IPR Interview: Joel Skousen, Freedom Fest Speaker; POTUS Candidate (Western States Only)

In a series of telephone and email exchanges over the past two weeks, Independent Political Report interviewed author Joel M. Skousen, publisher of World Affairs Brief, and 2024 candidate for the national Constitution Party’s presidential nomination. A partial transcript of that interview follows this brief introduction.

In apparent defiance of the national party’s convention, Mr. Skousen has been placed on the ballot by the Constitution Party of Utah, and by the Independent American Party of Nevada (the Nevada affiliate of the national party) in those states, respectively, in place of the national Constitution Party‘s nominee Randall Terry. Mr. Skousen will be speaking on the topic: The History of the Deep State and its Effect in the Coming Election on Wednesday afternoon, 10 July 2024, at FreedomFest in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Joel Skousen is a political scientist who publishes on the philosophy of law and US Constitutional theory. He is also recognized as a leading expert on high security residences and retreats, having published several books on those subjects. Mr. Skousen served as a fighter pilot for the US Marine Corps during the Vietnam War era. In the 80’s Mr. Skousen served as Chairman of the Conservative National Committee in Washington DC, while concurrently serving as the Executive Editor of Conservative Digest. He is the author of four books: Essential Principles for the Conservation of Liberty, (1984); How to Implement a High Security Shelter in the Home (1996); Strategic Relocation: North American Guide to Safe Places (1998); and The Secure Home: Architectural Design, Construction and Remodeling of Self-Sufficient Residences and Retreats (2024). He is currently working on a new book tentatively titled: Foundations of the Ideal State.

IPR: Thank you for agreeing to be interviewed, Mr. Skousen. Where do you hope to be on the ballot? 

MR. SKOUSEN: I am on the ballot in Nevada and Utah. I will probably be on in Idaho, Arizona, and California as well. Perhaps Washington too.

IPR: As a write-in (for Arizona, California, Idaho, and Washington)?

MR. SKOUSEN: Yes.  We are going to be a Western-states campaign, and it is not totally quixotic. I have a unique message that is different from any other candidate, and it is not one about winning – it is one about alerting people about the deep state control of the government. You can argue the libertarian and conservative and all the different nuances of platforms all today long, but we’ve got to face the reality that we’ve got a globalist conspiracy with a deep state enforcement arm already in charge of the government, and nothing’s going to change unless you know how to dismantle that deep state.

No one can know how to dismantle it unless you know the conspiratorial history of the deep state, which is taboo in today’s society. It’s taboo because they don’t want people to know that you can in fact track the conspiratorial history and know who are the main players involved.

IPR: Will you be on the ballot as the Constitution Party candidate in Nevada?

MR. SKOUSEN: The affiliate party of the Constitution Party in Nevada is the Independent American Party. I am on the ballot as the Independent American Party candidate in Nevada, but the Constitution Party in Utah.

Only about half the states have actual working Constitution Parties, and most of those are extremely small.

The Independent American Party of Utah, even before our convention, put Donald Trump on the ballot. They essentially didn’t have anybody to run. They said, Well, we’ll just go with Donald Trump. So I didn’t even apply to them because they’d already made their decision.

IPR: So you are on the ballot with the Constitution Party of Utah, the Independent American Party of Nevada, which is an affiliate of the Constitution Party in Nevada, as a write-in candidate in Washington, California and Arizona.  You’re also hoping the Constitution Party of Idaho will put you on the ballot there, rather than Mr. Terry?

MR. SKOUSEN: Yes. The Constitution Party of Idaho broke away from the national Constitution Party over the abortion issue. That’s why the Constitution Party of Oregon also broke away from the party.  I went to Oregon to make my case. There were only 10 members that showed up.

IPR: At the national convention you proposed a much shorter platform.

MR. SKOUSEN: I did not want to have the appearance of a religious test in the platform, especially since, if I were running, I had to have something that I could have as good talking points. If you have 40 pages hostile interviewers can pick and choose the most extreme positions that they want to have you talk about. I wanted to eliminate those by doing an abbreviated platform about the most important positions.

IPR: Can you tell us about your vice-presidential running mate, Rik Combs?

MR. SKOUSEN: Rick is a retired colonel of the Air Force. He was an F-4 pilot like myself early in his career. Then he turned to a desk job as he rose in the Air Force and logistics and other things. He ran for Governor of Missouri as Libertarian and has been a subscriber to my World Affairs Brief for many years.  When he found out that I was running for president, he volunteered and said, Look, I’d like to be your vice-president. We agree on so much that we joined forces. But he is a very mild-mannered, reasonable guy, enjoyable to be with.  Being F-4 pilots is a commonality we have and it is going to be our campaign banner, a couple of F4s roaring off into the sky.

IPR: What is the primary focus of your campaign?

MR. SKOUSEN: The history of the deep state. You cannot deal in politics without dealing with the big gorilla in the room, and that is that we’ve got a controlled government.

IPR: When do you believe our Constitutional Republic ended and the deep state started taking over?  When was the tipping-point?

MR. SKOUSEN: When we lost the enumerated powers restrictions. The Supreme Court interpreted away enumerated powers and allowed the general welfare clause and the interstate commerce clause to work away from the enumerated powers.  But it wasn’t really until the turn of the last century, 1900 or so, that I think that the globalist deep state started to really control governments. The first one, of course, was Woodrow Wilson. They totally controlled Wilson because of his immorality while at Princeton University and as governor of New Jersey, they had the blackmail on him. That is how we got the Federal Reserve and the income taxes and World War I. So that’s the first time we saw them pull Teddy Roosevelt out of the woodwork to run against William Howard Taft and dilute his vote, so that Wilson could win. They pulled that several times since then.

IPR: Do you feel we are being pushed into World War III by the deep globalist state?

MR. SKOUSEN: I think it’s going to take the invasion of Taiwan to trigger war, mostly because North Korea has just signed another pact with Russia, has an existing pact with China that if North Korea intervenes, as they claim they will, if the U.S. tries to stop China from taking Taiwan, North Korea will attack the U.S. and South Korea. That’s going to be the real trigger, because we have to intervene to protect our 26,000 troops in South Korea. We probably have to use tactical nukes to intervene sufficiently to stop Kim, who has 1.5 million men versus 50,000 soldiers in South Korea, to defend South Korea, which is pretty dramatic. I see that as the trigger event.  If you see a war starting in Taiwan and North Korea, you are going to have World War III probably within about three weeks.

IPR: When do you see that happening?

MR. SKOUSEN: I don’t think it’s going to happen until China’s ready. China, by their own admission, says they will be a first-class military by 2027. That doesn’t mean it’s going to happen in 2027. Later President Xi said it is going to be 2040, but I think he was throwing a curveball at the West, saying you can relax, we won’t be ready until 2040. But the earlier statement about 2027 looks more accurate. Which means that sometime in the latter half of this decade, around 2030, we should probably have World War III. It will not happen until China’s ready.  It is not going to start with tanks rolling in from Russia or anywhere else. It is going to start with a nuclear exchange on military targets, not cities, per se.

IPR: Do you think the United States will be targeted with nuclear weapons?

MR. SKOUSEN: Absolutely!  As the main target.

First of all, we have all those missile fields. The intercontinental ballistic missiles have to be destroyed. And that’s going to take at least three warheads on each missile site. You are talking about 3,000 warheads just to take out our missiles, let alone all of our strategic air bases, so that we cannot project power. We have the subs, but half of those subs, at least half, are always in port at any one time, in two places, Kings Bay, Georgia, and Bangor, Washington, in the Puget Sound area. So those two bases are going to be hit, which leaves, what, 5 to 6 submarines out? And none of those warheads on those submarines have big enough warheads. So you can’t really stop Russia and China, because most of their missile forces are in underground bunkers right now, which our submarine warheads can’t penetrate.  There’s Mount Yamantau in Russia, where most of their military, secret military hardware, is deep underground.

IPR: What are you doing to prepare for that?

MR. SKOUSEN: That has been my second career, other than political science as one of the foremost preparedness experts in the United States.

IPR: What was your impression of the Presidential Debate on CNN last week?

MR. SKOUSEN: I was not shocked at all by Biden’s poor performance given the much worse lapses that have been documented by the alternative media before.  In fact, given his level of dementia, I thought his handlers did a good job of hyping him on uppers and giving him a complete set of notes (which he was constantly looking down on for guidance) so that he could at least answer the questions.  He did lose it from time to time, lashing out of Trump.

What did shock me was the almost universal criticism by the CNN commentary panel afterward, and the even worse condemnations across the Democrat spectrum the next day. They could have defended Biden’s performance as they have every time before, but suddenly they choose not to – and that is a major change from the mainstream media coverage for Biden in the past 3 years.

The alternative media was ablaze with claims that the early debate (before either were the confirmed candidates) was a setup or excuse to dump Biden.  I disagreed. Biden’s handlers, and Biden himself, quickly put that to rest by saying President Biden is not quitting, and will participate in the next debate. 

My conclusion is that there has always been a major split within Democrat ranks over Biden’s dementia, but the critics, including the media have been silenced by the kind of uniform pressure that dictates everything surrounding the Democrat Party.  The Biden doubters thought the debate provided them the perfect opportunity to push for someone more competent than Biden, but they obviously didn’t count on the Deep State handlers that surround and control Biden and his every move.

For some reason, which I will discuss in Friday’s World Affairs Brief, the deep state has a very dark and secret purpose in running someone worthless in the first place, and that reason is still there.  At best, as I pointed out in the previous week’s briefing, they’ll switch out giggling Harris for Clinton or some other more competent yet radical woman that can step in when Biden is removed (after the election is stolen).

IPR: What else would you like our readers to know about your campaign?

MR. SKOUSEN: The major thing – despite its being a taboo subject in the world – is that only a person who really knows the history of the deep state and who has been involved, is capable of draining the swamp, exposing it, and then limiting the power of the deep state.

My point is that we can argue all day about the issues, about abortion and how to limit it, and about the size of government and taxation, but none of that makes any difference, as long as you have a deep state control of our existing government. Donald Trump, in my opinion, is unqualified to do that because he’s never studied conspiracy. He was never a conservative before he was president. So he had to rely on Reince Priebus (former chair of the Republican National Committee and former White House Chief of Staff) to fill the 4,000 slots in the White House. That is why he got a lot of deep state people in there. Donald Trump’s campaign to this day still has leakers inside that are feeding what he does to the other side.

So Donald Trump recognizes this and who does he replace him with? With Christopher Wray, who is also deep state. How do I know this? Because Christopher Wray was involved in the 9-11 cover-up, and so was Robert Mueller. They were both involved in the 9-11 commission and covering up the government’s involvement in that horrific attack. Donald Trump picked a conservative jurist, Brett Kavanaugh, to be on the Supreme Court, but he’s deep state.

How do I know he’s deep state? Because he was part of the cover-up of the Vince Foster murder. He was second-in-command to Ken Starr, and his job was to attack the one witness that could prove it wasn’t suicide. It suits their purpose to have a conservative court to give Americans the opinion that we’re being okay. But when he gets that phone call in the night, which he did about the Texas border situation, or he, along with John Roberts, who’s a very controlled entity there, they’ll switch sides and we’ll lose.

That’s what happens consistently. Donald Trump lives by briefings. He never does any homework himself. Even though I am not going to win the election, what this campaign does is allow me to have a broader platform to be able to teach people about how you have to understand these conspiratorial facts, not just theory, but facts, so that you can come to correct theoretical opinions. As I said in my speech in the National Convention, the reason we still have to deal in theory is because they are still hiding most of the facts of these illegal acts behind the veil of national security.

So it is fair to say your campaign for president is an issues-driven campaign to raise awareness among voters about the evils of the deep state?

That’s right. The conspiratorial forces behind our government. I am going to talk directly and openly about this as a conspiracy. To do so in a credible way that people cannot dismiss. Believe me, people don’t want to debate me. Because I have the facts on the JFK. I know what happened, I also have my 10-point history of the deep state published on my website. Free to everyone. It’s a 10-part series, done with Lost Arts Radio. It was 10 informal sessions where I went through each historical period of the deep state and went through what their operations were. So it’s a tremendous resource there for people who want to take time to learn the history of the deep state when they can’t attend my speeches.

IPR: It’s all free?

MR. SKOUSEN: It is all free.

IPR: Any other reading you recommend?

MR. SKOUSEN: There is The Secure Home, but my top seller is the Strategic Relocation: the North American Guide to Safe Places. That’s essential for people if they’re going to survive war and the EMP strike and other things.  How to pick areas that are relative, provide relative safety. There’s no place perfectly safe, but this provides relative safety if you’re going to still stay within that compromise of job and society and how to choose a location. Also review my Seven Talking Points.

Those succinctly lay out what my positions are relative to the fact that this nation will not recover.

I am not looking for a solution. I am saying the only solution will come when people realize what has gone on and been controlled, but it will fail. As a political scientist, I’ve done a lot of theoretical work on how to restructure government so you don’t lose your liberty like this.  That is my law and government section, which is for those libertarians and intellectual legal types who want to see how an expert such as myself has tightened up the language of the Constitution so that it cannot be destroyed by court interpretation as easily as it has been. The government can only do what we enumerate, which they have obliterated. It helps to at least have a list of what you cannot do. If I remember the debate at the time, they thought this was unnecessary because it was so obvious, but it wasn’t. They failed to see the ingenious nature of the human mind to be able to get around general language.

IPR: What about a Constitutional Convention?

MR. SKOUSEN: I am against that because, first, the delegates to such a convention would be chosen by state legislatures and they’d never pick a constitutionalist like me. They would pick mainstream people and you are going to get something worse rather than better. For example, we do not need a Balanced Budget Amendment because we already have one in the annual debt ceiling limit. It only takes a simple majority to say no more debt and you have a balanced budget amendment. You have to balance the budget.

I am not preaching we’re going to win; I am not preaching we’re going to reform; I am preaching we are going down. I want people to know that Joel Skousen was right. The deep state did steal the election from Trump. War did come. An EMP strike did happen. Those that followed Joel’s advice were prepared and are still alive.  That is when you rebuild. That is when you reconstitute. When you have learned your lessons and you figure out how to do that.

So I am setting myself up for future leadership rather than to win the election right now.

IPR: Thank you.