When the question involves the Lincoln Project group, the question should never be “how can they be this stupid?”

The question really is “why is there no floor to how stupid they can get?” Their latest stunt, of sending out young Democrat staffers, including a black man, to pose as tiki torch carrying white supremacists at a Glenn Youngkin event in Charlottesville yesterday, is truly illustrative of just how the saying “the stupid, it burns” is a real thing.

This all started, allegedly, as the brainchild of the Lincoln Project people. What if we sent out operatives to pretend that they were white supremacists in order to point out that Glenn Youngkin is JUST LIKE Donald Trump??? What could possibly go wrong???

Instead of this being treated like a protest stunt, however – which by the casting call alone, it had to be – the press and the Terry McAuliffe campaign treated this as a REAL THING. Watching the indignant Tweets roll across Twitter from righteously angry blue-checked Democrats was quite a sight to behold.

And McAuliffe campaign staff immediately posted tweets pretending those holding tiki-torches really were white supremacists who supported Youngkin https://t.co/IyCCwDzope pic.twitter.com/LB3GdJXrIq

— John McCormack (@McCormackJohn) October 30, 2021

Even more hilarious was watching the young Democrat staffers get identified, one by one, as Twitter sleuths and some journalists began to piece together what was happening, and seeing them freak out and lock down their social media profiles – even renaming Twitter accounts. Do these kids not know how social media works? How could they have been so blindly stupid and think that they would never be identified? The tipping point, however, looks to have been when VICE reporter Cameron Joseph identified one of the staffers who was cosplaying as a white supremacist and tracked the staffer back to the Democrats, and the Lincoln Project itself.

The Lincoln Project acknowledged they were behind the stunt after VICE News identified one of the people dressed in the photo in front of Youngkin’s campaign bus as a low-level Democratic operative who has recently been working for Democratic sting operator Lauren Windsor’s The Undercurrent. Her group has repeatedly gone undercover as conservative activists to goad politicians into saying what’s really on their mind—and has also held events alongside the Lincoln Project in recent days.”

For her part, Lauren Windsor produced some unintentional comedy when she decided to call out THE REPORTER on Twitter for not “disclosing” his information TO HER.

You should have disclosed your close personal relationship to the person you ID'd in the photo… @vice

— Lauren Windsor (@lawindsor) October 29, 2021

Print that tweet and frame it, because that is ART. However, Windsor is very proud of the work she did with the Lincoln Project, she says. And once caught, the Lincoln Project came out with their own statement about Glenn Youngkin and Donald Trump and this was TOTALLY a legit protest that made complete sense.

Lincoln Project claims credit for the "white supremacist" stunt at Youngkin's campaign event today. pic.twitter.com/h18Sfk5AUC

— John McCormack (@McCormackJohn) October 29, 2021

And then all the angry McAuliffe staffers, so eager to denounce Glenn Youngkin, started deleting their tweets. Screenshots are forever, though. One of the young staffers who was tagged as a participant, Camden Layton, is vigorously denying (after unlocking his Twitter account) that he was even there (although the claim that “I was at my apartment alone all day long” is hardly an alibi).

It’s rare that a hoax job of this magnitude gets inflated and deflated within a single day’s news cycle, and even if the McAuliffe campaign knew about it (there’s about a 50/50 chance that they did, given that the Lincoln Project has been actively supporting the McAuliffe campaign). But after screaming about it on Twitter via multiple staff accounts, the McAuliffe campaign now can’t run away fast enough from the Lincoln Project.

And when asked about it by Chris Cuomo on CNN, Lincoln Project “advisor” Stuart Stevens claimed that this was playing “hardball” and trying to tie Youngkin to Trump.

“Some people showed up at a Youngkin event posing as Charlottesville protestors,” said Cuomo. “A group you’re with, the Lincoln Project, owned that it was them, that they posed this way because they wanted people to remember. You’re getting crushed by people on the right as a dirty tactic. Do you stand behind what was done and is that being what you guys say you oppose?”

“No,” said Stevens, seemingly addressing the second part of Cuomo’s question. “Listen, 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.”

Stevens then changed the subject from the stunt to Trump’s infamous comment about the Charlottesville rally and counterprotest. “You had some very bad people in that group,” he said at the time. “But you also had people that were very fine people, on both sides.” During one protest, a White nationalists drove his car into demonstrators, killing a woman.”

“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. You know, the Lincoln Project was the first in this race to put Charlottesville in an ad. And some people thought maybe it went too far. But we did it. And it worked. And then McAuliffe’s campaign followed us and put Charlottesville in a very good ad they did. So I think the question here is, we can’t ignore what happened in Charlottesville, the question is why hasn’t Glenn Youngkin denounced Donald Trump?”

Meanwhile, Glenn Youngkin said that “Terry McAuliffe owns this” during an interview on the Bo Snerdley Show.

Ed Morrissey of Hot Air ends with this point: if McAuliffe now loses, the media won’t blame him for his complete idiocy regarding parents and schools, or Biden’s continued plummeting poll numbers and name-checking of Donald Trump. They will now get to blame the Lincoln Project hoax instead as the “tipping point” in this race. Except the numbers have been trending Youngkin’s way for a lot longer than the last 24 hours. The Lincoln Project has egg on its face and dog poop on its shoes, but that won’t be the reason why McAuliffe may lose this race that was his to win. But if the left can blame the Lincoln Project instead of themselves – and keep doubling down instead of looking at themselves – then you can bet that they will.

Featured image via juancmtz_ on Pixabay, cropped, Pixabay license