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Producer Christy Walton attends the 28th Annual Imagen Awards at The Beverly Hilton Hotel on August … [+]
A video released by a recently formed anti-Trump group on Monday sparked an overnight Twitter rampage from President Donald Trump. One of the group’s richest backers? Walmart billionaire Christy Walton.
The Lincoln Project, a super-PAC founded by prominent Republicans including George Conway (husband of White House advisor Kellyanne Conway), released the video, titled “Mourning in America,” attacking Trump’s response to the coronavirus pandemic. The one-minute video postulated, “Under the leadership of Donald Trump, our country is weaker and sicker and poorer. And now Americans are asking, ‘If we have another four years like this, will there even be an America?’” The group is currently asking for donations to help run the video as an advertisement on national television.
The video was a play on Ronald Reagan’s 1984 “Morning in America” campaign ad, which highlighted the positive impact of Reagan’s first term. In response to the ad, Trump called The Lincoln Project leaders “loser types” and tweeted, “A group of RINO Republicans who failed badly 12 years ago, then again 8 years ago, and then got BADLY beaten by me, a political first timer, 4 years ago, have copied (no imagination) the concept of an ad from Ronald Reagan, ‘Morning in America’, doing everything possible to get even for all of their many failures.”
Walton donated $20,000 to the group in January. Forbes estimates that she is worth $9.1 billion. She inherited a stake in Walmart when her husband, John Walton (one of founder Sam Walton’s sons), died in a 2005 plane crash. In the past year, Christy Walton has also donated to Democratic presidential candidates Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper. She declined to comment on the donations.
So far, The Lincoln Project has raised $2.6 million since November 2019. The group’s website states Donald Trump and his supporters present “a clear and present danger to the Constitution and our Republic.” In December, the group published an op-ed in The New York Times, advocating against voting for Trump in the upcoming election.
In addition to Conway, the group’s advisors include Jennifer Horn, a former chair of the Republican Party of New Hampshire, and Mike Madrid, former political director of the California Republican Party, among others.