Dr. Jo Jorgenson secures the Libertarian Party's 2016 presidential nomination by prioritizing membership growth over ballot access, arguing that the $5 trillion state requires a peaceful revolution to reverse its expansion of power. She condemns Democrats as fascists censoring free speech and Republicans as hypocritical fiscal conservatives, proposing immediate Social Security opt-outs funded by asset sales and ending lockdowns despite potential deaths. Highlighting healthcare free markets, environmental protection, and withdrawing troops to transform America into an armed, neutral Switzerland, Jorgenson targets disaffected Democrats and independents, asserting that corporate propaganda obscures domestic realities while foreign interventions endanger national safety. [Automatically generated summary]
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Why Libertarians Need Membership00:13:57
Fill her up.
You are listening to the Gash Digital Network.
We need to roll back the state.
We spy on all of our own citizens.
Our prisons are flooded with nonviolent drug offenders.
If you want to know who America's next enemy is, look at who we're funding right now.
Every single one of these problems are a result of government being way too big.
Hey, what's up, everybody?
Welcome to a brand new episode of Part of the Problem.
Today, we have a guest I'm very excited to speak to.
She is the Libertarian candidate for President of the United States.
Maybe you've heard of that position before.
It's a pretty big deal.
Of course, Dr. Joe Jorgensen.
First off, I should say, congratulations.
How are you feeling?
Thanks so much.
I appreciate it.
I'm just excited to get this going.
Yeah, so this was a really wild nomination cycle for a lot of different reasons.
Number one, because it was just a very interesting climate in the party coming off of the 2016 campaign where it was Johnson Weld, and the party got more votes than it had ever gotten before, but membership was down.
And a lot of people, myself included, kind of felt like that wasn't really a success, that just getting a lot of votes but not advancing the conversation at all doesn't really do anything to help see liberty in any of our lifetimes.
And there was a lot of different factions within the Libertarian Party.
And you had guys like myself and Tom Woods and Scott Horton and people we got involved and we got behind Jacob Hornberger's campaign.
Then you had Adam Kokesh, who is a very well-known libertarian.
He had a show on RT, has a big social media following.
He got in the race.
Then you had Judge Jim Gray, who a lot of the establishment people in the Libertarian Party really liked.
This guy's been a judge for decades.
And then, of course, we had a sitting congressman, Congressman Amash, come in, and a lot of people got excited about him.
And somehow you stole this nomination away from all of these people in what is really quite an accomplishment, I must say.
What are your thoughts now kind of looking back at the whole cycle and how did you end up winning this thing?
Well, first of all, I hate to call it stealing, especially since I am a libertarian.
I want you to know I worked very hard for it.
And I know you were behind Jacob and I was in every debate he was in on the road.
I kept seeing him.
In fact, in Florida, I had actually gone to Missouri and he didn't.
And I talked to the many fine people in Missouri that morning and then the same day flew out to Florida to debate him that afternoon.
So yes, I was going to two and three states every weekend.
So I was in the thick of things too.
But do you mind if I back up to what you said earlier about Gary Johnson?
Sure, absolutely.
So yeah, first of all, Gary didn't actually lose membership, but you're absolutely correct that he didn't get the membership that the numbers would show you.
And votes are important to the degree that some of the states, we need votes in order to get ballot access.
And in fact, that was one of the criticisms lodged against me was that I was putting too much into membership and forgetting that some states need to worry about ballot access.
But I don't know if you're aware of this, but in 1995, 1996, Harry Brown and I, we doubled the party membership.
That was the largest growth in Libertarian Party history and was 8,500 members, even though we only got half a million votes.
Now, Gary Johnson got 4 million votes, but only grew the party by about 7,500 members.
So, you know, yes, it's great he got votes because that helps with ballot access.
But on the other hand, I agree with you that we need membership.
We need support.
And if we can grow the party big enough, we'll be big enough that we don't have to worry about ballot access because we would be a major force.
So long term, long term, I think we do need to look at membership.
I agree with you completely.
Well, I just, you know, my take on libertarian politics in general, and not just libertarian party politics, but anyone who's concerned with liberty, whether running on the Republican ticket, I suppose theoretically the Democratic ticket, although I don't know that I've ever seen anyone do that.
But, you know, to me, I go, look, obviously, and I'm sure you know this, you know, as well as anyone, it's a daunting task to try to win.
And I'm not saying that it's impossible.
I mean, Donald Trump's the president.
Anything can happen, but you're trying to take out the duopoly.
I mean, the most powerful forces in human history, probably, certainly currently, that exist in the world.
This is a daunting task.
And if we're going to do something like this, if we're going to roll back this, I used to call it the $5 trillion state.
I don't know what we're going to spend this year by the time.
So I think we've spent $5 trillion in the last few months.
If we're going to take this out, it's going to take something looking like a revolution.
I'm not suggesting it should be a bloody revolution.
Let's make it a peaceful one.
And you're not going to do that unless you really inspire and galvanize and change people's minds and wake people up.
And so just trying to kind of moderate and get somebody who will vote for you as a protest vote or just getting your numbers up, if you're not winning over converting new libertarians, I don't see there being any real upside.
Again, not to say that getting votes and getting ballot access, this is all important.
But to me, it's like if we have a presidential national candidate, they should be trying to tell people what every libertarian believes, which is like, look, we found this wonderful philosophy that has so many answers to the problems that plague our society that it's the philosophy of peace and prosperity and civilization.
And that to me is a little bit better than we're fiscally conservative and socially liberal.
You know, that stuff just doesn't inspire.
That's always been my take.
Right.
And when I first joined the party, this was back in the late 70s.
I first heard of the Libertarian Party in 1979.
What we used to say is we take the good parts of the Democrats and the Republicans.
Economically, we're like the Republicans.
Socially, we're like the Democrats.
But you can't even say that anymore because now the Democrats are the biggest fascists out there.
And Republicans have lost any semblance of having any kind of economic freedom.
So I don't even say that anymore.
Yeah, well, like, right, exactly.
I mean, I guess once upon a time, that was at least what they pretended they were.
But nowadays, you're like, oh, okay, so we take the fiscal parts of the Republicans.
What does that mean?
The biggest spenders of my lifetime?
I mean, what George W. Bush and Donald Trump's fiscal policy, is that what we're borrowing from?
And then the social policies of the Democrats, I mean, they've gone into cartoon land.
I think that would be telling every business that they have to build another bathroom for someone who identifies as zur or something like that.
It doesn't exactly seem like what libertarians are pushing.
Yeah, well, I heard an interesting speaker at Clemson, where I teach, and he said that, and we look back at, you know, with fondness at the Democrats in the 60s, how they fought for free speech.
And his theory was that the Democrats really never wanted free speech.
They just wanted the free speech as a tool to get what they wanted.
They weren't inherently interested in free speech.
It just sounded like they were.
And the argument he put forth sure made a lot of sense.
So, and really, they are the biggest censors of what we say.
They are so against free speech that I think he's probably right.
Maybe they never were for free speech, but excuse me, they said it just to get what they wanted.
Yeah, I mean, I certainly think that makes sense.
I guess it seemed like in the 60s that they were kind of on that side, but I also think a lot of the energy in the 60s from the left was kind of just a burn it all down energy.
And that's not necessarily what freedom's about.
Right.
And with Antifa, they still have burn it all down.
So, and one thing that I like to point, because again, we talk about how we're socially liberal and supposedly the Democrats are like that.
And what I like to point out to people, especially liberals, hey, you realize that Barack Obama, when he campaigned in 2012, was against gay marriage.
And people are typically horrified.
And I say, oh, by the way, Hillary Clinton, same thing.
She was against gay marriage.
And the question I usually get is, well, why?
Why would he be against gay marriage?
Well, the answer is votes, because they have no philosophy.
They have no core beliefs.
Basically, they will tell the electorate whatever they want to hear just so they get their votes.
And getting elected is their number one thing, not changing the world, not bringing about peace and freedom, not giving taxpayers what they want.
It's about their power and getting in control.
Yeah, well, that seems to be pretty demonstrably correct.
So I wanted just asking a little bit more about the campaign, because one of the things that I noticed, and I paid attention to this campaign cycle more than I have to past libertarian years in the past.
And I became a libertarian in 2008 through Ron Paul, and then I supported him again in 2012.
It wasn't really until 2016 that I started to look at the Libertarian Party.
I was more just in the liberty movement, not in the party.
And then I joined, the Mises caucus guys kind of persuaded me to join.
But one of the things I noticed was that a lot of people, even people who were supporting other candidates, started to really like you the more they saw of you.
So there was a whole bunch of people in the Mises caucus who were like, hey, we're Jacob Hornburger guys.
But, you know, this Dr. Joe Jorgensen, she's pretty good.
And then, and a lot of people, people who are supporting Vermin Supreme, people who are supporting Kokesh and people who are supporting Judge Jim Gray, a lot of them kind of, once they started to get a look at you, because you came in, I think, with a little bit less of like a social media presence, a little bit less of like kind of the, you know, the people hyping you up.
But once people started to see you, they started to go, ah, you know, this lady's pretty good.
So what do you think now is, do you think you have a message that can kind of unite all of the different factions in the Libertarian Party?
Oh, absolutely.
And I'm a huge Ron Paul fan.
When I ran for U.S. Congress in 92 as a libertarian, I was on a first name basis with his office manager, David James.
And I would call him all the time getting advice.
He was sending out videos, information.
So I was a huge Ron Paul fan.
And when I heard that the Mises caucus was supporting Jacob, I was a little surprised because I thought, okay, that's what I believe.
I'm a huge Ron Paul fan, but there's also personality thrown in there.
But towards the end of the debates, what I was telling people is, hey, if you like the principles of Jacob party platform, and if you like the practicality of Judge Gray, then I'm your person because I have both, because I do follow the platform plank by plank.
I'm going to push the entire platform, but I don't think we can just give visions of, you know, was that Paul Ryan, whatever, you know, grandma going over the cliff in the wheelchair.
We can't go out and tell people that.
So for instance, for Social Security, immediate opt-out.
There's no way that you should have your money continually taken from you into some black hole that you're never going to see again.
However, we've got 12 million people who were forced, literally at the point of a gun, who were forced to give their money over to the government.
It didn't go into some lockbox, despite what they said.
It was spent for, you know, it was spent for government items.
So since they were forced to turn their money over, what I'm saying is let's sell some of our government assets, you know, where their money went and give them their money back.
If you're 70 years old, what are you supposed to do?
Go out and get another career?
How can you do that?
And it would be different if they chose it.
It'd be different if, you know, if somebody says, well, I'm going to buy T-bills or whatever, I'm going to buy this stock.
Okay, that's your choice.
But they didn't have a choice.
In fact, that money was taken out of their paychecks before they even saw their paychecks.
So how is it fair now to not say, okay, you're forced to pay in.
We're going to take the downtown post offices, the mineral rights, whatever, and sell those and then give you your money back so that at least you have security.
Okay.
Well, yeah, I mean, I think it's reasonable.
It's difficult to figure out how exactly to unwind these programs, but I would agree with you that continuing to rob from the young generation has to be off the table.
I mean, it's just not right.
Yeah.
And I would like to stress, if I had my way, first day in office, immediate opt-out, nobody has to ever put money in again, because that's the whole libertarian principle, is we don't take money from some and give it to others,
because what happens is it usually goes towards the special interests, or they use it for bribery and extortion, like Elizabeth Dole, who would take our money and then tell the states, okay, tell you what, if you raise your drinking age to 21.
Government As Santa Claus00:13:40
we'll give you your money back.
You know it wasn't her money to begin with, so it gets that.
It gets the government out of that transfer where it gives them power.
The last thing we need are bureaucrats with more power.
Yeah that's, that's really it.
Yeah, and I was gonna say, and they don't spend our money as well as individuals anyway, so why would we even want to give them our money?
Yeah, it's interesting, because that's that seems to me to always be the.
The fundamental insight that only libertarians offer, that I don't hear from any other uh, group of of political thinkers, is that you know, you can, you know, kind of in a theoretical, in a hypothetical, you can say okay well, this power could be used to do something that you know we would kind of like.
Well, what if we took from wealthy people and helped out some of the poorer people?
But what the libertarians understand, the insight that we bring to the table is that you have to create a power source, you have to create somebody with the power to steal in order to do that, and power tends to corrupt.
So you may like the idea of creating these powerful bureaucrats, these powerful politicians that can rob from the right groups and give out to the others, but don't Be too surprised when it turns out that this whole power structure gets corrupted.
And what have we seen over the last three months?
Just enormous corporate handouts, handouts to the big banks, the biggest corporations, when America's in its greatest hour of need, when people are being kicked out of work by the tens of millions, literally kicked out of work by the government, not just losing work, not just your traditional they created a boom bust and you've lost work, but they're actually forcing people not to go to work.
And they're taking this opportunity to give bailouts to those who don't need it.
It's really despicable.
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All right, let's get back into the show.
Back to what you said, how libertarians are the ones who understand that it's theft.
Again, I like to present it to the American people because we have to win them over.
It's, you know, I looked at it and here was my argument.
If you love liberty, you're probably already in the libertarian party.
So now let's explain in practical terms how liberty can help others.
And so, back what you were saying about, you know, spending other people's money basically is somebody decades ago came up with this thing, and I think it's great.
Is to ask somebody, okay, let's say you just got, you know, $100,000 inheritance, and let's say you've already got plenty of money.
And so you're deciding you want to help people.
You want it to do the most good.
Would you maybe give it to your church, you know, or some local charity?
You know, maybe give it to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
You know, maybe they could use it.
Or would you give it to a federal bureaucracy, a federal government, and give it to them to spend?
And most people's reaction are, no, I would never give it to the government to spend.
Exactly.
That's the whole point.
I would trust Bill and Melinda Gates to spend my money a heck of a lot better than the federal government.
I'd expect my church to spend it better.
And at least there's accountability when we can decide who gets our money.
Yeah, well, right.
And if you were giving your money to a church and they ended up doing a really crummy job with it, you might not give them money in the future.
Whereas when the government does a crummy job with it, we really don't have that option because, you know, I'd like to stay out of prison and in my family's life.
So I have to continue to give them money.
And in fact, yeah, and in fact, there's a real life example in the early 90s.
United Way was, and that's the advantage, by the way, of being an old timer.
I've got like, I've got 40 years of examples, 40 years of stories.
You give me any issue, I can give you an example.
So back in the early 90s, the president of United Way spent something like $400,000 on artwork.
And keep in mind, that'd be closer to a million dollars today.
And what happened was donations went down.
The donors said, we're not giving you our money because we don't want our money to go to artwork.
We want our money to go to people who need it.
And so they actually had to rehabilitate themselves and prove that, okay, we're not doing that anymore.
Now we're going to spend the money how you want it to.
But sure, it goes into a federal bureaucracy and they don't spend it well and they need more money.
What do they do?
Raise taxes, you know, promote the person, hire five more people because, oh, obviously there's not enough people to do this.
So, no, just like the free market should compete for when you buy a car or a computer.
How about let's have charities compete to see who does the best job of getting the money to where it belongs.
And in fact, there are sites that do that, who give charities, you know, A, B, C, D, F rating as to who gets the money.
So wouldn't that be a much better way than to give it to the federal government?
Yeah, no, I think quite clearly it would be.
So what is your, because I think this is what a lot of people in the libertarian world are grappling with, certainly what we've been talking about on this show for quite a while, because the big thing, and it's pretty clear this is going to be the big thing throughout the rest of the election cycle, is this COVID pandemic and the government response to it, which is really unlike anything we've ever seen before.
And even in your 40 years of experience, I don't think you've seen something quite like these lockdowns.
So what is your, what is, you know, you're the libertarian standard bearer now.
What's the libertarian response to the situation?
Well, first of all, my response is this is the biggest assault on liberty in our lifetime.
Forget just about a reaction to a disease, but anything in our lifetime.
We've never seen anything like it.
And they're doing it on two levels.
First of all, locking us all in our homes, you know, taking away our personal freedom, but then also the money, because once again, they're giving money to their pals.
And, you know, the CARES Act, it's like, yeah, they care all right for their Democratic and Republican friends who they're giving money to.
So once again, do you want the bureaucrat to decide where your dollars go to?
And I have had people say, well, but they wouldn't have money.
It's like, but the money comes from somewhere.
The money has to come from somewhere.
And so they're taking it from the people and then giving it back to the people.
So how about we let them keep it?
And, you know, I love Milton Friedman.
Let people vote with their dollars.
Let people vote with their feet.
Yeah, no, absolutely.
And I think it's important because that is the part that's almost a little bit tricky for libertarians to address.
You know, it's like Harry Brown, your old running mate, right?
He used to say the government breaks your leg and then offers you a crutch.
And if you just come along after someone's leg has been broken and you say you're against the crutch, they're like, well, what are you crazy?
I mean, I need this crutch.
I can't.
So you have to kind of explain to them that, well, listen, you probably wouldn't need this crutch if it wasn't for the prior actions of the government.
I think that in this situation right here, what we really need to drive home is that they, in your hour of need, they've robbed you.
I mean, they added something.
I thought the last number I saw was like $60,000 of debt per family, but it's probably higher than that now because I know they've passed some more spending bills since then.
So you're getting a crummy $1,200 and your kids owe $60,000.
So that's the deal.
Even in the moment where you'd think if ever the government could just help people, it would be right now.
No, of course, they're all jockeying for position.
They're all trying to increase their own authority.
So I think you're absolutely right.
That I think it's a very good starting point to be like, look, this is a violation of our civil liberties, unlike anything we've seen in this country, at least in the last, you know, 70 years.
And the, or I'd say, since the last draft, at least, since maybe since Vietnam.
And you made a good point about how what they see is government basically being Santa Claus or being given money.
And the same thing happens, as you know, with our income tax.
So everybody waits until April, you know, well, after they file in April, whenever it is in June when they get their check, and it's like government to Santa Claus giving them all their money, but they don't look at what's being taken out week by week or month by month.
So if, you know, I think that's one of the worst things that was ever done was having the withholding take, you know, done.
Because if people had to actually write out a check themselves every month, or worse yet, write out a huge check at the end of the year, they would have a completely different view of government.
But once again, what we see is, you know, government being Santa Claus, and we forget that we're the Santa Claus.
It came from us.
Yeah, as somebody who works for themselves and writes out a check every year, I can confirm it is awfully painful.
It really is, though.
It's a very different experience when you have to put your money aside in like an account all year long and then write the check out and send it into the federal government.
It really, it's just, it's much more painful than, you know, every, you know, week having money withheld from your tax, where, you know, you might be like, oh, you know, when I got hired, they say I make, you know, $50,000 a year, whatever it might be, but really I make this.
You just, you just look at the number that you take home and assume, okay, that's what I'm making.
But when you actually make the money and have to send it, it's painful.
Especially, you know, like having a young daughter as I do.
I mean, it's, you know, you literally watch the money get taken from her, really, because I don't really spend money on myself anymore.
It's really hard.
Well, yeah, well, wait till she gets her first job when she's 16.
And they tell her you're going to make, you know, whatever, $12 an hour.
Heck with inflation, it might be $32 an hour, by the way.
So she signs up for her first job.
They say you're going to be, you're going to make, you know, $200 a week, $300 a week, whatever.
And she gets her check and it's under $12.
Dad, where'd all my money go?
And at least that initial shock to many teenagers is a good lesson.
But then they get used to it, you know?
And then by the time they're making six figures, they're not even seeing what's being taken out, which is unfortunate.
Yeah.
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Flu Death Rates And Testing Kits00:04:07
So as president, if you, I mean, not that it's really, this is being decided on by governors at this point, but your position would be to, I assume, to end the lockdowns, to allow the economy to open back up.
What would you say to the response that is the CNN response like, oh, people will die or something like this?
What would you recommend we do?
Yeah, well, first of all, I would have never locked down.
And we're seeing now that we've got a death rate similar to that of the flu.
And, you know, of course, I want to say that my heart goes out to all the people who died.
And I realize even if something is 99% effective, if there's a 99% survival rate and a 1% death rate, if you're that 1% that dies, you're not 1% dead.
You're 100% dead.
Okay.
So we are talking real lives here.
But my question is, why didn't the government shut down for the flu with a similar death rate?
And even more than that, here's where the problem starts, is when we first had it, companies rushed out to make testing kits for when the virus came out.
And we have an onerous FDA where not only do you have to prove safety, you have to prove efficacy.
And out of the 60-something test kits that were out, the FDA only approved two.
And so somebody might say, oh, wow, well, all these other companies, I guess they went out of business, you know, because they couldn't sell their test kits.
No, they were selling them around the world.
So countries around the world are getting the benefit of American ingenuity, but we don't get to take advantage.
So if I were president under, you know, Emergency Powers Act, whatever, I would have immediately said, okay, the FDA, you no longer have an efficacy requirement.
You now have a, you know, just safety requirement.
And by the way, of course, this is on the way to getting rid of it completely, but we got to do, you know, we got to do something today.
And by having testing and knowing who has it, who doesn't, especially because at the time, and by the way, and I saw President Trump say in one of his press conferences, you only need to get tested if you have symptoms.
If you don't have symptoms, no need to get tested.
But at the time, they were saying that about 60 to 80% of the people who had the virus didn't have any symptoms at all.
So you have no symptoms walking around infecting people and you don't know it.
Now they're saying the rate is a little bit lower.
But again, that's the problem with government is we're going by bureaucratic decisions as opposed to being based on science.
And so if we had had testing kits, if people who knew, you know, the people who knew they were sick stayed home and the people who knew they weren't sick went out, then we would have been in a much better position.
And now apparently it's mostly killing people who are older, who have pre-existing conditions.
So of course they can self-quarantine, but there's just not as much reason to have the younger people self-quarantine when they've got the same death rate as the flu.
Again, we didn't lock them up when the flu came around.
Yeah.
And I mean, look, there's obviously, as you said, you know, anyone dying is a tragedy into their family.
That's that, you know, it doesn't matter if, you know, like what the death rate is.
If your family member dies, it's a tragedy in your family and it's horrible.
But there are horrible things all around us all the time.
And we don't make the calculation that we are going to shut down everything, that we are going to just, you know, cause, because, because the problem is, and this is what a lot of people, particularly the Democrats and the corporate press, seem to not want to consider, is that there's also tragic repercussions to putting 40 million people out of work.
And it's really been wild to me personally to be in the because this thing is divided into partisan lines in a weird way.
Big Business Loves Big Government00:06:27
But to have to explain to left-leaning people that unemployment, putting people out of work, has all types of negative externalities of damaging effects.
I mean, this is something they've been talking about forever and now all of a sudden seem to think, well, we can just cut everybody a check.
It won't be a problem.
Anyway.
I mean, exactly.
Starvation is also deadly.
So is malnutrition.
Not eating will also kill you.
And if you look at who's been hurt and who's benefited, major companies such as Amazon and Walmart Online, their profits, their sales are up hugely this first quarter as opposed to last year, you know, 2019 to 2020.
And yet you look at mom and pop small stores, their sales are down 75% overall.
That's an estimate.
So again, once again, the big corporations come out ahead and it's the little guy who gets hurt.
And so many times, and this is what's so frustrating, of course, when we hear the Bernie Sanders supporters.
And by the way, my reply to if, and keep in mind, I teach at a university, but of course, and I'm very good about not, unlike the liberals, I don't inject my own beliefs into the classroom.
In fact, I teach psychology, which is a science.
And it's really hard these days to find a psychology book that is pure science because so many of them have adopted social policy and most of it liberal.
And, you know, here I'm saying psychology is a science and all the textbooks are leaning towards what are we going to do as a society.
So anyway, when I'm on campus, I've got to think about as I walk by all the booths man by students, you know, the Bernie Sanders booth, the Hillary Clinton booth, and all that, what am I going to say?
Because being a teacher, I don't want to offend my students.
But on the other hand, I don't want to get into some kind of argument.
So I decided that walking by the booths, whenever a Bernie Sanders person would ask me to join the movement, I would say, no, thanks, I'm for the little guy, which, you know, and that's who they think they are for.
But of course, we know that Bernie is all about bigger government, which is the opposite of the little guy.
It's giving the bureaucrats in Washington power, not the little guy.
No, absolutely.
And the thing that is hardest to get some of these kids to understand, which we have so much, you know, evidence on our side, but the truth is that big business loves big government.
And this is why we, I mean, they'll, you know, like they'll say that, you know, business is that our Congress is bought off and all of this stuff.
And sure, they're right about all that.
But you might want to ask them if our Congress is bought off by these corporate interests, why is it that the government's spending, you know, whatever it's going to end up being six, seven trillion dollars this year?
I mean, why if corporations have bought off the government, why do we have the biggest government in human history?
If your theory is that free markets would allow the corporations to take over or whatever the Bernie Sanders kids believe, well, then why wouldn't they, why wouldn't they just get rid of government?
Why wouldn't they?
And they talk so much about like the Koch brothers or they'll find these, you know, like one kind of boogeyman, you know, rich guys, or Peter Thiel or someone like that who wants to cut government.
But if you're saying they already own the government, why is it that they seem to be going the Bernie Sanders direction?
And I've never gotten a good answer.
First of all, we hear about the greedy corporations.
Yeah, I'm sure they are greedy.
And the way that they can come out ahead is by going to government for their power.
If they had to compete in a free market, then they wouldn't be in such a good position.
And if we look at, you know, when I was in a third-party debate in March in Chicago, and by the way, Jacob was not in that debate.
That was not an official convention debate, but it was a lot of fun because I sat just a couple people down from the socialist who was in the debate.
And I swear to God, this is what she said in the debate, or in her closing.
And unfortunately, it was at the end of the debate, so I couldn't get a rebuttal because it was a closing.
But she said, the Department of Defense is the biggest polluter on the face of this earth.
And then her very next sentence goes to talk about those horrible corporations.
What?
And I wanted to say, did you just hear what you said?
Absolutely.
I 100% agree with you.
The U.S. government is the largest polluter on earth.
So why are you going to them to solve the problem?
They're the ones causing the problem.
And we can look at that.
And especially with minorities.
And my heart goes out to them.
After slavery was ended, the freed slaves were doing great.
They were offering their excellent skills and abilities, their excellent service for a lower-than-market rate to get a foot in the door, which, by the way, is what everybody does.
It's what I did when I started a company.
I went around and offered better prices than everybody else, so people would use me.
And so the whites, instead of saying, okay, how can we compete?
Maybe we should offer lower prices.
No, what they said was, I know, we'll come up with laws that keep them from competing.
And so unfortunately, right now, it's the big government who put them in that position to begin with.
Again, Rosa Parks riding on the bus, sitting in the back of the bus.
What people forget to tell you is the entire story is that the government was the one that owned and operated that bus.
So today, if you're Uber or Lyft and you do that to your best employees, and by the way, at the time that that happened with Rosa Parks, something like 70% of the bus ridership consisted of blacks.
What happens if you treat your best 70% of your customers as horribly as they treated Rosa Parks?
Hate America Campaign Explained00:17:37
You'd go out of business and you would go out of business and you deserve to go out of business.
But the government did go out of business because they're the government.
They just keep raising taxes and taking our money.
So it's just sad that the very, you know, that they're the ones who caused the problem.
And now other people are going to them for help when I don't even think they realize that they're the ones who are wrong to begin with.
So.
Yeah.
All right.
Let's take a quick moment.
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All right, let's get back into the show.
It's an interesting moment, at least now, in our political history or in the young history of this country, where, you know, obviously there was this huge, you know, kind of populist anti-establishment wave that carried Donald Trump into the Oval Office.
And after what, you know, the ramifications of what we're going through right now, I got to think that's only going to get that's only going to get stronger.
And pretty much there's more of a consensus now that rejects the Bush-Obama legacy than I think ever before.
And I don't think people are particularly thrilled with Donald Trump.
And so now, I mean, he's never had a very high approval rating, at least with the general public.
Not with his own party, I guess is okay.
I'm sorry.
Oh, it hasn't been too bad, but here's the thing.
And those are some of the people I want to reach out to because the reason the predictions were so wrong is that the people who voted for him, many of them either had never voted or hadn't voted in 20 years because it's like they're all the same.
And Donald Trump comes along and says, I'm different.
People say, oh, great.
I'll vote for you because they're different.
You're different.
And now they're finding out.
No, he's just like everybody else.
He said he'd get rid of the deficit.
Keeps getting bigger.
That keeps going up.
So I hope to reach those people and to say, okay, remember all the reasons you voted for him?
Okay, that's why you need to vote for me.
Yeah.
And now, and on the Democratic side, I mean, at least it seems like it's going to be Joe Biden, who's basically his claim is to own the Obama years without Obama's charisma or verbal abilities, very, very basic verbal abilities.
Not that Obama had basic verbal abilities.
He was quite an orator, but that he doesn't even have a fraction.
Joe Biden doesn't even have a fraction of that.
And in a lot of ways, Obama's policies were far less popular than Obama himself.
People did like that guy.
He's a very charismatic guy.
And now Joe Biden's almost been stripped of that charisma and just left running on the policies, which are pretty hard to defend.
So it does seem to me like there's a real opening for you to make some inroads.
Yes, you make an excellent point because you're right.
Obama's policy without Obama in the bare naked light, they don't look so good.
And so that's what we get with Joe Biden is basically the bare naked light and it doesn't look so good.
Yeah, no, absolutely.
Do you think, you know, I know that in 2016, They were really trying to the corporate press that says was really trying to put a spotlight on Gary Johnson and Bill Weld because they thought he was going to hurt Donald Trump and help Hillary Clinton.
And then when some polling came in and indicated that that wasn't the case, that they were actually pulling more from Hillary Clinton, they really kind of turned on them.
Do you think you're going to be able to, you know, you don't have a title like former governor to kind of get, you know, you're not as in that way.
And that we all knew that would always be one of the risks of running a pure libertarian is that they're probably going to be more hesitant to give you this platform.
Do you have a strategy to try to kind of garner attention in that way or what's the plan?
Oh, absolutely.
But first, let me mention that people for decades have assumed that we tend to take people more from the right.
But most elections show that we pull equally from the right and left.
You know, not always, but most of the time.
But usually we get independents or people who haven't been voting, but very few right and left.
But yeah, we're going to try to break through the media barrier.
We're going to try to talk directly to people who are interested in our message.
And rather than saying, vote for me for the personality, you know, or vote for me for just this one election, I'm going to be putting out the ideas so they vote for the ideas.
So hopefully they will stay around, unlike the past election.
You know, so the one advantage to not having to mine not being some kind of celebrity or nobody knowing my name is they're not voting for me just because it's me.
Because think about it.
If I were well known, okay, they'd vote for me.
And then what happens in 2024?
So this way, they're not voting for me.
They're voting for the ideas.
So, but absolutely, it's our job to get those ideas out there.
So being on your show, being on other shows, getting as much publicity.
And we're hoping that, and again, being a libertarian, of course, I didn't run on identity politics, but we're hoping that I will be such a sharp contrast to Trump and Biden that maybe I might get some attention.
And maybe I should go back to Madeline Albright and say, remember what you were saying?
I don't know if you remember the famous line where she was saying, you know, like you're a disgrace to women or whatever it was she said.
I believe she said there's a special place in hell for women who don't support other women.
And Madeline, here I am, Madeline.
Well, say what you will.
She is an expert in special places in hell.
This is a woman who openly said that 500,000 children who died from starvation and malnutrition was a price that we were comfortable with.
Right, right.
Well, and looking back in 2016, people, you know, there were people looking for another choice.
However, they saw Trump as somebody new, as a new choice.
And now they know that Trump is same old, same old.
They're going to get the same big government.
So hopefully those same people, now that they got into the ballot last time, are into the voting booth last time.
Hopefully this time they'll say, well, geez, now, you know, I voted last time.
Maybe I'll vote again, but maybe this time I can find somebody who is different.
And also, my platform, one thing that I ran on for, you know, and you asked me how I stole the election.
Let me just say, I meant it like, you know, like a basketball guard stealing the ball, like you worked hard and took it.
I didn't mean in an immoral sense.
Like, you know, it's wrestled it away or something.
I actually play hockey, not basketball, but okay.
But yes, no.
And in fact, in fact, I love to play.
Usually when I play sports, I like to play offense, except when I play hockey, I love to play defense because I love, I just, it's so gratifying to take the puck away from somebody else.
So there you go.
I know exactly what you mean exactly.
But one of the things that I emphasize is that the top three things I was going to talk about were things that the American people, excuse me, either were interested in or, you know, they're not as much about bringing the troops home.
But I still wanted to feature that.
But I'm talking about health care.
And we did have other candidates in the race who said, no, we're not talking about health care.
That's just, you know, too much to handle right now.
It's too hot.
No, we absolutely have to talk about health care because we're just running towards single parish system.
And unfortunately, the American people have been hoodwinked into thinking that we have the free market and it doesn't work.
So we need to go somewhere else.
So my number one thing in healthcare is to explain to people that we do not have the free market, have not had it since World War II.
And with me, you will get the free market.
And the other thing I'm, another thing I'm running on is the environment.
And very few libertarians have been talking about the environment.
It's just not a libertarian hot button issue.
So I, however, am different because I know that the young people are really interested in the environment.
They think it's one of their top issues.
We want young people.
So guess what?
I'm going to talk about the environment.
And then third, we just, we just got to bring our troops home.
And keep in mind that's something that Trump actually did run on, but didn't follow through as much as he said he would.
So those are my top three issues.
And I think that they're enough to get the American public's interest, attention.
Well, I would say that to me, I mean, I always lead with anti-war stuff and for a number of different reasons.
And the primary reason is just because it is the worst thing that anybody does.
I mean, it's, you know, we're talking about murdering children.
There's nothing morally that you could find that is worse than a war.
It's not even just one person murdering one children.
It's murdering a ton of them and also innocent men and women, you know, but like it's the worst thing you could do.
And then, you know, it also, it's destroying our economy.
It's putting us into debt.
It's, it's, you know, it's, it's just horrible on every level.
We also, we've been fighting the longest wars in American history and we have not one crummy thing to show for it.
Nothing, except, you know, our bravest, strongest young men coming back with one leg and getting hooked on opioids.
I mean, it's just...
Yeah, it's just a tragedy.
It's like a biblical level tragedy.
And on top of that, there's a real political opening.
I mean, it's not just that Donald Trump ran, which he absolutely did on ending the wars, but so did Barack Obama.
And George W. Bush ran on never fighting them in the year 2000.
And all of them have let the American people down.
And I would say that there is a big, look, a lot of this, the energy behind Trump was this kind of America first, you know, we're going to take care of us first.
He has not moved in that direction at all.
I mean, rhetorically, maybe a little bit, but he hasn't moved in that direction.
He does what his policy on Israel, on Saudi Arabia, on Iran, on Yemen, they're horrible, every one of them.
And then I would say I think you have a real potential for an opening with some of the disaffected Democrats.
Obviously, Tulsi Gabbard, her whole campaign was about being anti-war, and they were awful in the way they treated her.
She's bad on a lot of other issues, but she was pretty good on that one.
And they were terrible to her.
And Bernie Sanders, his people don't want to fight any of these wars, and they were pretty awful to his supporters, even if he'll bow down to Joe Biden.
A lot of his supporters won't.
So I do think that's an issue that can really draw you people from across the political spectrum.
Absolutely.
And you're right about all of them.
And even Hillary, because people looked at her, oh, here's a Democratic woman.
You know, women, they don't like wars.
I mean, Hillary was the biggest hawk.
She was awful when it came to that.
So, yeah, I'm hoping to get the Tulsi Gabbard group because you're absolutely right.
She was good on that.
Unfortunately, a lot of libertarians didn't realize just how socialist she was, that she was more like Bernie Sanders than a lot of people realized.
So she was right on one issue, though.
Yeah, but you know, well, number one, that's how desperate we are.
If you're pretty good on one issue, we're like, oh my God, it's like the Messiah coming back.
But, you know, I think one of the reasons why I was interested in her campaign, I mean, I was never going to vote for her or anything like that, but I really liked that she was running because that was what her campaign was about.
So even though she was bad on these other issues, it was about the one issue she was good on.
Whereas someone like Bernie Sanders, his campaign is about the issues that he's terrible on.
And then it's just an aside that he's, you know, was better on the war in Iraq.
So that was, that was one of the redeeming qualities of the Gabbard run.
But she's dead to me.
She endorsed Joe Biden.
I'm not happy with it.
Well, yeah.
Well, and well, she endorsed Bernie Sanders in 2016, correct?
And that's what, in fact, since, and I know, you know, you're a libertarian.
So this is kind of behind, you know, inside baseball stuff that we're talking about.
But I would like to mention that I was in a debate and they asked us, you know, who was the most dangerous person or who was the worst person on the other side.
And, you know, I think the first person said, oh, Bernie Sanders, you know, he's just an awful guy.
And I said, actually, I think Bernie Sanders is perfectly safe because he's telling us he's going to steal from us and he's going to do it.
The person who scares me is Tulsi Gabbard because everybody thinks, oh, anti-war, she's libertarian and she's not.
So, but yeah, her truth color showed when she endorsed Joe Biden, but of course she was going to.
She's a Democrat.
So I hope to offer a true alternative.
And I hope that people who, you know, who believe that war is the worst thing we could be doing will look into my campaign.
In fact, my campaign from the start, the very first policy paper I had written for my campaign was to turn America into one giant Switzerland, armed and neutral, to bring all of our troops home.
And of course, that includes no sanctions, no embargoes.
We need to trade peacefully with other people.
We don't need to be in other people's business.
And what's so ironic about this, the worst part about this is you look at what's the goal of the military.
The goal of the military is to keep us safe.
And what's our military doing?
It's getting, and I'm not accusing them.
I'm accusing the commander-in-chief.
The commander-in-chief is putting them all around the world so that now they're making us less safe.
They're going out there to where other people will see what we're doing.
And it's kind of a hate America campaign.
And we're doing it to ourselves.
That's the sad part.
Yeah.
And the truth is that there's no popular support for this.
There is no popular support for America to take care of the problems between the Houthis and the Saudis.
Nobody cares, especially now with 40 million Americans out of work in the last three months.
I mean, it's just not our problem.
And it's just not, we, like Ron Paul always used to say, we just need to mind our own business.
And I really, you know, I would just say, rather than even the Switzerland example, it's America.
What you're talking about is true Americanism, is that we have a Bill of Rights.
We have the Second Amendment.
We have the right to protect ourselves.
And we do not go out in search of monsters to destroy.
We protect our country and we don't infringe on our right to protect ourselves.
And what's more American than that?
Yeah, you're right.
And the average American, if you ask them to stop and think, well, how would you like it if Iran or France or Korea or whoever started stationing troops over here in our country and started putting their law in our country?
They would stop and they would say, well, of course we don't do that.
But unfortunately, what our government does is they tell the American people, we're over there to make you safe.
You know, we're fighting the wars over there so they don't have to be fought here.
We're over there helping, you know, we're peacekeepers, right?
Well, we'll change the word.
So we're not soldiers, we're not warmongers, we're peacekeepers.
And we're doing this to help the peace.
And so the average American just, you know, and I'm not saying that they should do that much better.
I mean, the thing is, the average American needs to worry about earning a paycheck, enough to pay for their own well-being as well as the federal government.
They need to raise their kids.
They're worried about taxes and where they're going on vacation.
You know, they don't know what's going on around the world.
Yeah.
Yeah, no, you're right.
And they're lied to and propagandized by the corporate press and by their supposed leaders.
Wake Up The American Voter00:00:54
And that's why we need people like you out there telling the truth.
So I know you got a bunch of these press events that you're doing.
I just want to say one more time, congratulations on becoming the nominee.
And best of luck.
I hope you can wake a lot of people up and kick up some dust and make some noise throughout this campaign.
And may I give up my website?
Oh, yeah, of course.
Thank you.
It's joj2020.com.
So j-o-j2020.com.
I really appreciate that.
So thanks for having me on.
Oh, yeah, absolutely.
My pleasure.
I'd love to have you on again and check in with you throughout the campaign.
All right.
I very much enjoyed it.
We'll have to do it again.
Dr. Jorgensen, everybody, the libertarian nominee for President of the United States.