Part Of The Problem - Dave Smith - Trump Heads To The Libertarian Convention
Aired: 2024-05-05
Duration: 01:01:01


=== Why Libertarians Support Trump (11:46) ===

[00:00:00]  Fill her up!
[00:00:02]  You're listening to the gas human.
[00:00:08]  We need to roll back the state.
[00:00:10]  We spy on all of our own citizens.
[00:00:12]  Our prisons are flooded with nonviolent drug offenders.
[00:00:16]  If you want to know who America's next enemy is, look at who we're funding right now.
[00:00:21]  Every single one of these problems are a result of government being way too big.
[00:00:26]  You're listening to part of the problem on the Gas Digital Network.
[00:00:30]  Here's your host, James Smith.
[00:00:33]  All right, what's up, everybody?
[00:00:34]  Welcome to a brand new episode of Part of the Problem from Tacoma, Washington.
[00:00:40]  Of course, I'm here.
[00:00:41]  I'm Dave Smith, and I'm joined, as always, by Robbie the Fire Bernstein.
[00:00:44]  We're having some fun shows out here in Tacoma.
[00:00:48]  I love that room.
[00:00:49]  I hate that you look this much bigger than me with this camera angle and see it.
[00:00:53]  It really is.
[00:00:55]  And of course, everybody, I'm joined by my baby brother, Rob Bernstein.
[00:00:58]  We look like different species of humans.
[00:01:00]  So Rob, tell everyone.
[00:01:02]  You had a big week.
[00:01:02]  You turned seven.
[00:01:03]  That was pretty cool.
[00:01:05]  That's pretty nice way to spend it.
[00:01:07]  Well, yes, the size differential is not as extreme as it looks on this.
[00:01:12]  We're doing what we can here to get you guys an episode.
[00:01:14]  We're in Rob's hotel room.
[00:01:17]  He did a good job setting this whole thing up.
[00:01:19]  But yeah, so we just yesterday was Thursday.
[00:01:22]  We had our first show.
[00:01:23]  We got two more tonight, two more tomorrow, and then over to Spokane.
[00:01:26]  Looking forward to that.
[00:01:27]  There are still the shows here, I think, are all sold out.
[00:01:32]  The shows in Spokane are close to sold out, but there are still some tickets left.
[00:01:36]  If you're listening to this, you could give it a shot.
[00:01:38]  You might be able to get in.
[00:01:40]  And then we're all over the place.
[00:01:41]  Got a lot of stuff.
[00:01:42]  This is a crazy month.
[00:01:45]  You know what?
[00:01:46]  We'll get into that because there's actually a lot to talk about on that.
[00:01:48]  So just let him know, Rob, anything you got coming up that you want to play?
[00:01:51]  This week, and then the first porch score is with Clint in West Palm Beach.
[00:01:56]  Ooh, Clint Russell.
[00:01:58]  Oh, my good friend Clint Russell.
[00:01:59]  Well, I'm going to see Clint at the end of the month, as will you, when we're down in D.C.
[00:02:05]  We got a live stand-up show and a live part of the problem podcast.
[00:02:09]  And we're pledging our allegiances to Trump.
[00:02:10]  And that is the other thing.
[00:02:11]  Well, so the big news is that obviously we have the Libertarian Party National Convention coming up.
[00:02:17]  It was just released on social media the other day that Donald Trump is coming and speaking at the Libertarian Party National Convention.
[00:02:27]  Same day I'm speaking, by the way, Saturday.
[00:02:30]  The fact that anyone would complain about getting to see Donald Trump play live for free, coming to your thing.
[00:02:37]  You don't even need to go see him?
[00:02:38]  Yeah, you're watching Metallica in 91.
[00:02:41]  Come on, do you see that?
[00:02:42]  Prime time Donald Trump.
[00:02:43]  You get to see the guy live and you're upset.
[00:02:45]  That's insane to me.
[00:02:46]  Well, take the free tickets.
[00:02:48]  Well, listen, it's an incredible accomplishment that Angela McCartle pulled off.
[00:02:53]  She, I believe, invited Biden and Trump and RFK.
[00:03:00]  And I'm not sure what the status with RFK is yet, but Biden obviously is not going to come.
[00:03:05]  That would require walking and speaking, not his strengths.
[00:03:09]  But Donald Trump took her up on it, and he's coming to the convention.
[00:03:12]  And yes, it's an unbelievable accomplishment.
[00:03:16]  It's been interesting to see the reaction to it on social media.
[00:03:20]  I want to talk a bit about this.
[00:03:22]  So, first of all, someone said to me on social media, and then I lost the comment.
[00:03:28]  I was going to respond to it, but sometimes you see a comment and then you're like, I can't find where it was.
[00:03:31]  But someone goes, they go, be honest, Dave.
[00:03:34]  How would you feel if Nick Sarwalk, who was, of course, the previous chair, who was very antagonistic toward me and Ron Paul and Tom Woods, and he's the guy we, you know, kind of entered the party to take over from, very much motivated by that.
[00:03:47]  Of course, I famously debated him.
[00:03:49]  Maybe not famously, but I debated him in 2018 and then had him on the podcast and debated him and just destroyed and be clowned him.
[00:03:57]  And he's been a laughing stock ever since.
[00:03:59]  Is he going to be at the new event, bumping shoulders with people?
[00:04:02]  He might be.
[00:04:02]  I don't know.
[00:04:03]  That's a good, for people who get the reference, it's pretty goddamn funny.
[00:04:06]  Reference back to our last convention at Reno.
[00:04:08]  But so someone said to me, they go, well, how would you feel, be honest, Dave, if Nick Sarwalk had invited Barack Obama to come speak at the convention?
[00:04:17]  And I'm like, listen, I don't know what you think is a gotcha there.
[00:04:21]  I would have been blown away that he pulled that off.
[00:04:24]  If he got Barack Obama to come speak at the Libertarian Party National Convention, I would have been blown away that he was able to pull that off.
[00:04:33]  You got to tip your hat to him.
[00:04:34]  Wow.
[00:04:35]  You've actually like pushed us into political relevance.
[00:04:39]  You know what I mean?
[00:04:40]  You've got the president of the United States of America coming to try to pitch us.
[00:04:46]  Then there's something.
[00:04:49]  Anyway, now, obviously, I also would have liked him to be like, oh, I hope he faces some tough pushback, you know, and I feel the same way about Donald Trump.
[00:04:56]  Like, let's see what he has to say.
[00:04:57]  And let's also, obviously, we have some, with Trump, it's almost even more interesting because we have some real grievances with Donald Trump, major ones, but they're not any of the ones that get aired on the corporate media every single day.
[00:05:10]  It's like the opposite.
[00:05:12]  You know what I mean?
[00:05:12]  Like they're like, oh, he didn't act fast enough on COVID.
[00:05:15]  And we're like, no, no, no, no.
[00:05:16]  You championed lockdowns into the summer of 2020.
[00:05:19]  We have totally different beefs with him.
[00:05:23]  And it'll be interesting to see how he tries to juggle this and how he tries to appeal to libertarians.
[00:05:29]  Does he even understand what our grievances are?
[00:05:32]  What's the reception to him going to be?
[00:05:34]  I just find this fascinating on so many levels.
[00:05:38]  But it also, I will say, it's been revealing of a few things that I think are major problems within the Libertarian Party.
[00:05:48]  And they're problems that I've been talking about for years now.
[00:05:51]  And there's different groups, right?
[00:05:54]  Like there are people who basically there's a small group of people from the old guard who are just bitter that we took the party over from them.
[00:06:04]  And they basically just bitch and moan all day long about the Libertarian Party.
[00:06:08]  So whatever Angela McArdle does or whatever I do, whatever Heist does, they're going to bitch and moan about it.
[00:06:13]  So that group I kind of dismiss a little bit more because it's just like, yeah, you would bitch about anything.
[00:06:19]  It doesn't really matter.
[00:06:20]  They also, part of the reason why I have no respect for that group is that, look, it's not like we didn't bitch and moan about the old Libertarian Party, but we also put in a plan of action to like take it over.
[00:06:34]  You know what I mean?
[00:06:35]  And we did it and we put it together and we won.
[00:06:38]  And like these guys just bitch and moan.
[00:06:40]  Like they're not doing anything.
[00:06:41]  They're not organized.
[00:06:42]  They're not like even like making any attempt to do anything.
[00:06:45]  So it's like, dude, if you're sitting around bitching about the Libertarian Part, like just leave.
[00:06:50]  What do you care?
[00:06:51]  Like anyway.
[00:06:54]  So, but then there's a different group.
[00:06:56]  Some of them even like are Mises caucus guys and some of them aren't but are just you know pure kind of libertarians.
[00:07:05]  And this group is, I would say, allergic to any type of creative strategy that isn't simply, we're going to sit here and be 100% pure libertarians.
[00:07:20]  And that I like being a 100% pure libertarian, but that doesn't mean you can't have any type of strategy or you can't go, okay, so we have these ideas.
[00:07:30]  Now, how are we going to enact them?
[00:07:31]  How are we going to marry them with the real world?
[00:07:34]  So this is a story that some of you guys may remember, be aware of.
[00:07:39]  I know there's a lot of people in our audience who don't pay attention to the Libertarian Party that much, although this might be a little more interesting to you now that it involves Donald Trump and is kind of relevant in the bigger political conversation.
[00:07:51]  But as you remember, Rob, I'm sure, Shortly after we took over the Libertarian Party, a couple months after, there was a Senate race in Arizona where Blake Masters was running against Mark Kelly.
[00:08:06]  And for anybody who doesn't know, Mark Kelly was, he's kind of famous for his wife was the woman who got shot.
[00:08:15]  He was an astronaut.
[00:08:17]  He's a Biden Clinton Democrat whose big issue is pushing gun control because his wife was shot or whatever.
[00:08:26]  He's like the worst of the worst, just a complete establishment Democrat.
[00:08:32]  On the other hand, this guy, Blake Masters, was a very interesting candidate.
[00:08:39]  Now, he was at one point a libertarian ANCAP, like hardcore libertarian ANCAP.
[00:08:46]  He was published on LewRockwell.com.
[00:08:48]  He wrote like amazing anti-war pieces, was in the Ron Paul revolution.
[00:08:54]  Like, now he definitely went in more of like a populist Trumpist direction after that.
[00:08:58]  But he was at one point one of us.
[00:09:01]  And so here you had like a clear preferable outcome would have been Blake Masters being a senator to Mark Kelly.
[00:09:11]  And they were polling dead even.
[00:09:14]  Now, Mark Victor was a libertarian running in the race, and he was polling pretty well, like 5% or 6% or something like that.
[00:09:21]  Very good for the libertarians.
[00:09:22]  So clearly way above the difference between the two of them.
[00:09:26]  And I was really pushing for him to drop out of the race.
[00:09:32]  And I was like, look, here's the kind of a thing we can work out.
[00:09:36]  Like, well, look, we don't have the power to win a Senate seat, but we do have the power here potentially to affect the outcome and get a much better outcome.
[00:09:45]  And what we kind of, not just me, but what was orchestrated basically what happened was Blake Masters came on Ron Paul's show.
[00:09:54]  He came on our show and he sat down and had a one-on-one conversation with Mark Victor to each one of them trying to convince how close our values were and how libertarian he was, you know?
[00:10:07]  And anyway, ultimately, Mark Victor dropped out of the race and endorsed him.
[00:10:10]  Now, he didn't win.
[00:10:12]  You know, it was a very close race by the polls.
[00:10:15]  It was 50-50.
[00:10:16]  He didn't do that good on election day, and it didn't work out.
[00:10:19]  So, hey, you know, it didn't work.
[00:10:22]  But the plan here, obviously, which was not far off from happening, was that you get the guy, you get the better outcome, which is this guy being a U.S. senator than this other guy.
[00:10:35]  I believe, I mean, look, we don't know.
[00:10:37]  They all disappoint once they're in office, but he very likely would have been like one more rebel member of Congress, like another Rayon Paul, Thomas Massey, kind of, you know, and there's other people, Matt Gates, like one of these type of guys.
[00:10:52]  And that's definitely a lot better than just having another Biden Democrat in the Senate.
[00:10:56]  And so it would, I thought, if he were to win, I go, look at that, not only did we get the better outcome, but we got somebody to have to come kiss the ring of all these libertarians, make these pledges.
[00:11:11]  And I thought it would be the biggest power move that the Libertarian Party's ever pulled off.
[00:11:16]  And the amount of people who were outraged about this, because I was supporting a Republican, not a libertarian.
[00:11:25]  And because it's, oh, look at the three issues he's bad on.
[00:11:28]  And look at that.
[00:11:29]  And it's like, I remember it was very eye-opening and it changed the way I look at a lot of members of the Libertarian Party.
[00:11:37]  And this even within my own camp, because this was like Mises guys who were really mad at me.
[00:11:41]  And this is when I was still planning on running.
[00:11:43]  I mean, this is like when the whole effort was kind of behind this thing we were doing.

=== Phoenix Ammunition Meme Warfare (02:22) ===

[00:11:47]  And it was amazing to me that it was like, wait, but you guys don't think we're going to ever have to make some tough choices or we're ever going to have to like leverage the position we're in rather than the imaginary position that we wish we were in.
[00:12:01]  And you just don't like, you don't see what a badass power move it is to like establish this precedent that you got to come sell yourself to us libertarians because we can get you over the edge.
[00:12:13]  Like we're not winning national office.
[00:12:15]  We're not winning statewide office.
[00:12:16]  That's the reality of the situation right now.
[00:12:19]  And it was just bonkers to me how many people were like allergic to any attempt to being relevant.
[00:12:26]  So anyway, so that was kind of in my mind as all of this is happening.
[00:12:31]  All right, guys, let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show.
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[00:14:00]  All right, let's get back into the show.
[00:14:02]  You know, okay, so I remember back when I debated Nick Sarwalk.

=== The Individualist Dilemma (15:02) ===

[00:14:09]  And there's like a seeming irony here, but I don't actually think it is irony.
[00:14:14]  I don't think there's actually any contradiction here because I was debating Sarwalk at the Soho Forum and I was saying like, hey, enough with these bullshit milquetoast candidates.
[00:14:23]  Like, why are we running Bill Weld, a Raytheon lobbyist?
[00:14:26]  We should be the Ron Paul revolution.
[00:14:28]  Like, we should be opposed to all the wars and ending the Federal Reserve and all of this stuff.
[00:14:33]  You know, like, that should be our bread and butter.
[00:14:35]  And he was like, no, no, no.
[00:14:37]  Well, they got the highest vote totals and they were two, you know, you know, Republican governors in blue states who came together to get things done.
[00:14:46]  And so he's just taking this kind of milquetoast approach to, you know, the purpose of a political party is to get people elected.
[00:14:54]  And it's like, okay, well, you're not doing that.
[00:14:56]  They didn't get elected.
[00:14:58]  But then at one point, he just throws out this line, which is a tagline that the Libertarian Party members love to say.
[00:15:05]  And he goes, our goal is nothing short of setting the world free in our lifetime.
[00:15:13]  And that's the line that a lot of Libertarian Party members like to use.
[00:15:16]  That's what we're here to set the world free in our lifetime.
[00:15:21]  And it's kind of funny because it's like, for all the radical things I'm saying, you know, that like gets my eyebrow raised.
[00:15:27]  Like, really?
[00:15:29]  Set the world?
[00:15:31]  You think you're going to set the world free in our lifetime?
[00:15:35]  Like, I don't know.
[00:15:36]  I got 40, 50 years left or something, maybe 60 if things go real good.
[00:15:40]  But yeah, no, no, I've been very hard on myself in these first 40.
[00:15:44]  But you know what I'm saying?
[00:15:46]  But you're telling me not only are we going to set our country free or a state free, but we're going to set the world free.
[00:15:51]  And it's like, okay, well, that's bold.
[00:15:54]  What's the plan?
[00:15:56]  And your plan is, we'll keep running people who get 2%.
[00:16:00]  And they say, we're socially liberal and fiscally conservative.
[00:16:04]  And that ought to liberate the world.
[00:16:08]  You know, it's like, and there's just this weird thing where it's like, there's really no contradiction between like having pure principles, standing on them, but then also being strategic, mapping out the real world as it exists, not as if as we wish it to exist.
[00:16:24]  And that is where I just see a lot of libertarians struggling.
[00:16:29]  So that's kind of my background.
[00:16:31]  I don't know.
[00:16:31]  Any thoughts you want to add to any of this?
[00:16:33]  What's the biggest complaint about Trump speaking?
[00:16:36]  It just seems like such a win.
[00:16:38]  It's an unbelievably clear win.
[00:16:40]  The complaint seems to have been, oh, this, there's several.
[00:16:44]  From the Mises Caucus haters, I'm not making this up.
[00:16:47]  Their complaint is that we were always an op to destroy the Libertarian Party, to hand it over to Donald Trump.
[00:16:55]  And this is confirmation that we're really throwing all of our support behind Donald Trump.
[00:17:01]  Okay.
[00:17:01]  That would be a weird way to do it.
[00:17:04]  You know, as the person who is the biggest mouthpiece of the Mises caucus, and I have been, I think, since the beginning, or at least certainly it developed that way.
[00:17:14]  Maybe I wasn't at the very beginning, but I certainly became that after 2020.
[00:17:22]  I feel like I'd be taking a really weird path in order to do that.
[00:17:26]  I've been like one of the sharpest critics of Donald Trump.
[00:17:29]  I've done debates with other prominent, you know, like content creators about like how terrible Trump is.
[00:17:36]  I mean, we've been merciless critics of Donald Trump.
[00:17:41]  And always, I think we just did a segment on the last episode, or one of the last episodes about just how fed up I was after he supported Mike Johnson passing this latest aid program.
[00:17:51]  I mean, so that just seems weird.
[00:17:53]  Like if that was our goal, or also if it was our goal, why wouldn't we just endorse him then?
[00:17:57]  Why would also, why would we be trying to de-wokeify the Libertarian Party?
[00:18:02]  It would make no sense.
[00:18:03]  Like it would help Donald Trump, obviously, if the third party was like something woke that would never his supporters would never go for.
[00:18:10]  Why would we make it something that might be more attractive to his supporters?
[00:18:14]  Just none of it makes any sense.
[00:18:15]  But then I guess the other more reasonable complaint is like this will associate us with Donald Trump.
[00:18:22]  And to the layman now, they will think of libertarians as something like Donald Trump.
[00:18:27]  That's so unbelievably negative because just in pure percentage terms, how many people moving forward just associate us with Trump versus how many people might go, oh, who's this libertarian group?
[00:18:39]  And then start looking into it, I don't understand why you go to the worst case scenario that to like, who is this specific person that sees that Donald Trump speaks at the Libertarian Party and then, and I don't even understand it, associates the LP.
[00:18:53]  So now they know that we exist.
[00:18:55]  They didn't know that we existed, but it's a negative people.
[00:18:57]  I don't get it.
[00:18:58]  Now when they think of us, they think of Donald Trump.
[00:19:00]  It's like, well, at least they're thinking of us.
[00:19:03]  I mean, I don't know.
[00:19:03]  Yeah, I'm not saying there couldn't be any bad like misconceptions that come out of this.
[00:19:08]  And yeah, here's the thing, though.
[00:19:10]  And this is what's crazy to me, right?
[00:19:11]  This is why I made the point about, because I've used this football analogy before, right?
[00:19:17]  But it's, look, if you're going to throw the ball downfield, you can go, well, that might get intercepted.
[00:19:25]  And it's like, yeah, you know, like, okay, I'll grant you that.
[00:19:29]  It could, it could get intercepted.
[00:19:31]  But you also got, look, if you're saying we're going to set the world free in my lifetime, well, then what did we just establish?
[00:19:39]  I got 30 years left.
[00:19:40]  We'll give me 30, I think.
[00:19:42]  Okay, we got 30 years to set the world free.
[00:19:44]  Well, guess what?
[00:19:44]  It's the fourth quarter and we're down by 27 touchdowns.
[00:19:49]  And what are you proposing?
[00:19:50]  We run the ball.
[00:19:51]  Like I'm saying throw the ball downfield.
[00:19:53]  Let's like, it's like people are allergic to like taking a shot.
[00:19:57]  You're right.
[00:19:57]  Maybe, maybe that it will, maybe it won't work out great.
[00:20:01]  But hey, let's go for it, dude.
[00:20:04]  What else are we doing here?
[00:20:05]  And no, it's not so clear that the, I think it's quite possible that the result of this is people go, who's this libertarian group?
[00:20:12]  Oh, Donald Trump feels they're important enough that the former president of the United States of America and the current frontrunner to be the next president of the United States feels it's necessary or at least worthwhile to come try to pitch to them.
[00:20:28]  And if there is any pushback or if he doesn't get a good reception or something like that, which I think, I think he might be walking into a very hostile environment.
[00:20:36]  I don't know when Donald Trump ever speaks to a hostile crowd like this.
[00:20:39]  Then it might be like, oh, why is it that they're, oh, they're pissed off that he ever endorsed lockdowns or they're pissed off at the spending.
[00:20:45]  Or they're, I mean, like, not like, again, I'm not saying when you throw the ball downfield, it's a guaranteed touchdown, but it's the only way to maybe score.
[00:20:53]  You know what else might be really great is if he walked away and we educated him specific things that he committed to, such as let's just say he walked away from it and said, I'm going to free Assange.
[00:21:04]  And then it became the Libertarian Party educated Donald Trump.
[00:21:07]  It's very possible.
[00:21:08]  On, hey, this is wrong.
[00:21:09]  And there's numerous topics that are like borderline and very agreeable that if it was just on his radar, he might actually do.
[00:21:17]  And then even that's just a light education of who's this libertarian people talking about freedom that Donald Trump willingly made this commitment.
[00:21:26]  And nobody, and by the way, nobody here is saying now we must vote for Donald Trump.
[00:21:31]  Now we must blindly support Donald Trump.
[00:21:33]  We have to, our candidate's going to pull out of the race.
[00:21:36]  Nothing like this has been said.
[00:21:38]  We've sacrificed nothing.
[00:21:39]  We've sacrificed nothing.
[00:21:41]  We just get more attention on our convention than ever before.
[00:21:46]  And people are fucking complaining about it.
[00:21:49]  It's like, listen, libertarians, I love you.
[00:21:51]  Not all of you, but a lot of you.
[00:21:53]  I do love a lot of you guys.
[00:21:55]  But you got to like, listen, man, if you really, and I mean this, if you really have such a big beef with this, then close up the political party and start a book club.
[00:22:06]  Like, if that's what you want to do, if you just want to read Murray Rothbard and talk about your thoughts and talk about like how zoning regulations could possibly work in an anarchist society because they could be done by voluntary zoning boards, like fine.
[00:22:20]  I actually find all of those to be interesting academic conversations.
[00:22:25]  Like I'm into that stuff.
[00:22:26]  But if it's going to be a political party, it's so funny because the old guard would like lecture us.
[00:22:31]  This isn't an advocacy group.
[00:22:33]  This is a political party.
[00:22:34]  And it's like, yeah, that's right.
[00:22:36]  But it's a political party that doesn't right now have a shot at winning statewide or nationwide elections.
[00:22:42]  So what are we doing?
[00:22:43]  And I'll say one other thing.
[00:22:45]  Aside from even the Trump stuff, this is something I've already experienced because I've been, listen, I don't know about in the legacy corporate media.
[00:22:53]  I, you know, I don't really have connections like that.
[00:22:55]  I mean, I got some, but not really.
[00:22:57]  And I don't know whether they're going to cover this at all or what.
[00:23:00]  But I'll tell you already, I've been talking to the guys at Timcast.
[00:23:05]  I've been talking to Tucker Carlson.
[00:23:08]  I've been talking to Sagar and Crystal Ball, the guys at Breaking Point.
[00:23:14]  I was texting with Patrick Bett David the other day.
[00:23:16]  Like I'm texting with all of these people in our world who all of a sudden are very, very interested in our convention.
[00:23:23]  And these are between the people that I just mentioned.
[00:23:27]  These are people with millions and millions of audience.
[00:23:30]  This is new media with millions of eyeballs on it.
[00:23:33]  And obviously, the fact that Trump's there makes this much more of a story that all of these people are interested in.
[00:23:40]  And I think a lot of them are going to be coming to the convention.
[00:23:43]  I'm not sure who's able to do it yet and who's not, but I bet a bunch of them are going to come to the convention.
[00:23:50]  And okay, already just that in itself makes a lot more attention.
[00:23:55]  And at some point, obviously, all these people covering it are going to be like, so what are, how do these libertarians feel?
[00:24:01]  What is that?
[00:24:02]  I'm sure that they, when they're covering this, will get, you know, will ask people like me or Spike Cohen or, you know, Michael Heiss or Angela McCartle or someone, what do you think about all of this?
[00:24:15]  You know what I mean?
[00:24:16]  And then like people will like, and this is the thing that really was frustrating me about libertarians is that they would play they like Angela was in like an interview and she was being very diplomatic about it.
[00:24:30]  And she was like, well, I forget exactly what she said, but it was like, well, obviously there's a lot of areas where Trump and libertarians agree.
[00:24:35]  And so he was coming to speak about these, these areas.
[00:24:37]  And also there's areas where we have issues.
[00:24:40]  And they're like, she's basically endorsing them.
[00:24:41]  And you're like, guys, she's being diplomatic.
[00:24:44]  Like, obviously, that's, she has to.
[00:24:47]  She can't come out.
[00:24:47]  If she just comes out and says, like, oh, he's a war criminal and he's this and that.
[00:24:50]  It's like, well, okay, great.
[00:24:51]  Then he won't come.
[00:24:52]  And then we don't get any of this opportunity.
[00:24:54]  And it's almost like that's what a lot of people would prefer because then they get to feel 100% pure.
[00:25:00]  But it's like, hey, guys, we're working in the real world here.
[00:25:03]  We're trying to like, like, actually maybe move the needle a little bit.
[00:25:07]  And it's just, I don't know.
[00:25:08]  It's, it's just such an obvious win.
[00:25:11]  All right.
[00:25:11]  I got, I got two radical pitches here.
[00:25:13]  Okay.
[00:25:14]  The first is, I would, I'm, I'm jealous.
[00:25:16]  I'm not going to be able to see Donald Trump, but for everyone that wants to protest it, I invite you to Childerberg.
[00:25:21]  You don't have to listen to me.
[00:25:22]  Oh, you're going to Childerberg?
[00:25:23]  I'll be out there on Saturday.
[00:25:24]  I'm going to miss the Trump shenanigans.
[00:25:26]  I mean, nothing against Childerberg.
[00:25:27]  I've heard it's a great time, but this is not the one to go to.
[00:25:30]  Exactly.
[00:25:30]  I'm not bailing on the gig and I love being there, but I would like to see Donald Trump play live.
[00:25:35]  This show is sponsored by BetterHelp.
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[00:26:23]  All right, let's get back into the show.
[00:26:25]  Okay, I'm going to, I know you're not going to like it, and it's going to piss off some of the libertarians, but I got a pitch for a publicity stunt here.
[00:26:32]  We put up a demand list, and I actually think that they're all reasonable enough that Donald Trump might say yes to it.
[00:26:39]  And if Donald Trump says yes to this demand list, and I'm not done with my demand list, but I got a rough framework here.
[00:26:45]  We bail and say that we'll support him.
[00:26:47]  And I think.
[00:26:48]  I want to see Stormy's tits.
[00:26:50]  That's number one.
[00:26:51]  I know you got pictures.
[00:26:53]  No, because I think if you were to front.
[00:26:55]  I guess she's a porn star.
[00:26:56]  I guess we could all get pictures.
[00:26:57]  This is a way I think you can really move the ball forward on specific things that we're doing.
[00:27:02]  So you wrote down the thought into this?
[00:27:04]  Yeah.
[00:27:05]  All right.
[00:27:05]  This is more effort than you've put into your act.
[00:27:08]  I'll tell you the first one.
[00:27:09]  And support for Gaza War and the Ukraine war.
[00:27:12]  You might get a commitment from him on that.
[00:27:14]  That's not totally outside the realm of what you might get a yes on.
[00:27:18]  And then you get to front, hey, this is the number one thing that we care about right now.
[00:27:22]  And you might get a yes.
[00:27:23]  You might literally get a policy yes from the guy.
[00:27:25]  All right, you want to know the next one?
[00:27:26]  Sure.
[00:27:27]  Prosecute Fauci or at least a commitment to a special investigator into financial crimes of Fauci during the COVID pandemic.
[00:27:35]  I like that.
[00:27:36]  Next one, audit the Federal.
[00:27:37]  Don't limit it to financial crimes.
[00:27:38]  Okay.
[00:27:39]  Yeah.
[00:27:39]  Audit the Federal Reserve.
[00:27:41]  I like that.
[00:27:41]  I don't, because I don't think, like, you can say end the Fed if you want to be a purist.
[00:27:45]  I don't think you'll get a yes on that.
[00:27:46]  I think you could get a yes on audit.
[00:27:48]  A law against central-backed digital currencies, a law against health passports or any sort of mandated health tracking system.
[00:27:56]  Right.
[00:27:56]  And a law against U.S. participation in a who-based virus response.
[00:28:01]  And then the last one, real easy, complete the wall.
[00:28:05]  Well, that one's not going to be unanimous amongst libertarians.
[00:28:08]  So I don't think that last one would make sense for the LP as a party because there's a lot of people who don't agree with that there.
[00:28:13]  So I'm just trying to be fair.
[00:28:15]  Between me and you, I'd be fine with that being on the list.
[00:28:18]  Between me and you and everyone who listens here.
[00:28:20]  I didn't mean between us.
[00:28:21]  I meant amongst us.
[00:28:22]  We'd probably agree on that.
[00:28:24]  At least there's a publicity stunt of these are the most important things.
[00:28:27]  I'm not, I get, I get your point there.
[00:28:30]  I don't, I think it would be hard to get the, the issue with libertarians is that they are such individualists and that it's going to be hard to get anything where the group would agree, we'll support you if you do this.
[00:28:43]  Let me say this, okay?
[00:28:46]  I've endorsed Michael Rechtenwald.
[00:28:49]  I'm supporting Michael Rechtenwald for president.
[00:28:51]  I'm going to vote for Michael Rechtenwald when he wins the nomination after this.
[00:28:55]  So that's certainly, I'm not, but back to the thing with Blake Masters, because I remember when I was, I jumped on, because there were a bunch of actually like Mises caucus guys who were very upset with me at this point.
[00:29:07]  And these guys were like getting ready to support me for president at the time.
[00:29:10]  Like that's what they all want.

=== Turning the Power Move (06:22) ===

[00:29:11]  They were very upset with me.
[00:29:13]  And I jumped on like an organizer's meeting as Michael Heiss asked me to jump on.
[00:29:19]  And I talked to like, I don't know, like a bunch of them.
[00:29:23]  And there were a bunch of them really critical of me.
[00:29:26]  Like they were really, it was it.
[00:29:27]  You just said, sit there and take it.
[00:29:29]  Well, no, I sat there and argued with them.
[00:29:31]  You know what I mean?
[00:29:31]  Yeah, no.
[00:29:33]  Brutal.
[00:29:33]  And it was, it did, it was very frustrating.
[00:29:35]  And it did, it did change, you know, it was an eye-opening experience for me where I was kind of like, you know, I was a bit pissed off by it.
[00:29:47]  I was just kind of like, you know, it's like, Jesus, guys, like, we've done this whole thing together and you're going to turn on me over this over like a clear like an opportunity to have the biggest power move in the history of the party.
[00:29:59]  And look, here's the thing, okay?
[00:30:01]  The position that libertarians are in is that, well, look, something like that, that we can actually do.
[00:30:07]  We can kind of like extort, for lack of a better term, without the illegal connotations of it, but we can be like, hey, we will ruin this for you unless you do this.
[00:30:18]  We're actually in the position to do that right now.
[00:30:20]  We're not in the position to say we're going to win the Senate race, but we are in the position to say we could get you over or not get you over.
[00:30:26]  Or look, sometimes, as in this case, it didn't work either way, right?
[00:30:30]  Like we still weren't able to get him over, but at least there was a shot.
[00:30:33]  It could have been successful.
[00:30:34]  But the point is more like, if you can get concessions out of a candidate, say like what you're saying with Donald Trump, it's one thing when you get them for somebody running for office because, you know, they can make promises and politicians don't keep their promises.
[00:30:52]  So, okay, there's a flaw there.
[00:30:54]  But at the same time, like you said, it could create a big publicity stunt.
[00:30:58]  It could get your demands on the map.
[00:31:00]  But the real move here, and this is what I was trying to explain to the Mises caucus guys, is that, look, what I was trying to do with the Blake Masters thing here is I go, okay, but guys, if this works, right?
[00:31:12]  If this works, then it will be very clearly seen that we got him over.
[00:31:18]  Because the Libertarian Party candidate dropped out and endorsed him.
[00:31:23]  He went to Ron Paul.
[00:31:24]  He went to Dave Smith.
[00:31:25]  He went and addressed that.
[00:31:26]  And then he wins.
[00:31:28]  But then the real rub of it comes that he's going to have to get reelected.
[00:31:33]  Now you're extorting an incumbent.
[00:31:36]  Now it's not, I want a campaign promise.
[00:31:39]  Now it's, I want to see that you did this.
[00:31:41]  I want to see, you know, and then like now you might actually be in the realm of something that makes libertarians very uncomfortable of actually wielding political power.
[00:31:51]  So like Donald Trump is not the, look, ideally, this would have happened with Donald Trump in 2016.
[00:31:57]  And then when he's going for re-election, you go, hey, how come Russ Ulbrick hasn't been pardoned yet?
[00:32:03]  How come Julian Assange hasn't been pardoned yet?
[00:32:05]  And then if he does that, we'll support you, right?
[00:32:07]  So like that, but again, that's got to start somewhere.
[00:32:11]  And this is a good, so my other point is that the Blake Masters thing, or this with Trump, this is a good place to start that process for the future to maybe actually get, you know, some concessions, maybe actually move the needle a little bit toward the side of what's right.
[00:32:28]  I also think, and now I'm, you know, let's say Donald Trump took the bait.
[00:32:34]  You've put up my list of demands.
[00:32:35]  He actually says yes.
[00:32:36]  And then you got to eat the crow and go, all right, we're backing Donald Trump.
[00:32:41]  I'm just going to say, in reality, what have you lost?
[00:32:45]  I'm just saying, like, just pure, you know, your other choice was Biden was going to become president.
[00:32:51]  In my opinion, that's substantially worse.
[00:32:54]  It's like, what gets lost?
[00:32:56]  Even if he doesn't keep the commitments, you get to educate people on, hey, this was what was important to the Libertarian Party.
[00:33:01]  Maybe, I don't know, that moves the ball forward a little bit that people realize these are the most important issues.
[00:33:06]  And he bails on you.
[00:33:07]  And then whatever.
[00:33:08]  You're in the same place you always were.
[00:33:10]  Yeah, I mean, and again, look, I get your point.
[00:33:14]  But the thing that's crazy is that that's not even what's happening.
[00:33:17]  And people are upset.
[00:33:18]  Oh, yeah.
[00:33:19]  They're not even.
[00:33:20]  I'm going forward with a way more radical.
[00:33:22]  You're telling me much more radical.
[00:33:23]  None of this is actually happening.
[00:33:25]  All that's happening is he's coming to speak.
[00:33:27]  Which is so funny.
[00:33:28]  And it's like, yeah, on top of it, it's going to be very entertaining.
[00:33:31]  But it's like, it's also fascinating to see what he's going to do.
[00:33:36]  But it just was, it was kind of unbelievable to me how much like this is.
[00:33:42]  This is like a controversial move, when it's just I don't know like that old corny slogan, but it's like, this is why we can't have nice things.
[00:33:52]  But it really did make me feel that way that it's like, oh, this is why we can't have nice things libertarians, because even now, in this moment, people can't just give it to Angela and go, oh, she pulled it off.
[00:34:03]  Like she pulled off something amazing that this party's never pulled off before.
[00:34:06]  This is great and I'll tell you, it also just is exposing to how like, how stupid some libertarians are and I literally, I don't have anything else to say other than like it's like, oh, I didn't realize how low your IQ was, whereas people are going, oh, he goes.
[00:34:20]  Dave, you said Donald Trump was guilty of war crimes, but now you're celebrating that he's coming to speak.
[00:34:25]  So which one is it?
[00:34:27]  And you're like, what wait seriously, like it's it's.
[00:34:32]  There's no contradiction between those two positions at all.
[00:34:36]  It's like, yeah, I think Donald Trump was a disaster in many different ways.
[00:34:40]  I also think the most famous human being to ever exist, who is the former president and the current frontrunner for president.
[00:34:46]  Coming to the Libertarian party convention, you puts a tremendous amount of attention on us and the ideas that we care about.
[00:34:55]  Those are both obviously true.
[00:34:57]  Sorry, go ahead.
[00:34:59]  Well, can I push back on that one?
[00:35:01]  Sure.
[00:35:02]  Don't you end up with like, would you make a similar case for Hitler in his prime of, hey, it brings the tension to us?
[00:35:08]  Like at what point does someone, like if you view him as a war criminal, what point do you see someone as reprehensible enough that you go, well, we just can't have him.
[00:35:14]  Well, the thing about, look, I mean, you think about Hitler as like this, like almost like this historical figure of like cartoonish levels of evil.
[00:35:26]  But if you're talking about Hitler as, say, like, I don't know, he was just the chancellor and he's the frontrunner to be chancellor again.

=== Debating Hitler's Relevance (14:49) ===

[00:35:34]  Well, then, yeah, because like it or not, he's fucking really relevant in this situation.
[00:35:39]  And if you were saying, let's say, like, to make the analogy complete, Hitler, you know, I don't exactly know.
[00:35:45]  He hasn't been Fuhrer yet, but he was Chancellor and he's out and now he's running again for Chancellor and he's the favorite to be chancellor and he's coming to speak to a Jewish, a Jewish rights organization.
[00:35:58]  You know what I mean?
[00:35:59]  So like this mission of, hey, I want to placate to this.
[00:36:06]  Well, then yes, you have him come speak, man.
[00:36:08]  I mean, I don't believe in any, like, yes, no, it doesn't matter how evil the guy is.
[00:36:13]  It matters like how relevant this is.
[00:36:16]  And if we're trying to make this system a little bit less worse, then yeah, I think you got to deal with these guys.
[00:36:24]  Now, there's if Hitler is some fringe figure who is totally irrelevant, do you bring him just to start ranting about the Jews?
[00:36:31]  No, probably not.
[00:36:32]  So the question isn't like how bad the guy is.
[00:36:35]  The question is like, what position is he in?
[00:36:38]  All right, guys, let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show, which is MyPatriot Supply.
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[00:37:46]  All right, let's get back into the show.
[00:37:48]  I got two.
[00:37:50]  Donald Trump, if for some reason this comes across your radar, here's the speech he should give.
[00:37:54]  Just talk about the deep state and the deep state only.
[00:37:57]  So if I was him, just get up there and be like, listen, the biggest problem in our country right now is I was undermined by a deep state.
[00:38:03]  This is what we have to clean up.
[00:38:05]  And that's why you have a military industrial con, like, just take a look at that.
[00:38:08]  There are many issues that he could pitch libertarians on.
[00:38:12]  Again, I'm very interested to see if he's even prepared for that.
[00:38:17]  You know what I mean?
[00:38:18]  Like what he even knows about what he's getting into.
[00:38:21]  You know, Trump doesn't, I don't, I have a feeling that Trump is not going to come in prepared with a message Taylor made for our group.
[00:38:31]  I don't think he's going to like do his homework and know that.
[00:38:33]  I think that the way they're trying to set it up is like, you know, that there'll basically be like a list of things that libertarians care about that they want to hear him address and then see if he'll address them.
[00:38:46]  You know, the other thing too is that people.
[00:38:47]  I'll fix this.
[00:38:48]  I'll fix that other thing.
[00:38:50]  That will be great now.
[00:38:51]  Yes.
[00:38:52]  But again, there's, you know, there were other people I saw on Twitter because I really was very interested in like the response to this.
[00:38:59]  And people were like, well, if Donald Trump's going to come there, then he should have to debate Michael Rectenwald.
[00:39:06]  He should have to debate this guy or something.
[00:39:08]  And you're just like, guys, again, just we got to live in the real world here.
[00:39:13]  And this is not, I'm endorsing Michael Rectenwald.
[00:39:15]  You know, I'm supporting him.
[00:39:16]  I'm not like, this isn't a knock against him or any of the other candidates.
[00:39:20]  I saw like Josh Smith was like, Trump, if he wants to be a real man, should come debate me.
[00:39:24]  And you're like, Josh, look, man, like, dude, I love you, dude.
[00:39:28]  But like, if the demand is Donald Trump has to come debate Josh Smith, then yeah, that's just going to be a no.
[00:39:35]  Like, it's either this or it doesn't happen.
[00:39:38]  It's just, and it's like people almost got to like remove themselves from the world of like, like, that's just not going to happen, okay?
[00:39:48]  I also, I'd like Joe Biden to debate me, but that's not going to happen, right?
[00:39:52]  So like this, this is something that can happen.
[00:39:55]  And at least we're throwing the ball downfield, man.
[00:39:58]  At least we're taking a shot at something rather than, oh, no, you know what?
[00:40:02]  Let's just keep doing what we're doing.
[00:40:04]  Let's keep doing what we're doing, Libertarian Party.
[00:40:06]  But we'll all get together a few times a year and we'll all give out awards to each other and we'll all pat each other on the back and we'll all say we're going to set the world free in our lifetime.
[00:40:17]  That's a better route than having the most famous person who's a president of the United States of America attend and get more eyeballs on us than we've ever gotten before.
[00:40:27]  Like if the choice there isn't obvious, I don't know what to tell you.
[00:40:30]  And this is odd coming from me, but I will recommend that everyone be a mensch.
[00:40:35]  Don't heckle the speech.
[00:40:36]  Don't show up and try and derail it.
[00:40:38]  Just don't go if you don't want to hear it, but let the guy do his thing.
[00:40:41]  I would say, I'd say don't heckle for sure.
[00:40:44]  And I think you should be respectful to him when he goes up there.
[00:40:47]  But I also wouldn't be against if there's something he says that's bad, I wouldn't be against booing.
[00:40:53]  You're allowed to clap if he says something good.
[00:40:55]  I think you're allowed to boo if he says something you don't like.
[00:40:57]  Because I think that might be good.
[00:41:00]  It should be done in a way that it's not going to ruin this and he's going to walk off stage.
[00:41:04]  That doesn't get us anything.
[00:41:06]  But if there is something where like, look, when his own audience booed him for celebrating the vaccine, I thought that was powerful.
[00:41:12]  And so I'm not against that.
[00:41:13]  Right.
[00:41:14]  And it'll be funny.
[00:41:14]  Like, you know, he looks at the list and it says Federal Reserve and he goes, I want to lower the interest rate and the order just booze him.
[00:41:21]  He goes, why did I just get it?
[00:41:22]  That would be really funny.
[00:41:23]  He goes, I want to raise the interest rate.
[00:41:25]  Boo!
[00:41:27]  Is there a third option here?
[00:41:29]  Yeah, he's, well, we're going to really blow your mind, Donald Trump.
[00:41:33]  But anyway, it's, look, it's a, if nothing else, it's a fascinating, it's a fascinating moment in the history of the libertarian movement, in the history of the Libertarian Party, and even in American political history.
[00:41:49]  Like, we've now entered that conversation.
[00:41:52]  I don't know what you can point to that is exactly like this that's ever happened.
[00:41:57]  And so like, again, wow, that's, that to me is like exciting.
[00:42:01]  Like, okay, now, again, I will admit, as I was saying before, when you, when you throw the ball downfield, it could get intercepted.
[00:42:08]  And it's going to be a challenge to like try to mold this into the best possible outcome.
[00:42:15]  Like, I'm literally, I'm thinking out loud here when I was just saying, well, no, but you should boo him.
[00:42:19]  You know what I mean?
[00:42:20]  Like, there's, like, it's, there, we should be giving this a lot of thought.
[00:42:24]  I know, and I just spoke to Angela on the phone for a while.
[00:42:26]  I know she's giving this a lot of thought.
[00:42:29]  But at the same time, it's amazing that anybody who cares about these issues would be like, no, I'd rather just not do this.
[00:42:38]  I'd rather just have a regular libertarian convention.
[00:42:42]  It just makes no sense to me.
[00:42:43]  Just look at it this way.
[00:42:44]  He had to come to this convention to try and win over the people that are pro-freedom.
[00:42:48]  And then people go, wait, there's a group of people that are pro-freedom?
[00:42:51]  Who's this pro freedom group?
[00:42:53]  Yeah.
[00:42:53]  It just, it actually shows off the largest of where we're at that people are interested in us.
[00:42:59]  And that's part of the game is, and that's why, like, during COVID, it's the inverse of during COVID where they were trying to pretend you were crazy if you weren't getting vaccinated.
[00:43:06]  And then if you actually looked at the numbers, up until the forced compliance, it was not very popular.
[00:43:13]  And then once the forced compliance came in, there were still a lot of people that weren't, but they were trying to pretend like you're crazy.
[00:43:17]  They kind of censor us by pretending like we don't exist or we're not important.
[00:43:21]  If people have to actually show up and contend with us as a potential voting block, that actually goes, oh, there's a lot of people that are interested in this.
[00:43:28]  And that's how you get more people interested.
[00:43:30]  Yeah.
[00:43:30]  And look, like there also was by some people like a complete inability to grapple with the Trump moment and what that represented.
[00:43:39]  And all of the complaints that we've listed out over all of the years, and I don't know, there's not a single one of them that I take back.
[00:43:46]  Literally, like I said, just on, I don't remember if it was either the last episode or one of the most recent episodes.
[00:43:51]  I was going hard at him and I'm going to continue to do that throughout the campaign, throughout if he gets into the White House again, throughout all of that.
[00:43:58]  So like all of that's true.
[00:44:00]  Donald Trump's track record on war and spending and obviously COVID and money and almost everything you could think of is really has a lot of problems.
[00:44:16]  He's that's all true.
[00:44:18]  And it's also true that he is the figure who is more single-handedly responsible for completely discrediting the corporate media, for kind of luring the deep state out into the open for them to reveal themselves, for really in many ways shattering the matrix than anyone else.
[00:44:42]  And so, okay, he's like a profoundly interesting figure.
[00:44:48]  I think debatably the most interesting figure in like modern American history.
[00:44:54]  And so like that, I don't know.
[00:44:55]  Just like, look at that.
[00:44:57]  And the other thing that I just...
[00:44:58]  If I miss out on a backstage pseudo-Fed party with Donald Trump.
[00:45:02]  Dude, I'm going to be like, did you pick the wrong year to go to Childeberg?
[00:45:06]  Let me tell you something.
[00:45:08]  And then, by the way, all the critics are completely right.
[00:45:11]  I just go, I don't know, dude.
[00:45:12]  I did a bunch of pseudo-Fed with this guy.
[00:45:13]  I'm voting for him.
[00:45:15]  I'm sorry.
[00:45:16]  I'm out of here, dude.
[00:45:18]  But the other thing that I just kind of kept thinking about because particularly that one person who, again, I just was lost in the replies.
[00:45:24]  I got too many Twitter followers.
[00:45:26]  Twitter was way more fun when I had less followers.
[00:45:28]  It really was.
[00:45:29]  Don't get me wrong.
[00:45:30]  Well, you could ignore it.
[00:45:31]  You dudes kind of take the bait and like to argue with so many people.
[00:45:35]  That's the point, though.
[00:45:36]  But that's the point.
[00:45:36]  I like doing that.
[00:45:38]  And I can't do it as well.
[00:45:39]  I like having more followers because more people listen to the podcast, more people come out to shows, you know, when you have a bigger platform to promote your stuff on.
[00:45:49]  But like right around 50,000 was the most fun because you could argue with all those people.
[00:45:55]  Right.
[00:45:56]  But you also could keep up with it.
[00:45:58]  Right.
[00:45:58]  You know what I mean?
[00:45:58]  When it wasn't just like this thing where, you know, like if you, if there's a reply and you're like, oh, I want to respond to that guy, and then you accidentally hit refresh.
[00:46:06]  You're like, dude, I'm never going to.
[00:46:07]  And now you already had the perfect argument.
[00:46:10]  You just got to walk around thinking about how you were going to smoke him.
[00:46:12]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:46:13]  And then it's just, and it's true.
[00:46:14]  I mean, it would take me 40 minutes to go through all my replies to find that thing again.
[00:46:18]  But anyways.
[00:46:19]  Like, how do I tell this guy to go fuck himself?
[00:46:21]  Shit.
[00:46:21]  Yeah.
[00:46:22]  No, no, no.
[00:46:22]  It's bad for your soul when you don't get to tell someone to go fuck themselves when you really wanted to.
[00:46:27]  But so anyway, so to the guy who said, he was like, well, how would you feel if Nick Sarwak had gotten Obama there?
[00:46:34]  And I, and again, I mean, I really mean it.
[00:46:36]  I would have been like, holy shit.
[00:46:38]  Got to admit, I'm impressed.
[00:46:40]  Got to admit it.
[00:46:41]  I would have been really impressed.
[00:46:43]  And I feel this way also.
[00:46:45]  This is one of the major things that separates the Mises caucus haters from me and like a lot of the other guys that even if, let me tell you, and this is a fact, and I know you know this is true about me, even if one of the most deranged,
[00:47:01]  I hate Dave Smith libertarians out there, who I can't stand, who's been a really bad person to me, if they got on a platform like a Joe Rogan experience or some platform with like huge millions and millions of people and just made like an incredibly tight, perfect argument against gun control, say, or something like that.
[00:47:24]  You know, I'd be like, that was pretty awesome.
[00:47:26]  Like, I can't stand that guy, but that was really awesome.
[00:47:30]  That's really cool that he got that many people to see it.
[00:47:32]  Like, that is who I am.
[00:47:34]  I was like, I actually do care about moving the needle.
[00:47:36]  I care about these issues.
[00:47:37]  Whereas like they will never give me that at all, even though there are issues that they completely agree with me on that I've made excellent arguments for on some of like the biggest platforms.
[00:47:47]  They'll never, because they don't actually care.
[00:47:49]  They care more about like securing their own spot in the hierarchy of a fucking book club.
[00:47:55]  But yeah, no, I would have undeniably been impressed with Sarwak.
[00:47:59]  But the other thing that I say is like, there's a reason why it didn't happen under Sarwak.
[00:48:04]  There's a reason why this is only now happening because the Mises caucus took over the party and that people can say whatever they want about like, well, you guys had a tough financial stretch or whatever the hell it is.
[00:48:14]  The truth is that this effort of the Mises caucus created a much bigger like signal for the Libertarian Party and one that was much more like palatable to relevance.
[00:48:28]  And that's the reason why shit like this is happening.
[00:48:31]  And that's the reason why, if you're going to this convention, why we got to keep the party, we got to like, which we're going to, but like we got to keep this.
[00:48:38]  Like these, on top of the fact that the like so many of, you know, one of the things that really, there were several things that led to the Mises caucus taking over the party.
[00:48:49]  Like there were, there were many factors.
[00:48:50]  One of them was the fact that the former disgraced chair decided to attack all of the most popular libertarians.
[00:48:57]  And that pissed a lot of people off.
[00:49:00]  But it was also really, it was really galvanized by their awful response to COVID and that the party didn't come out strong against lockdowns, which is just so insane.
[00:49:13]  I mean, you remember me and you were losing our minds in 2020.
[00:49:16]  It's like, you're a party for liberty in the year of lockdowns and you can't figure out what to run on.
[00:49:23]  Like, we're the anti-none else is being the anti-lockdown party.
[00:49:26]  Just come on.
[00:49:27]  If you believe in liberty at all, this isn't a divide between whether you're an anarchist or a minarchist.
[00:49:33]  You know what I mean?
[00:49:33]  Like, this is a, do you believe in totalitarianism or any semblance of liberty?
[00:49:38]  And they were awful on that.
[00:49:40]  And those same people who like the anti-Mises caucus faction, they've also since then been awful on the war in Ukraine and the war in Gaza.
[00:49:50]  Like they all support U.S. tax dollars funding all this stuff.
[00:49:53]  And it's not, so again, they're not awful on these issues because it's as simple as like they lack courage to speak up against them.
[00:50:01]  It's because they actually support them.
[00:50:03]  Like you have people who call themselves libertarians who actually supported the lockdowns, actually support funding the proxy war in Ukraine, actually support arming Israel in their slaughter of these captive people.
[00:50:16]  Like those people cannot be allowed to be in charge of this fucking party ever again.
[00:50:21]  Period.
[00:50:23]  Anyway, I'm sorry.

=== Engaging in the Real World (10:14) ===

[00:50:24]  Anything else?
[00:50:25]  No, strong pitch to the people.
[00:50:26]  Show up for the convention, support the Mises caucus, and enjoy the Donald Trump spectacle.
[00:50:31]  All right, guys, let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show, which is Sheath Underwear, the underwear of legends.
[00:50:38]  I've been telling you guys for years now how much I love this product, how much I love this company and the guys over there.
[00:50:44]  They've been longtime sponsors of our show.
[00:50:46]  We could not do what we do if we didn't have these great sponsors who are committed to us for the long run.
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[00:51:01]  So, look, if you want to support our show, go support our great sponsors like Sheath Underwear.
[00:51:07]  And at the same time, get the best pair of boxer briefs you'll ever own.
[00:51:10]  Do that by going over to sheathunderwear.com and use the promo code problem20 to get 20% off your next order.
[00:51:18]  One more time, that's sheathunderwear.com, promo code problem20 for 20% off your next order.
[00:51:25]  All right, let's get back into the show.
[00:51:27]  I'm not sure what's been confirmed so far, but I think there's also going to be, like, I don't want to announce anything if it hasn't been announced yet, but Bill Cosby is coming to you.
[00:51:37]  He's coming out of retirement.
[00:51:39]  He's going to do a new hour of stand-up comedy.
[00:51:42]  No, but I think there's going to be some other really big speakers there.
[00:51:46]  Thomas Massey and Rand Paul to show up for this.
[00:51:48]  You know, it's interesting.
[00:51:50]  And I, you know, maybe I will try to reach out to Massey.
[00:51:55]  I don't, I have, you know, I know some people.
[00:51:59]  You know, I could maybe reach out to, you know, I should probably do that because I'm only one degree of separation away from Round.
[00:52:05]  I think you've got to.
[00:52:06]  But I think that I know, by the way, some other people, there's some other people who I don't think they're confirmed yet, but it would be amazing if they're there who might be coming.
[00:52:13]  I haven't heard anything about those two.
[00:52:15]  But there's another thing that that also looks like in the same way I was saying with these people in the alternative media space, there's another, that's another benefit of getting Trump there is that it makes it much more appealing for a lot of other people to be like, oh, well, then I kind of want to come to this too.
[00:52:30]  You know, it's like that.
[00:52:31]  But I should, we should reach out to both of them and because those would be really interesting guys too.
[00:52:35]  And even if their pitch is like, hey, come over here and be a Republican, it's like, okay, but let them make that pitch and then let some of our guys interact with them and make our pitch, which is like, okay, but like, why?
[00:52:49]  Because the Republicans are just so goddamn awful on all these things.
[00:52:52]  And like, someone's got to plant a flag down and say, no, we're not, we're not Republicans.
[00:52:57]  We're libertarians.
[00:52:58]  And that's what we care about.
[00:53:00]  And like, let's have this dialogue.
[00:53:03]  It just, to me, like, that seems like the obvious way to play it.
[00:53:07]  One more thing, by the way, that's just popped into my head is that there was this concern that people are saying, they go, well, what's in it for the libertarians?
[00:53:16]  I mean, what's in it for Trump is that he gets to peel off LP votes.
[00:53:20]  But like, what do we get out of this?
[00:53:22]  Now, aside from the fact that I've just, we've been going over here the whole episode, what we get out of this.
[00:53:27]  But I also go, like, there's this weird, and I've heard a lot of people make this claim.
[00:53:33]  They go, well, they don't want Trump to come because he's just going to try to convince us to vote for him.
[00:53:37]  And there's, okay, number one, I'd say there, I go, so are you, are you saying that you have a fear that like if we hear from Donald Trump, well, like the idea that Trump will be so persuasive that we'll all just go, yeah, you know what?
[00:53:56]  I had all these grievances, but goddamn, this guy was so persuasive that he came up.
[00:54:00]  I mean, just think about it.
[00:54:01]  Like, you have this party.
[00:54:02]  You have people who are members of the Libertarian Party, and they've been members of the Libertarian Party this whole time while Donald Trump has been the face of a different political party.
[00:54:13]  Like, it's not like they've never heard of Donald Trump before.
[00:54:16]  It's not like they didn't know there was an option to go be in the party that he is that since at least 2016.
[00:54:22]  He has been the face of the Republican Party.
[00:54:25]  So all that time, people have been members of this party, but you're worried now if they hear from him, they might flood over to his party.
[00:54:33]  This just seems very bizarre to me.
[00:54:35]  And then number two, like, do you not realize how much that argument identically mirrors the woke leftist argument about platforming people?
[00:54:48]  Like, it's the argument for censorship.
[00:54:50]  It's the argument against platforming as if, as if, by the way, the Libertarian Party are the ones giving Trump a platform.
[00:55:00]  Like, let's just keep some... sense of reality in our minds here that we're the ones going like, oh, no, you know, like, whatever.
[00:55:08]  You get the point I'm making.
[00:55:10]  But it's like, no, fuck that, dude.
[00:55:12]  Fuck that.
[00:55:13]  If Donald Trump comes over here and is so persuasive that he wins the Libertarians, well, then he earned the votes.
[00:55:20]  I don't know what to tell you.
[00:55:21]  But on the other hand, if he is not, then all that happened was that we got more attention on our convention, on our ideas, on our political party.
[00:55:32]  I think about how many people don't even know there is a Libertarian Party who are going to know that now.
[00:55:37]  And also that it's a constituency to be attempted to be won over.
[00:55:43]  You know, if we're ever going to be in a situation, which look, let's say if there's the order of likely scenarios, okay, going from unlikely to more likely, okay?
[00:55:54]  Up here at very unlikely is we set the world free in our lifetime, okay?
[00:56:00]  A little bit more likely, still pretty unlikely is we set the country free in our lifetime.
[00:56:06]  You know, libertarians win over so many people that we now replace the Republicans or replace the Democrats of one of the two major parties and our candidates take control of the House and the Senate and the presidency and start repealing everything, right?
[00:56:23]  Still pretty damn unlikely that scenario, right?
[00:56:26]  Maybe there's a scenario here where libertarians, let's say, grow from being 2% to being 8%.
[00:56:37]  And now we are kind of kingmakers.
[00:56:40]  We could spoil the Republicans or we could back off and allow the Republicans to win or vice versa with the Democrats.
[00:56:47]  And then we're in a situation where we can really hold negotiating power over, let's say, an incumbent and say, here are our demands.
[00:56:56]  You know, it's election year for the president.
[00:56:58]  We want, maybe they're just even reasonable demands.
[00:57:01]  We're not getting everything we want.
[00:57:02]  Let's say it's just pardon Ross Ulbric.
[00:57:05]  It's just pardon, you know, like these list of people who are in jail for like victimless nonviolent crimes.
[00:57:10]  It is just that, okay?
[00:57:11]  But we'll, you know what I mean?
[00:57:12]  And we can like negotiate that.
[00:57:15]  That is still a lot of work to be done to get there, but that is somewhat plausible that we could maybe be there someday and maybe the party could function as doing that, making these incumbents do good things and still spreading our message, right?
[00:57:31]  That's not that unrealistic, that we could maybe get to that point.
[00:57:35]  But in order to do that, we have to start somewhere.
[00:57:38]  We have to start establishing that we're a constituency that you have to come and talk to.
[00:57:44]  And all in the time, trying to have our guys go out now that there's like new media out there where we can get on platforms in front of millions of people and introduce our ideas, be a part of the national conversation as the entire political class and media class are being totally discredited and we can kind of grow our influence and maybe we could get to that point.
[00:58:05]  Now, do you want to just be in a social club and say we're doing the most, we're setting the world free in our lifetime?
[00:58:11]  Or do you want to still be as radical, in fact, quite a bit more radical than the LP members who were talking about that stuff, still be quite a bit more principled than those guys, but also actually move toward an attainable goal?
[00:58:26]  Well, if you want to do that, then here's a really big step in that direction, a gigantic step in that direction.
[00:58:33]  Having the frontrunner for president of the United States of America publicly acknowledge that this group exists and that they're worth trying to persuade.
[00:58:43]  It's an enormous W for the Libertarian Party.
[00:58:47]  A much bigger one than saying Gary Johnson got the most votes.
[00:58:52]  By the way, which is what a whole bunch of people will still argue is the most successful thing the Libertarian Party has ever done.
[00:58:58]  Because Gary Johnson got a lot of votes.
[00:59:00]  What did those votes turn into?
[00:59:02]  Well, by the way, Donald Trump became president that year.
[00:59:05]  That was the result of it.
[00:59:07]  You know what the other result of the Gary Johnson?
[00:59:09]  And this is what I always love, that nobody looks at, not nobody looks at, but that so many people will still deny, okay?
[00:59:15]  This is what's so interesting, right?
[00:59:16]  So you had a Ron Paul movement in 2008 and in 2012.
[00:59:22]  And many of us had hoped that that was going to continue into a Rand Paul movement in 2016.
[00:59:28]  It didn't end up happening, but that Donald Trump ended up taking over the Republican Party rather than Rand Paul.
[00:59:36]  But so then in 2016, you have this Gary Johnson presidential campaign.
[00:59:41]  And they'll say, hey, he got millions of votes, man.
[00:59:44]  He got more vote than any LP presidential candidate has ever gotten.
[00:59:47]  And you know what the result of that was?
[00:59:49]  The result of that was a few years later, the Ron Paulians taking over the entire Libertarian Party.
[00:59:57]  That's what you got to show for the Gary Johnson presidential campaign is that he so didn't create any movement or move the needle within the libertarians that the Gary Johnsians, the Bill Weldians, couldn't even hold their own Libertarian Party.
[01:00:11]  They lost to the Ron Paulians.
[01:00:14]  Doesn't that just say it all right there?
[01:00:16]  So look, if we want to actually start engaging in the real world and start maybe developing a little bit of tolerance to the severe allergy to relevance that so many libertarians have, then you should be excited about this and you should be thinking about what the best way to play this is.
[01:00:37]  It's a really big opportunity.

=== Throwing the Ball Downfield (00:22) ===

[01:00:39]  We're throwing the ball downfield.
[01:00:41]  That's what the Mises caucus is doing here.
[01:00:43]  And I, for one, say it's about damn time.
[01:00:46]  All right, let's wrap on that.
[01:00:48]  Thank you guys for joining us.
[01:00:49]  We will be back very soon with a brand new episode.
[01:00:51]  Having a lot of fun out here in Tacoma.
[01:00:53]  See you guys in Spokane in a couple days.
[01:00:56]  And we'll be back in the studio real soon.
[01:00:59]  All right.
[01:00:59]  Peace.
[01:01:01]  No