For the first time, a former president spoke at the Libertarian National Convention.
Under the leadership of Chairwoman Angela McArdle, the Libertarian Party hosted several non-Libertarians who agree with the nation’s largest third party on a variety of policies. Along with former President Donald Trump, independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT,) and tech CEO and former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy all spoke to the raucous group of Libertarian delegates.
In his speech, Trump claimed his legal troubles moved him in a more libertarian direction. “In the last year, I’ve been indicted by the government on 91 different things,” Trump told the crowd in Washington, D.C. “So if I wasn’t a libertarian before, I sure as hell am a libertarian now.”
The former president offered olive branches to Libertarian voters by pledging to commute the sentence of Ross Ulbricht, who is serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole for founding the dark net website Silk Road, and promising to appoint a Libertarian to a Cabinet-level position.
These statements received massive applause, while the audience, largely comprised of principled, independent-minded big-L Libertarians booed the former president mercilessly when he veered away from libertarian ideas. Trump, not to be outdone, gave the crowd a taste of its own medicine, mocking the feckless history of the party.
“Only do that if you want to win,” he told the crowd, speaking about nominating him. “If you want to lose, don’t do that. Keep getting your 3% every four years.”
Trump did what his opponent President Joe Biden could never do: He walked away from a hostile crowd intact, and that was just the beginning of the weekend’s great news for the 45th president.
After several rounds of contentious voting, Libertarian delegates nominated activist Chase Oliver as their nominee for president. Oliver represents the old-school wing of the Libertarian Party as opposed to other leading candidates such as Michael Rectenwald and Josh Smith, who are more overtly right-wing.
Oliver, a former Senate candidate in Georgia, is a proponent of open borders, drag queen story hour, letting children undergo gender transitions, and Black Lives Matter, and he has a less-than-stellar record on COVID-19 tyranny.
Polls show, with a few exceptions, that Kennedy siphons more votes from Biden than Trump, and it appears that the Libertarian Party has nominated the one candidate who will likely fail to draw a significant number of votes away from the Republican candidate. Even Libertarian Party members dissatisfied with the nomination of a left-libertarian may weigh Trump’s concessions and social conservatism over Oliver’s undoubtedly superior understanding of economics.
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Podcaster and comic Dave Smith and mortgage broker Clint Russell, who narrowly lost his bid for the Libertarian vice presidential nomination to former police officer Mike ter Maat, have both said they will not be supporting Oliver in November.
Between Kennedy’s stance on guns and his recent heel-turn on abortion and the Libertarian Party’s decision to nominate a candidate to the left of Biden on all social issues and the border, it appears that “Teflon Don” has avoided a scenario in which a third-party candidate can threaten his right flank, even as the former president has tacked to the center as the general election approaches.
Brady Leonard (@bradyleonard) is a musician, political strategist, and host of The No Gimmicks Podcast.