Back in May, former President Donald Trump spoke at the Libertarian Party’s national convention directly soliciting the party’s nomination or at least votes.
It was an unusual move for a former president to make such a direct appeal to a third party, especially one so ideologically inclined as the LP. But he managed to speak very much like a standard libertarian.
“Well, in the last year, I’ve been indicted by the government on 91 different things so if I wasn’t a libertarian before, I sure as hell am a libertarian now,” he said. “Unlike Joe Biden, I don’t throw people in jail for disagreeing with me. I don’t do that.”
Trump echoed classic libertarian talking points, “We want government out of our business, out of our wallets, and out of our lives.”
And he directly appealed to the generally anti-war sentiment of the party, “We believe that the job of the United States military is not to wage endless regime change wars around the globe, senseless wars.”
It was all very reminiscent of the sort of rhetoric from libertarian Rep. Ron Paul in his 2008 and 2012 presidential campaigns.
But beyond such talk, Trump also made some direct promises if he received libertarian votes. Some were vague, like saying he would “break the deep state grip on our democracy once and for all” or that he would “root out the sickness that has taken over our Justice Department, our FBI, and other agencies.”
Specifically, he said he would “rapidly review the cases of every political prisoner who has been unjustly persecuted by the Biden administration, so that I can sign their pardons or commutations on day one.” That’s libertarian in some sense in that libertarians are generally opposed to politicized persecutions where it appears the hammer of the state is brought down on people for political reasons rather than actual guilt for a legitimate offense.
This is going to be a bit fuzzy, because Trump has called the January 6 rioters political prisoners, or “hostages” as he called them at the Libertarian convention. Something tells me that if the January 6 rioters were Democrats with otherwise the exact same characteristics as his supporters he would not have the same sympathies.
Better was his vow to “commute the sentence of Ross Ulbricht,” who was convicted in 2015 for creating and running the darknet “Silk Road” website which facilitated the sale of drugs and other things, but mostly drugs. Ulbricht has been something of a cause celebre among libertarians who don’t see anything wrong with drugs per se and who are inclined to favor online privacy.
I personally don’t see anything wrong with what Ulbricht did and hope he gets his sentence commuted. He was a smart entrepreneur who made it possible for people to peacefully sell things that shouldn’t be illegal to people who wanted them. But Trump oddly isn’t much of a libertarian when it comes to drugs besides favoring marijuana legalization so it isn’t clear what’s motivating him on this. Still, he should deliver on this because Ulbricht shouldn’t spend his life rotting behind bars for a victimless offense.
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Trump also vowed to “sign an executive order banning federal agencies from colluding to censor the lawful speech of American citizens. And we will remove the rogue bureaucrats who conspire to take away your First Amendment freedoms.” That makes sense. If federal bureaucrats have a problem with what people are saying, the way to address that is by offering better arguments. Censorship just erodes public trust and confidence.
One interesting vow he made was to “shut down our out-of-control federal Department of Education and give it back to the states and local governments.” This is a classic libertarian position. Education is nowhere in the United States Constitution as a federal function and there isn’t much reason to believe the federal government must remain involved. But will he actually do it?
He also vowed to appoint a Libertarian to his cabinet and senior posts. Technically, I guess, he has done so, appointing Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who the Libertarian Party announced was a member of the party. But, RFK Jr. is mostly a big government progressive with a litany of bizarre ideas. Not exactly a libertarian win.
I’m not saying Trump is very libertarian. His stances on trade and immigration are quite terrible from a libertarian vantage point. His first term saw massive deficit spending even before the pandemic and his commitments to the constitution are tenuous at best. But if he can deliver some libertarian wins, that would be welcomed.
Sal Rodriguez can be reached at salrodriguez@scng.com