Steve Schmidt

Stephen Edward Schmidt (born September 28, 1970) is an American political and corporate strategist. He co-founded the Lincoln Project in 2019, in opposition to Donald Trump and his leadership of the Republican Party. He left the project in 2021 and has co-founded the Save America Movement, a PAC organized to oppose the actions of the Republican Party under Trump. He authors a podcast on Substack entitled, The Warning. Earlier, Schmidt had worked on Republican political campaigns, including those of President George W. Bush, California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, and U.S. senator from Arizona John McCain during his 2008 presidential campaign. He was a vice chair at the public relations firm Edelman, where he advised CEOs and senior decision makers at Fortune 500 corporations, until he stepped down July 2018. He became a political analyst for MSNBC in 2011, and appeared on the third season of Showtime's The Circus. Schmidt has been extremely critical of Donald Trump and, of the GOP for supporting him. In June 2018, Schmidt renounced the Republican Party as "fully the party of Trump". In September 2020, Schmidt predicted that violence would erupt as a result of Trump's election denial proclamations. In early December 2020, he stated: "The Republican Party is an organized conspiracy for the purposes of maintaining power for self-interest, and the self-interest of its donor class ... It's no longer dedicated to American democracy." Schmidt is a founder of The Lincoln Project, a group founded to campaign against Donald Trump. It became the most financially successful Super-PAC in American history, raising almost $100 million to campaign against Trump's failed 2020 re-election bid. He left the group in 2021. In a podcast on December 14, 2020, Schmidt announced that he planned to register as a member of the Democratic Party.