Should the Democratic Establishment fear Lindy Li?

Unmasking a former donor who warns she knows 'where the bodies are buried'

Welcome back to The Red Letter.

A few weeks ago, the name Lindy Li came up when my producer Eric and I discussed the need to book guests on The Tara Palmeri Show who reflect the people in power on The Right. Information has become so incredibly siloed, and when political tides change, audiences feel misled because their trusted sources only feature the same 10 people with the same opinion. As you can imagine, it’s easy to book Democrats who are down to shit-talk the Trump administration, but getting Republicans to defend their leadership is not as simple. After all, the best part of being in the minority is the mudsling and claiming you could do it better.

But Lindy Li is a strange case. She’s a former Democratic fundraiser with a large social media following who announced her rabid (and convenient) conversion from Democrat to Republican after Election Day. Ever since, she has been the darling of the Right-wing media ecosystem, racking up millions of views on shows like Dave Rubin, Shawn Ryan, and Dr. Phil. Every party loves a convert, but Li was made for this digital age, slinging red meat with the same fervor that she bowed to the pulpit of the Democratic National Committee. Take a look at some of her tweets from before Election Day:

Credit: The Bulwark

Credit: The Bulwark

Now she’s churning out soundbites like, “I’m writing a book and people should be scared because I know where the bodies are buried,” and pumping out videos with titles like, “My book will destroy the Democratic cult. The world is not ready🔥” Unsurprisingly, she’s earned her own show on Patrick Bet-David's network Valuetainment and claims she’s been a conservative her entire life. It’s a whiplash-inducing turnaround.

(I just launched The Tara Palmeri Show last week so now you can listen to my spicy interview with Lindy Li on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio and Amazon Music.)

I’ve watched Li’s interviews and I did not learn anything outside of what’s been published by the flood of Biden books that have already come out. Her narrative mostly consists of how she’s being attacked by the left for finally speaking out. If you’ve been following my work, you know I’ve been eager to invite the authors of the Biden books on my show so that we can have an honest conversation about what happened during Biden’s presidency and the campaign. If the Democratic party wants to move forward with any credibility, they will need to address it head on. I have pressed my guests like Rahm Emanuel and David Hogg, who were top Democratic officials, about it on my show. And I agree with Li that leadership at the time like Gavin Newsom and Pete Buttigieg have to come clean if they want to lead the party in 2028.

But when I asked Li how her unpublished book Unburdened was different from the others, she said she had firsthand accounts, she was a personal friend of Biden’s, and was a Harris advisor. She was in the room.

“My story is so distinctly unique and I'm at the center of it,” she said. “The fact that I don't need to quote people I can tell you, I had a conversation with Valerie [Biden], it’s something that they said to me, it's not secondhand.”

When I asked for some of this explosive new material,