Libertarian National Committee Chair Angela McArdle elaborated on her decision to invite Republican former President Donald Trump to the party’s convention in a recent video on social media. This came in response to criticism from members of the party regarding the invitation.
In an X Space video hosted by Libertarian National Committee Chair Angela McArdle on Wednesday night, she attempted to address some of the criticisms received by party members, as well as her own reasoning behind sending the invitations. McArdle began by apologizing for the way information about Trump’s attendance was released. She stated that the party spent five days coordinating the announcement, but admitted that the order in which information was released to the public was incorrect.
McArdle also addressed the “Don Collection,” a series of shirts referencing Trump that were briefly available on the Libertarian National Convention website before being removed. “I had seen in a staff chat some designs and thought, ‘Haha, that’s awesome. That’s funny,'” McArdle said. “I had no idea it was actually going to be put into the store.”
She further explained that the idea behind the shirts was for delegates to wear a shirt with their preferred message to indicate to Trump which specific issues they wanted him to address. While McArdle acknowledged it was a “cool idea,” she admitted it should have been discussed further.
Regarding her decision to invite Trump, McArdle acknowledged that it was a political risk for her. However, she emphasized that the 2024 election presents a unique opportunity for the Libertarian Party, and she wanted party members to engage in an “honest conversation” about the party’s ability to generate attention during such an opportunity.
“Can we be honest about the amount of coverage the Libertarian Party has had historically when it comes to our presidential debate,” she asked the audience, “and can we be honest about the amount of coverage we will likely get this year?”
McArdle explained that the most important thing she can do as Chair of the Libertarian National Committee is to increase attention to the party, its presidential candidates, and specific policy issues that matter to Libertarians. Among the issues she referenced were the End the Fed movement, economic inflation, and the release of Julian Assange and Ross Ulbricht, among others. She saw the inclusion of candidates like Trump and Biden as a way to shift public perception of some issues and achieve some of those aims while still avoiding specific commitments.
“The thing that matters to us must matter to the two major parties, she said. “We will move the Overton window in the direction of liberty, and we will do it without making commitments to nominate anyone, or violate our bylaws, or do any back-hand deals.”
McArdle additionally sought to address concerns that the party would be giving Trump free publicity at the expense of Libertarian candidates. She clarified that Trump would not be participating in a presidential debate with candidates seeking the Libertarian Party’s nomination but would speak immediately following the debate. She also noted that she had attempted to arrange a debate with Trump but was unsuccessful.
McArdle also called on Libertarians to reject the “model UN, student government, loser energy” of critics and embrace radicalism within the party. “The point of the Libertarian Party is to be radical,” she emphasized.
McArdle concluded by teasing the potential announcement of other “big guests” in the coming weeks, although she admitted she had not yet received confirmations.
It will happen, but not there.
I look forward to a Trump/RFK debate at the LPC. If it happens, it’s a better outcome than just a Trump speech, for the obvious reasons.
Actually, much like Bill, and various friends thereof, I feel your pain.
I stated exactly what I wanted to state, and aside from way too many typos and or Google automangles, both expressed and illustrated my point well. If you’re incapable or unwilling to get what I was saying there, that’s on you. The things that are important to you are not important to me. Allowing them to have ever been important to me in the past was a huge mistake. I like my salads butt nekkid, no dressing or croutons, but dressing and croutons is all you got. If you don’t have enough, level up your shaking game.
Actually:
Next time you toss a word salad, bring croutons and dressing.
You wrote a lot but stated nothing.
SMH
I recall coming to that conclusion based on many hours misspent discussing it years ago. I don’t remember the details or how I came to the conclusion. Spending more time to recreate that thought process and arrive at either the same conclusion I did then or a different one is not anywhere close to the 50,000 top priorities I currently have for whatever amount of time such an effort might be reasonably estimated to occupy.
Somewhere well ahead of using a portion of whatever time I have left in recreating that wasted effort is perfecting a time machine so I can attempt to persuade somewhat younger me to do something else with my life, or at least that portion of it.
The current discussion is well on its way to achieving that same level of usefulness , although the amount of time spent determining whatever is at stake here – which is almost certainly of near zero, zero, or negative cumulative value – has yet to approach nearly the scale of horribly misspent hours I punished myself with back then. Nevertheless, I ought to apply the lessons of history and head such tragic waste of the only irreplaceable resource before the remedial course achieves an equivalent level of failure and self-sabotage.
If I’m wrong, I’m wrong. I’m frequently wrong, and the question here is among the countless number which it’s counterproductive for me to delve into further. I don’t see Trump seeking the L.P. nomination. Stumping for NOTA seems more likely, or perhaps he’ll refrain from entering that debate and consider whether a human comes in ahead of NOTA to be the LPs internal business and focus on using whatever media coverage results to try to persuade those who are persuadable between himself and who ever that will turn out to be, if anyone, that he ought to be their choice.
Even as narrow as the official margin of victory was in the last two general elections in a tiny handful of determinative states, the L.P. didn’t change the outcome , particularly given the second preferences of allegedly random samples of those who did vote for them as expressed to people who were trained to and went on to conduct such surveys. Many libertarian voters said they would have otherwise not voted at all, while those who say they would have voted nevertheless were not nearly unanimous as to who was the worst major party choice.
The LP, given the available choices of human nominee and various parties and non-partisan competition, seems likely headed for significantly lower vote totals this time than the last two. The people who are likely to be persuadable between Trump and the lucky winner of this backyard chicken fight are so few that the chances of them determining the outcome of the presidential election are somewhat lower than drawing top prize in the megamillions lottery.
If that’s why Trump is allegedly going there, he’s wasting his time. Much like I am right at the moment. There are also the possibilities that Trump will back out, appear via video link, or send a canned video. I currently rate each of those as more likely than his physical presence there. We’ll know soon enough.
Only a tiny handful of states – quite likely ad few as two – allow Trump to appear on the ballot simultaneously as a Republican and Libertarian. It seems quite unlikely that he would forego the republican nomination to take the libertarian one. Since we obviously live in bizarro world, such a seemingly bizarre eventuality can’t be ruled out , any more than whether the LP previously violated its bylaw matters or that we’re not committing a hideous crime against an entire dimension at this very point in that dimension’s progression.
Likewise, I’d include the possibility that Trump and the LP will want him to be their nominee in the tiny number of states that allow presidential tickets in the same year to be on more than one party line to be in the same category of probability. Sure, the LP could replicate its original 1972 ballot access achievement of presidential candidate on the ballot in two states. I’m guessing it won’t happen, but you never know. Some Republicans may also be unhappy if Trump seeking and accepting such a nomination were to happen, but not the ones who matter, since the RNC is currently a wholly owned subsidiary of Trump enterprises.
Thus, the question of whether it’s allowed by lp bylaws is besides the point, if indeed there’s a point here and not just an endless time sinkhole. The question of whether who or what established precedent for such an extremely unlikely outcome is only relevant to this particular lotus eating quicksand hole if the possibility it might happen is taken seriously. And even then, I’d have to replicate a whole lot of previously wasted effort to determine whether I remember that right or drew an erroneous conclusion. Actually, I certainly drew an erroneous conclusion. It was that I should have spent that time thinking about it at all. I drew an equally dumb result in pondering whether to address your question. Oops. Maybe one day I’ll graduate from remedial education.
Actually:
“Honestly, it’s been a number of years since I’ve read the bylaw of seen the case made by various people why and how it was being violated.”
So if you don’t know what it says, how can you allege it’s being violated?
Either 1776 or 1788 is, indeed, pretty old. I highly doubt anyone reading was even remotely conceived at the time, or ever met anyone who was. On the planetary or other large scale, it’s a short time – not the blink of an eye vis a vis human lifespan, probably, although I don’t feel like calculating orders of magnitude to say for certain. There was also the whole revolutionary war thing, which took a number of years. Anyone can get a few folks together and issue a declaration. Whether the US would come to be didn’t hinge on that alone.
In any case, thank you for generously offering me the right to believe as I do. Having no firm beliefs on the matter and caring even less, I don’t think reality cares about what anyone believes, least of all Reality…
I don’t think it’s true that libertarianism, small l, has achieved nothing. I think in some respects we’d be a worse off now if no such movement ever existed. How much or how little ? It’s way to complicated for anyone to know for sure. If you want to debate even that, I’ll do my level best to ensure not going down yet another rabbit hole.
How central or irrelevant is the LP to the libertarian movement, supposing the movement has in fact achieved anything worthwhile or planted seeds that eventually will? I think clearly much less central than it used to be. For many years, regardless of what aspects of the libertarian movement people ended up being involved in or to whatever degree if any they remained involved with its namesake party, that party was the most likely way they entered the movement. I’m fairly sure that is no longer true.
I don’t think it’s central to anything any longer. Their presidential nominee, assuming there will be one, will probably get fewer votes than Kennedy by a lot, quite possibly fewer than Jill Stein, maybe fewer than Randall Terry. There’s a high likelihood he (if I’m not wrong, all the leading liliputians seeking the dubious honor are males) will get less media attention than all those, plus Cornell West. The nominated “winner” will probably get more actual votes than West, but only due to superior ballot access.
As for what holds them back, endlessly arguing over anything and everything instead of doing anything with a nontrivial chance of being somehow useful must be high up on that list. I won’t deny my share of blame – I was an active member for quite a few years. And remain a member, if that’s defined as either formally rescinding my blood oath – it becomes more tempting with each passing day, although that too would be akin to urination in pants in the dark – or by an idiotic inking with a four figure check when I was about half the age i am now.
Reality is: the number of people in the US who care about a single one of these things would not even approach the margin of error in any presidential opinion poll. I’m guessing the same holds equally true for battleground states.
You might be correct, and Trump could probably part with 25 or 50 bucks, whatever basic member is these days, or even a grand or two or whatever lifetime is now. The bylaw has been broken in relation to other matters besides the presidential nomination, and being a member of the L.P. doesn’t guarantee that someone isn’t a member of the Republican or some other party. For instance, they could be registered to vote with one party, donate to two others, sign the L.P. blood oath, etc.
Honestly, it’s been a number of years since I’ve read the bylaw or seen the case made by various people why and how it was being violated. LNC donations to fusion local or state or congressional members? It’s not important enough to me to refresh my memory, much less debate it. As with anything else, there’s probably at least as many or more opinions on this than there are libertarians. Whether there are more opinions than libertarians might hinge on who is or isn’t one, which they can’t agree about either.
Reality,
This is getting old, but I suspect most people would say the US was founded in 1776, and restructured in 1788. As I said before, you can believe whatever the hell you want!
I have NO idea whether McArdle believes a falsehood, is a revisionist, or whether she misspoke. My overarching point is libertarianism was stillborn in 72, and has been almost completely ineffectual. Government has gotten nothing but bigger since then. My diagnosis is that the dogmatic NAPism is completely unworkable.
There’s a lot of ways to be online. Social media, blogs, video tubes, online print news, etc. Also, just because he said it – I’ll take your word for that – doesn’t mean he is correct on the reason. My guess is that the bigger factor in that is that older people have been voting for the major parties for a long time and thus are less easily broken of the habit.
Being online more is probably a factor, but that doesn’t mean podcasts per se. I’m online a lot and have never listened or watched a podcast in my life. Supposing a lot of people consume podcasts , what kind? Sports, music, celebrity news, auto repair, cooking, whatever .
On cable, Kennedy obviously gets far less airtime than Trump or Biden, but much more than typical third party and independent presidential candidates. There are a lot of people who are the very least unenthusiastic about either of the leading two candidates in that race. Most of them have heard Kennedy is running through some media or combination of media. I think it’s unlikely that most of those care enough to listen to an hour long interview. I’m guessing most of them support him for who he’s not more than who he is. Feel free to disagree.
For someone not obsessed with LP Founding. Why keep that going? Last try : when was the US founded? You can say 1776. Or you can say over the course of several years in the 1770s and 1780s.
I don’t know how old McArdle is. My best guess is she’s in her 30s. If older, she looks good for her age. If not even in her 30s yet, my apologies – it’s just a guess, no insult intended. Is a founding a day, week, month, year, decade? Almost certainly, any of those were well before the year of her birth, and none of them are necessarily the wrong answer. She could have meant the early years of the L.P., or maybe you’re right and she’s simply misinformed or misspoke. If you want to keep insisting that your timescale of founding is the one and only way the word can possibly be used , have at it. I didn’t care In the first place, and shouldn’t have responded to that nit after the first time.
Actually:
That bylaw is NEVER ignored. All LP President and Vice-President nominees are Party members at the time of their nomination and campaigns.
Reality,
You may be the only person on earth who believes that a “founding” can take place over a decade. You are of course entitled to your form of “reality.”
I’ve heard RFK himself say that his coverage on cable and networks has been weak, and that’s part of the reason why he polls weakest among Boomers and best among Millenials and Zoomers, who are far more online.
A lot of libertarians like Trump. A lot don’t. Most states aren’t fusion, so can’t nominate him, unless nota on his behalf. There are some ballot access negatives to nota, but my recollection – sketchy at this point – is it’s not a lot of states..Most retain in other ways , such as number of registrations or vote total or percent for offices other then president..
In NYS and CT nominating Trump could actually help ballot access, provided a 2nd line for Trump is secured. He’d be much likelier to retain access with 2nd line than current contenders. This comment is only about ballot access, not whether such a thing is otherwise a good idea for ideological or non ballot access related strategic reasons. That’s a separate question.
I’ve seen varying opinions whether it’s against l.p. Bylaws. It seems to me that technically it is, but the bylaw is routinely ignored. I’m not a parliamentary expert by a long shot, though .
Seebeck, yes, that’s what I meant, and while I personally am not a Libertarian, for those who might want to try to stampede the convention to Trump?
Never say never.
Socratic Gadfly:
“Stampeding the convention?”
Do you mean a takeover and vote stack to take the nomination?
If so, that’s highly unlikely and probably impossible.
First, according to everything I’ve heard, current delegates and alternates will get first shot for preferred seating, so that’s anywhere from 900-1500 people in a room that can hold 2000. Add in staff, volunteers, A/V, hotel crew for the bar etc., and security for Trump, LP security, hotel security, and Secret Service, another 100 or so. Add press, another 50-100. Trump supporters get the rest of the seats, and those are on the perimeter ring, not on the main floor. They simply won’t have the numbers on that alone.
Second, they aren’t delegates so have no vote in the nomination anyway.
Now, if you mean packing the hall, well, the hotel folk have dealt with these things for decades and they know their venue, not to mention the fire codes and capacity limits.
Best thing I can say is that if you want to be there and you’re a delegate or alternate, RSVP your seat as soon as you can, and prep your issue sign. Hotel is sold out already.
That’s one perspective. Another is the entire 1970s was founders. Kennedy Has been mentioned on cable, radio. Print, social media, etc etc numerous times. You seem to presume his popularity stems from av interviews. Most people have shorter attention spans and or less focus on politics. His popularity is mostly not Biden or Trump plus they’ve heard of him. How much exactly they heard and through what types of media varies widely.
For someone not obsessed with LP founding, you seem to be quite dedicated to that particular topic tangent.
Jim,
Thanks for the data points.
I’d say the first convention qualifies as the founding. I suppose other events could qualify for others.
Main point: We seem to agree that most involved in 71 were NOT anarchists, despite McArdle’s revisionist history.
Clearing up the timeline, just to be pedantic:
July 1971 – Committee to Form a Libertarian Party formed by David Nolan and 4 other people at Nolan’s home home in Westminster CO. This group was exploring the possibility of a Libertarian Party. By August, after listening to Nixon give his speech severing ties to gold, they had informally decided they were going to do it.
December 1971 – Steering Committee of the Libertarian Party formed by 8 people at Luke Zell’s house in Colorado Springs CO. This group was to begin the process of formally organizing the Libertarian Party.
March-April 1972 – poll taken of members.
June 1972, first convention, in Denver, with 88 20-somethings, plus Hospers.
So, “founders” is ambiguous. Was it the 5 people in Westminster, the 8 people in Colorado Springs, or the 89 people in Denver? Doesn’t really matter. By all accounts, the vast majority at the convention were Objectivists and there were *probably* no ancaps in either the Committee to Form or Steering Committee.
Reality,
No, sorry, not “untrue.” I didn’t say he’s NEVER been on cable. I suspect his cumulative running time on media is something like 90% podcast, 10% cable. 1+ hour podcasts are more amenable to actual conversation vs. 5-minute spots punctuated with ads makes, for me and many, the superior communications vehicle.
I’m definitely NOT obsessed with the LP’s founding. I’m shocked that others seem to be. McArdle’s (false) callback to the founders is a BS justification for the LP’s even worse turn (from my perspective) under the MC. That dogmatic approach made it clear that I was no longer welcome in the LP.
Untrue. I’ve seen him numerous times on cable news, Maher, and Google news unlike, for example, mcardle, her chief l.p. Supporters and detractors, or the milk carton kids vying for their presidential nomination.
You seem obsessed with l.p. Founding. First year or first 5 or 10 from the vantage of 50 plus years later.
How to account for sling, YouTube clips, various roku apps, etc, etc? How many downloads are bot scripts? How many seconds or minutes is a view? You can listen to fox on Sirius xm but not watch. Maybe CNN, dunno. The Nielsen family can’t tell you a whole lot now.
The idea that the lp is suddenly relevant to major news coverage since Trump was invited does not appear to jibe with reality – small R of large..
Reality,
McArdle may well have been wishfully thinking that Rothbard was a founder, but clearly he was not one. Delusion is never a good look.
And, yes, of course, this is all ancient history. In my experience, dogmatic NAPists seem obsessed with the LP’s founding and a rigid interpretation of non-aggression.
I don’t disagree that measuring viewership is inexact. And I don’t even have cable, as I find it to be so 1990s. A great example of the power of podcasts is the surprising support that RFK has been receiving. He mostly does the podcast circuit, and rarely appears on cable news.
The viewership is hard to compare due to multiple platforms and what counts as view. It’s a lot less straightforward than years past.
Founders to her may have meant Rothbard , who came in a couple of years after the granular founding. Accounts of 1971/2 convention mentioned anarchists, who were not the majority. This is an extremely high degree tangent , this will naturally become a focus of further discussion. The least important things always become most important due to constantly missing the forest for the trees. At this point, 1971 is a fading memory for the elderly. As previously mentioned, the number of angels in a pin is besides any point I wish to make or ponder.
Reality,
“Founders” in this context is quite specific. It’s the 88 20-somethings + John Hospers who founded the LP in Colorado Springs in 1971.
I don’t disagree that the name ID of CNN, MSNBC, and Fox is higher than podcasts. But the *viewership* of the major podcasts now exceeds cable news.
Google automangled msnbc to manic
When : thurs May 23
Reality wasn’t around then but has read accounts .
Founders is ambiguous.
Already mentioned, have heard of Rogan. Not these others. I highly doubt they are more watched than legacy media . Try walking down a random street and ask 60 ppl if they heard of: Tim Pool, Joe Walsh podcast, CNN, manic, Fox.
Jim,
Thanks for the clarification. It doesn’t quite address my or McArdle’s claim, as it doesn’t address the ideologies of the “founders.” If we assume the poll more-or-less reflects the “founders” views, a super-majority ID’d as “Objectivist” on economics (which I’ve never seen described as a school of economics). AnCaps were a minority of those polled.
More importantly, why should anyone care what 88 20-somethings in the early 70s believed? This is a bizarre form of originalism, I submit.
Robert Capozzi – There was a poll of LP members reported in the April 1972 edition of LP News (before the first convention), asking about ideological persuasions. The intent was to use the poll to balance the first platform committee in accordance with member ideologies. The results were:
Civil Liberties
50% minimal restrictions
47% no restrictions
3% undecided
Economics
72% objectivist
25% anarcho-capitalist
3% conservative
Foreign Policy
50% isolationist
35% semi-isolationist
8% rollback (imagine the reaction to that in today’s LP)
4% containment
2% pacifist
1% undecided
Jordan, anybody?
IF Trump speaks (if the Hagopian motion is defeated), when?
Out of curiosity, I checked the convention schedule after your original post. It has a couple of speaking slots after the presidential nomination process, but a BUNCH before it. Given the pushback against the Hagopian motion, etc., if Trump speaks, and speaks before the nomination process, what’s to stop him from “stampeding” the convention?
“Shock me” on the merch issue.
On the original announcement, when I saw the LP was charging $10 a pop for having people vote on what issues they wanted to talk about, I suspected that was half the reason for this — trying to replenish party coffers.
That said, given how Trump has, time after time, most notably in his appearance in El Paso a few years ago, stiffed other entities with things like security costs, I have little doubt the LNC is more likely to lose money on this than make it.
If it happens at all, per Hagopian’s motion.
Reality,
My understanding is that podcasts are more watched than the “legacy” media. Have you heard of Joe Rogan? Pool has been on Rogan, and Pool’s pod is probably second-tier among podcasts. He has Libertarians on quite often, even though he doesn’t ID as a libertarian himself. Libertarian-adjacent might be a fair characterization.
Were you personally among the 88 20-something LP founders? If one reads the first LP platform, and it doesn’t come across as an “anarchist” document. IIRC, 2 years later, Rothbard and his crew extracted language changes to the platform that was, at least, not anti-anarchist. That was known as the Dallas Accord. Unless you have evidence that some of the 88 were anarchists, I’m going to stand by my view that McArdle misrepresented the party’s founders. Perhaps it represents wishful thinking on her part.
Of course, the argument that the LP members should cleave to what the founders thought. They were well-meaning kids!
I didn’t count for Randall Terry. If the LP nominates one of the no name candidates, he might could get in Debate with both Randall Terry and, quite possibly Jill Stein or both . Maybe Cornell West, although he probably won’t have the kind of ballot access which would justify excluding Claudia De La Cruz and perhaps some additional Marxists. We’ll see how that all shakes out. I’m going to guess none of them will be debating Trump, Kennedy or Biden, especially most of all not Biden.
Biden would scare people. He might walk or fall off the stage or fall asleep . It would be like the crypt keeper meets Weekend at Bernies meets a howling banshee meets the preacher from Poltergeist 2. He would forget his lines and try to sniff Jill Stein and possibly Claudia de la Cruz. It would be total chaos. Trump would have the biggest smile since the Joker in Batman.
Martin , you were doing sort of ok, until your last paragraph. Then you want off in dreamspace. Your first paragraph presumes average voters know or care about the LP. In between that and your silly closer, you demonstrate a great deal more realistic perspective for someone who takes the LP seriously.
Trumps speech, or more likely video, is on Thursday. You expect him to come back for a debate? Why? Biden already won’t be there. In fact, Biden probably won’t debate anyone at all. He’ll use Kennedy inclusion to weasel out of debating Kennedy, Trump or anyone else. Trump will debate Kennedy, but not at the L.P. Convention. No one except maybe Jill Stein will debate the LP nominee. Unless the LP is smart enough to nominate NOTA, which they probably will not be. But if they do, Biden will debate NOTA, which will be a huge coup for the LP – one major party nominee via video at their shindig, and POTUS debating the nominee!
Setting aside the dubious circumstances and changing narrative from the LNC under which this deal came about, here’s a few practical considerations.
BAD – OPTICS:
To a typical voter who has no idea how internal party politics works, it probably looks as if the LP is endorsing Trump. This is terribly off-brand and could have substantially-negative repercussions for down-ballot candidates.
NEUTRAL – INTERNAL PERSUASION:
It’s highly unlikely that even a single delegate at national will walk away supporting Trump if they didn’t secretly already support Trump. It’s also highly improbable that anyone watching the proceedings at national would walk away supporting Trump if they didn’t already. And even IF some of these people did change to support Trump, their impact on the outcome of the general election, or even for any LP candidate in a down-ballot election, would be entirely inconsequential.
Lastly, the idea that we are giving Trump a platform is ridiculous. Trump is the one who HAS a platform; he is the most famous person in the world. WE are the ones who don’t have a platform/name recognition.
GOOD – PUBLICITY:
This is a way to break through the media blockade of the LP. Some of the national/international press has quoted or referenced LP candidates like Chase Oliver, Michael Rectenwald, Mike ter Maat and Lars Mapstead as a result.
Also, if Party leaders, our candidates, and our pundits/commentators are all ready to leverage the enhanced media presence at the convention to get interviews and shift the conversation toward actual libertarianism, that would be a huge win. However, I doubt most of them are ready to navigate this in the way it needs to be done in order to work.
Unfortunately, this seems like something that had a lot of strategic potential but is going poorly in the implementation.
Out of the gate, Trump wouldn’t agree to a debate on our stage because strategically you’re never supposed to punch down. But just giving him the mic is also of dubious benefit to us.
What SHOULD happen is there should be some type of moderated discussion/interview, where the questions the donors have voted on are asked directly to Trump by a moderator (like someone from Reason; maybe the LNC could even get John Stossel). At least this would give some real balance to the event. If the LNC were smart this is what they would do.
Another potential is that now that RFK is clamoring to speak, the LNC could say Trump, Biden, and RFK will be allowed to participate in a DEBATE with our NOMINEE, to take place after he is officially nominated. The cat is already out of the bag with the press all over the story and about RFK wanting in, so the LNC has more leverage now. Let’s say RFK agrees to the debate offer first. Trump has been attacking RFK lately so clearly he’s nervous about RFK, which makes it more likely that he would also accept. Then we’d have a real debate between Trump, RFK, and our nominee.
Gene Berkman, I might click on that except for a couple of things –
1. I really don’t care, do you? – Melania
2. YouTube is strictly for music videos. I don’t want to mess up my play list.
It would be like watching a fat porn actor with a small pecker performing with a granny. I’ve seen it. I don’t need to see another video of the same thing again. It wasn’t good the first time. Actually, it sucked, but not in a good way. I didn’t last a minute, but not because I finished. Because I changed the video. I don’t know. Or care, how long the actor lasted.
Robert , furthermore: some of them were anarchists. How many angels dance on the head of a pin? Who cares? Kennedy and Biden were invited, and haven’t accepted. Maybe Kennedy will now that Trump has, but I doubt it. Remember, money is still on Trump cancels or appears by video. The question is which one, and whether the video will be live or canned. Speaking of which, did they finish approving the AV contract? How’s that going? I don’t really care, just throwing it out there. This is all strictly vicarious entertainment for me anymore.
I haven’t heard of Tim Pool, either. Therefore, the chance my dad, neighbors, barber, gym check in person, checkout clerk at the grocery store, etc, has heard of Tim Pool or Joe Walsh are even lower.
I can easily understand what she means by model UN, student government loser energy, and I’m not even a mcardle fan. She means cosplay, LARPing nerds of government/politics, except way less cool even than that. She’s not wrong. Libertarians will now demonstrate becoming ungovernable. Model it, if you will. The students will become the textbook study.
Andy – I have no reason to believe “Joe Walsh” is a complete jerk, unless you mean that he disagrees with you.
He was respectful toward Angela McArdle when he interviewed her, and he respectfully disagreed with her understanding of libertarianism.
Joe Walsh clearly had read up, and he clearly during the interview presented the libertarian view better than she did.
You can listen to the interview on Youtube @ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdjlTuw756c
Andy – I have no evidence on Joe Walsh being a jerk or not.
I did listen to his interview with Angela McArdle, and he was respectful of her and respectful of The Libertarian Party. During the interview, Joe Walsh made clear that he understands the Libertarian point of view much more than does Angela McArdle.
And Angela is clearly not respectful of The Libertarian Party.
Joe Walsh from the Eagles? Is he still alive? And, he jammed with McArdle? I didn’t even know she was a rocker.
Seriously, who the hell listens to podcasts? That’s not really media, lol. Well maybe like Joe Rogan, I’ve heard of him. But I had no idea there was a podcaster named Joe Walsh. If you canvassed your subdivision, apartment building, street, or equivalent wherever you live. What percentage of people would know that such a podcast exists, much less who McArdle is and that she had been on such a thingamajig?
If you know your neighbors well and they know about that kind of stuff because of you, repeat the experiment somewhere you have not biased the sample.
You probably don’t need me to tell you they will all know who Trump is and have an opinion about him. Even if you live or work in another country, and especially if you are in the US.
Any idea what she means by “Model UN, student government, loser energy”?
GB, to be fair, McArdle’s been on Tim Pool’s Timcast at least 2x, which is MUCH larger than Joe Walsh’s show. (I was not impressed by her performance, to be clear.)
She’s wrong in this vid, claiming the LP founders were “anarchists.” My understanding is the 88 20-something founders were almost entirely (and perhaps entirely) Randroid minarchists.
No fan of Trump, but actually this was a pretty effective publicity stunt. I’d be OK with inviting RFK, too. (I assume Biden won’t come, but he was invited.)
Joe Walsh was a complete jerk and has a weak grasp on the libertarian philosophy.
Other “big guests”? This should be interesting.
Let’s be honest about the amount of coverage that Libertarian Party campaigns for President have received? The only campaign that received any real coverage in the media was the Johnson/Weld campaign in 2016.
Let’s be honest about the amount of media coverage for The Libertarian Party since Angela McArdle became chair of the LNC. Mathematically, it amounts to an arbitrarily small amount of attention. The closest thing to any relevant media coverage was the interview with Ms McArdle on the Joe Walsh podcast, in which Joe Walsh came off as knowing more about Libertarianism than Angela McArdle.
Seriously, The Libertarian Party is better than this. We can do better than Angela McArdle and the (anti)Mises Caucus for leadership of the Party of Liberty.
Could it be…Satan?