Ingraham slams CNN, MSNBC for ignoring allegations against Lincoln Project co-founder until after NYT report

In her "Ingraham Angle" on Monday, host Laura Ingraham slammed the Never-Trump Lincoln Project and one of its co-founders -- John Weaver -- who is accused of harassing young men with sexually perverted remarks and questions.

Ingraham said that it took until one day prior when the New York Times laid out the allegations against Weaver -- a senior adviser to the late Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and the 2016 presidential bid of ex-Ohio Gov. John Kasich -- for the mainstream press to stop fawning over the anti-Trump organization.

The host said the Lincoln Project sought to promote an "anti-populist party" of Bush-era Republican thought, divorced from the new grassroots populism of Donald Trump.

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The project's other founding members include New Jersey attorney George Conway III -- the husband of Kellyanne Conway -- McCain's former campaign strategist Steve Schmidt, and Rick Wilson, a Florida political consultant who worked on the bids of President George H.W. Bush and former Rep. Connie Mack III, R-Fla.

Ingraham said that unlike the minds behind the Lincoln Project, to Trump's voters, the 45th president's appeal was not in his at times heated tweets or how he carried himself in public, but by his conservative and populist agenda.

"They admire the president's courage for taking on the swamp and are faithful to his America First policies that brought staggering prosperity, peace, and rising income until the Chinavirus hit," she said. 

To his voters, she continued, Trump was a president "who truly wanted to preserve the America we love.

"But let's face it, the only Republicans the media will ever love are former Republicans, especially like the grifters at the Lincoln Project."

She said that prior to allegations of Weaver's deviant behavior, leaders like him and Conway and Wilson and others were fixtures on national news programs -- going on to play a montage of their appearances.

Ingraham pointed to one clip of NBC News host Brian Williams reporting on a column by anti-Trump conservative columnist Jennifer Rubin, who wrote that the Lincoln Project founders "can say to their children and grandchildren that they gave their all to defend the deeply held principles."

"John Weaver, the media's go-to guy for calling out conservatives over their political and moral deviance. Well, you may recall the angle was the first television show to break this story," Ingraham said in response, playing a clip from January where a guest on her program laid out the allegations against Weaver.

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"That was almost three weeks ago, but it was only this past weekend that "The New York Times" finally saw fit to cover this sleazy Weaver saga," she said. 

"The 'true conservative' is now accused of making sexual overtures to 21 young men including a 14-year-old. Asking questions about his body while he was still in high school. And then more pointed ones after he turned 18," she explained, calling out CNN and MSNBC for failing to report on the allegations until the New York Times covered it on Sunday, "despite the fact that the Lincoln Project members appeared at least 21 times on those networks."

"Now as for the money grabbers at the Lincoln Project itself they did not discuss the predatory behavior of the cofounder until "The Times" coverage made it impossible to avoid. But it is time for America to hold these people accountable for their misrepresentations and defamation."

Ingraham said that in turn, it was the press that gave the Lincoln Project the visibility to raise the nearly $90 million that it has, adding that it had no true following in the contemporary, Trumpian, GOP -- which gave the president they loathe a 90% approval rating through much of his term.

"Anyone with a brain understood the Lincoln Project operated as merely another arm of the Democrat Party and another weapon in the war to defeat Trump, and there is nothing Republican or conservative about them. But you see the perversion did not end with John Weaver," she said, explaining that the "ideological perversion" of the group was also devious.

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"Every corporation that aided and abetted the Lincoln Project actively and helped fund its fat salaries is complicit. How much did Weaver himself make? While he was trolling young men? Appalling."

Ingraham concluded her 'Angle' noting that the Lincoln Project is just one entity of "NeverTrumpers" like Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, and Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., who are "desperate for relevance in a post-Bush world."

"[T]hey don't have the situational awareness to see when they are being used and exploited by the press."