Jerry Media but have not heard back by the time of publication. Kelley, Meme 2020's chief of staff, declined comment after several email requests.
