Libertarian National Committee Chair Angela McArdle stated in an email on Friday that she is already in communication with Republican Donald Trump’s team regarding the appointment of a libertarian to a cabinet position in his incoming administration.
In the email to party supporters, McArdle extended her “heartfelt thanks and appreciation” to Libertarian nominees Chase Oliver and Mike ter Maat, their campaign team, and their supporters, describing 2024 as “the most challenging election year in the party’s history.” McArdle acknowledged that, while the Libertarian Party did not win the presidency, she believes it will still have an influence on the incoming administration.
“While the ballot box may not have delivered the Libertarian Party a victory, the work that I have put in to garner assurances from President-elect Trump are poised to deliver us the most momentous victories, and influence, that we have ever had as a movement,” McArdle stated.
More specifically, McArdle referenced a pledge made by Trump to her to pardon Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht, which she expects to be fulfilled shortly after Trump’s inauguration. She also noted that she is in ongoing discussions with Trump’s team about his earlier commitment at the Libertarian National Convention to appoint a libertarian to his cabinet.
“We will have a libertarian in his cabinet. I am already in dialogue with President-elect Trump and his team for recommendations and conversations around potential candidates and positions,” McArdle added.
McArdle also said in the email that she is excited to see Trump “abolish the Dept. of Education” and work with figures like former Congressman Ron Paul and Representative Thomas Massie, the latter recently expressing his willingness for the role of Secretary of Agriculture.
“As National Security Advisor, Waltz likely won’t last a year. ‘Gaps in our capabilities,’ is DC intel codespeak for more rules, regulations, control mechanisms and anti-freedom national security legislation is needed.
My Spidey sense indicates a CNN gig in his future. Waltz just gives off that ‘he will believe everything the IC tells him’ vibe.
Mike Waltz is married to Julia Nesheiwat, the sister of Surgeon General nominee Janette Nesheiwat.
[…]
Julia Nesheiwat served in several U.S. administrations. Under George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump, she held senior national security and economic policy positions. Her most notable role was as Trump’s 10th Homeland Security Advisor from 2020 to 2021. Her Bush administration posts included State Department seniority and Office of the Director of National Intelligence Policy Chief.”
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2024/12/15/sunday-talks-incoming-nat-sec-advisor-michael-waltz-talks-about-drones-and-ukraine/
I wonder what quango Trump has lined up for the third sister, Jaclyn Nesheiwat.
https://legalinsurrection.com/2024/12/florida-sheriff-chad-chronister-withdraws-as-trumps-dea-nominee/
Good.
https://x.com/RepThomasMassie/status/1864073791283826739
Another totalitarian pick: Chad Chronister for head of DEA
The “Libertarians for Trump” lot are going to be thrilled about this one:
https://notthebee.com/article/a-woke-and-weak-democrat-plant-trumps-choice-to-head-dea-is-bad-real-bad
https://x.com/SpenceRogers/status/1863315977766580547
“President Trump […] might whiff on one or two picks. So let’s give a little grace to the incoming president.”, says Peter Heck.
No, Peter. Trump has whiffed the overwhelming majority of picks. And this isn’t his first rodeo. No more grace, no more excuses. He’s learnt nothing from any of his mistakes and he revels in it.
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2024/11/21/president-trump-nominates-pam-bondi-for-u-s-attorney-general-the-deep-swamp-smiles/
This swamp creature is what we are getting as Attorney General instead of Gaetz?! Christ have mercy.
“Florida AG Pam Bondi knew that her special prosecutor, Angela Corey, and her friend, Benjamin Crump, had manufactured an entirely false and fictitious witness against George Zimmerman.
Everyone, including AG Pam Bondi, was willing to put a transparently innocent man into prison; even to the extent of manufacturing a witness; in order to achieve a racially equitable political outcome that would assist their careers.”
“Pam Bondi, Trump’s new pick for Attorney General, was a registered foreign lobbyist on behalf of Qatar. She received $115,000 a month for her undoubtedly exceptional lobbying services”
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Joining Surgeon General Janette “Female Fauci” Nesheiwat, is Labor Secretary “Lockdown Lori” (Chavez-DeRemer) – which also happens to remove yet another Republican (though in name only) from the House.
https://legalinsurrection.com/2024/11/trump-nominates-rep-lori-chavez-deremer-for-labor-secretary/
—
And instead of getting Thomas Massie as Agriculture Secretary, we’re getting Brooke Rollins. Now I’m not saying that’s necessarily a bad thing – naming her alongside Female Fauci and Lockdown Lori is extremely insulting – but let’s face it, Massie she is not…
—
All Trump’s picks that I am aware of (which isn’t all of them – I’ve not been following *THAT* closely) are disappointing to a greater or lesser degree. Even Hegseth and Homan have been creepily pro-“Ukraine” and/or anti-Russia. As I see it, Trump is setting himself up for a repetition of his first term, by surrounding himself with bad advice and delegating power to the wrong people.
In other words, he hasn’t learnt anything. And we could all see it coming. For months, I’ve been warning that Trump is a RINO who says one thing then does the opposite, and that viewing him as a saviour who would #MakeAmericaGreatAgain is nothing more than self-deception. And I am once again being vindicated.
Where are all those mindless MAGAt Trump sycophants who told me I was wrong now?!
I wanted to say Scott Bessent for Secretary of the Treasury was undoubtedly Trump’s worst pick of all, but then he announced Janette Nesheiwat as Surgeon General…
https://notthebee.com/article/trumps-surgeon-general-pick-is-making-some-conservatives-scratch-their-heads
Yikes! “Female Fauci” is right. I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised given Trump’s repeated doubling-down on how wonderful Project Warpspeed was; nevertheless, a Democrat-worthy pick. Hopefully someone manages to talk him out of it before inauguration. RFK for one must be delighted at the prospect of being forced to work with her.
“Trump‘s father bought him his degree from Wharton.”
Wasn’t that debunked almost immediately as the invention of one of his bitter old neolibtard professors – a terrible teacher himself by all accounts – who tried to discredit Trump’s academic performance?
“No one has ever accused Trump of being brilliant.”
They have actually – remember all the “4D” and “5D chess genius” memes? – though not very credibly. But certainly there exists something between brilliant and stupid enough to throw away congressional majority. Besides, he has countless advisers who must have warned him.
No, Trump is aware of what he is proposing and is doing so deliberately. Whether that is a smart decision is another matter, of course.
In any event, he is continuing down this track:
Tulsi Gabbard as Director of National Intelligence. Presumably because she has no intelligence of her own – maybe she can acquire some on the job. Terrible choice, almost as bad as Rubio for Secretary of State.
Matt Gaetz as Attorney General. Honestly, not too shoddy considering some of the other picks, but again bizarrely removing someone from Congress*.
Pete Hegseth as Secretary for Defense. This actually seems like a pretty solid pick, especially compared to the others. It will be nice having a Defense Secretary who is actually qualified for a change, I don’t remember the US ever having one of those before.
Vivek Ramaswamy and Elon Musk for “Department of Government Efficiency” … This is just trolling libs, as Senator Fetterman put it, and creating jobs for the boys. They could have been used to actually cut red tape in positions which already exist.
And possibly(!) Kash Patel as FBI Director – though that one is more of a rumor than the others. Perhaps not a wise pick, but it would be pretty hilarious pay-back.
* I previously indicated that Lee Zeldin is a current NY congressman, however that is not true: he did not seek re-election, because he ran for NY governor in the 2022 midterm.
Trump‘s father bought him his degree from Wharton. No one has ever accused Trump of being brilliant. Evil, maniacal, devious, sociopathic… But not brilliant.
No, I think he honestly believes that if he pulls a Republican out of a seat, that person will simply be replaced by another Republican instantly. He does not seem to understand that if he pulls out enough of them the first day, his party could temporarily lose control of the house or senate while waiting for the seats to be filled. Some seats will be filled by appointments, but most will require a special election. That takes at a minimum one to three months, depending upon a state’s election laws.
But I don’t think he really cares.
@Stewart Flood
Trump might be that arrogant, but I don’t think he’s quite that stupid. More likely he is deliberately sabotaging himself because he doesn’t actually want to affect any change, and this way he can dodge all responsibility for sitting out another term while pretending to be a victim.
…But no, that also doesn’t make sense, because he is doing it so blatantly – surely he knows he can’t get away with that. Maybe he is misdirecting and will make completely different appointments(?)
As for the Supreme Court, I doubt it. Two of his three own appointments, Klown Kavanaugh and Amy Crony Barrett, have been working against him every bit as hard as Chief (in)Justice RINO Roberts, i.e. almost as much as Sonia Sodomizer, Elena Pagan and Kentucky Fried Jaxon.
Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, the only two with a track-record of justice that can match flipping a coin, are going to do what they think is best, which might sometimes align with what Trump wants but often won’t. That leaves Trump with Neil Gorsuck as the only one on whose backing he can count …probably.
I don’t believe that Trump or his team is taking her calls any more. Several times major media quoted a senior staff member as saying that the “clown car” was not coming near them. She is the one who has been making “clown car” comments all over the internet and probably to Trump himself near staffers the couple times she met with him. I think she’ll just wait for his “most” libertarian appointee and claim that SHE made that happen. They won’t bother to refute her lies or her claims. But she’ll ride that donkey clown as far as the media will let her. Hopefully into a good job with GOP SOON@@@
What Trump is doing is quite obvious. He has already indicated it by telling the Senate that they’re not to bother confirming any of his nominees. They are to be put in as “recess appointments“ and he doesn’t want the Senate to bother confirming anyone.
He clearly thinks that he is going to just do what he wants, including creating new government departments and new positions that don’t exist. He has done that several times today already. Or at least he has in his warped little mind. He doesn’t care if he removes people from Congress because he doesn’t care about Congress.
He is expecting the Supreme Court to back him on all of his power plays. They certainly might, and recent actions indicate that they would. But we won’t know for a while.
Continuing my train of though regarding “In short, nothing seems different this time around”, some more appointments are reportedly out of the bag.
RINO Rubio* “appears to be on the fast track to the Secretary of State position.” Ugh!
Treacherous Kristi Noem has been reported as Director of Homeland Security. Hilarious that NTB describes her as a “Trump loyalist” after how disloyal she has been to everyone – including Trump – except herself.
Susie Wiles as Chief of Staff. As I mentioned below, she is extremely anti-DeSantis. And I believe she was likely behind Trump’s libelous attacks against him.
Mike Waltz* as National Security Advisor.
Tom Homan as Border Czar.
Elise Stefanik* as UN Ambassador. Good luck trying to get a NY congresswoman or -man to replace her who isn’t worse.
Stephen Miller as Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy.
Lee Zeldin* in charge of the Environmental Protection Agency. Again, good luck trying to get a NY congressman or -woman to replace him who isn’t worse.
Mike Huckabee as Ambassador to Israel. Could do a lot worse, but also better.
* These are all current members of Congress – Rubio in the Senate, the others in the House. The GOP barely has the necessary two-thirds majority as it is. And now Trump seems dead-set on making sure that they will lose it. What is he playing at?
I think someone called me a leftist. No one who knows me would ever call me a leftist.
And for the record, calling someone Der Fuhrer is not saying they are H*****. The term was used to reference him, but he did not invent those words. Nor was he the first leader of a political movement to be called leader, which is the meaning of the word in Germanic languages.
In the US House and Senate, political leaders are normally referred to as leader followed by their name. English, German, the language does not matter. It is the same word. Placing them on a pedestal like that is what matters and it is wrong.
Note the extensive use of fatherland and motherland by American politicians over the past 25 years or so, nearly all of them Republicans. Did anyone else notice that when it started after 9/11? A shiver went down my spine the first time I heard Bush use it. It was not a pleasant moment.
But was I intending to show any respect toward the person just elected president? Certainly not. We should be able to respect the office of President of the United States, but it has been decades since anyone worthy of respect has occupied the oval office.
But this one does want you to click your heels and he does want you to salute. And I don’t care if I have just been put on the White House enemies list. I have been on it before.
Dave – What policies of Biden’s do you believe are comparable to the policies of Hitler?
I counted up the members several times from the list on lp.org and somehow came up with 18, making exclusion of the secretary 17.
I have been informed by someone that I trust that there really are only 17. So that would make the number of eligible votes of the full committee 16.
But that is just the trial, now there will be an appeal. The final decision will be up to their judicial committee. So while she has been suspended, she has not yet been removed.
Looking at the list of the judicial committee members, I only know three of them. But I consider those three to be highly honorable individuals who will make a decision based upon the bylaws and the facts of the case. I will make the assumption that the rest of the committee are also honorable individuals until shown otherwise.
They will have access to a lot more information than I have as a non-member of the party, so I will make the assumption that they will look at all of the evidence, the actions of all parties and the bylaws, and make the correct decision — regardless of what it is.
Redpath didn’t bother to show. 2/3 of 16 rounds up to 11.
Much as I dislike Trump, what was suggested as a possibility several comments back will hopefully not happen. That type of event would be catastrophic to our nation — no matter what corner of the political spectrum you are from.
But the reality is that at his age I would give him a 1 in 25 of something age or health related hitting before January 20, and about a 3 in 10 over the next four years. Don’t ask me to show where I got the numbers. I estimated life expectancies, family history, current lifestyle, and the stress/environment of the job. When Biden was sworn in, I estimated he had a 6 in 10 of a health issue, fatal or otherwise.
I am not a doctor, and I don’t play one on TV.
But I do know how to read bylaws and do basic math: 11 votes is not 2/3 of 17.
Harlos has been sacked due to gross misconduct, another win for libertarians. Now we can focus on actually getting things done instead of pink distractions.
Remember how Trump blamed his failures of the first term – those few he was willing to begrudgingly sort of admit, that is, not ones he’s doubled down on like Operation Warp Speed – on getting bad advice and appointing the wrong people due to inexperience, but said that wouldn’t happen this time around…
He has already named his fervently anti-DeSantis campaign manager Susie Wiles, who is likely behind his libelous attacks accusing DeSantis of locking-down Florida and working for the CCP, as his future chief of staff. During his victory speech, he lauded spineless speaker of the house Mike Johnson, as well as Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump, whom he previously said had misled him and whom he would not trust again. Already his big pharma-controlled advisers are supposedly pressing him to exclude Kennedy from his administration. In short, nothing seems different this time around.
What then are the odds he will actually follow through on appointing a libertarian to cabinet? And what kind of “libertarian” – real or fake? To what extent will they actually be allowed to do their job? And how long will he keep them around before sacking them – a day? a week? a month? a year even?
Trump will probably follow through on pardoning Ulbricht as a publicity stunt, but that alone really isn’t good enough. And while McArdle has certainly done more good for the LP than Redpath, Hinkle, Neale, Sarwark, Henchman and Bilyeu put together, it’s not as if that is a very high bar to clear. Let’s see this cooperation bear some fruit before celebrating, shall we?
Of course, I would like to see professor Rectenwald as Secretary of (Dismantling the Department of) Education, or better yet, Spike Cohen as Secretary of State. But I too am not holding my breath for anything even a fraction that impressive.
And that’s all assuming Trump doesn’t get whacked before he can even take office, which you just know there will be several more attempts at before Inauguration Day.
Trump is far from Hitler. If anyone is close to Hitler based on policy, it’s Biden. Comments like that show who is really just a far leftist.
As someone said earlier, the Sarwark wing of the party obviously doesn’t want anything libertarian. They just want to complain and try to ruin any progress actual libertarians are making. An ego trip obviously. Angela hasn’t been perfect, but she’s doing a much better job than the previous five chairs, at least.
Excellent catch, Darryl! Granted, there are very few anarchists or classical liberals who would consider Kennedy to be a fellow traveler, but it would satisfy the promise that was made by Der Fuhrer.
Don’t forget to click your heels smartly when you salute. They are watching.
RFK will be the “libertarian” in the cabinet, remember he did pay for a membership at the convention!
The fake libertarians are having a meltdown over Angela actually working to push libertarian policies with elected leaders. Oh the horror!
So, when Trump refuses to free Ross or appoint a libertarian to the cabinet, can we expect McArdle’s resignation? It’s the least she could do.
I voted for Oliver, as I have previously noted. I was also surprised to find three or four other candidates running as libertarians. I don’t remember the exact count, and I had never heard one single piece of promotion of or by any of them, other than Oliver, who’s campaign had sent me a few messages before I unsubscribed months ago.
When your choice for Congress is either James Clyburn, or some unknown republican, unknown, libertarian, or unknown something else… I believe there were actually about six or seven people trying to become a congress critter… Who do you vote for? Well, of course you vote for the libertarian that you have never heard of. I wonder if I was his only vote in my precinct.
But to the “impact“ comment. Really? Do you really believe that Trump was telling the truth? How often does that happen?
Again, we will have to wait and see. They raised money out of Libertarians from him saying that. How disgusting is it that people would do that or that their party would conspire with Kennedy to raise money for Trump?
Sounds like Trump will follow through on his promise! Running loser Chase Oliver was the best thing for the country.
Angela is a genius.
I am glad that I voted for Libertarian Party Presidential candidate Chase Oliver for President.
Excuse me while I puke!
This is interesting. What are the odds that his second term will have a libertarian in a cabinet level position? Does anyone else actually belive this? Well we’ll just have to wait and see.
Personally, I won’t be holding my breath.
It was a more difficult set of circumstances surrounfing this election than any LP presidential ticket had to face in awhile, but I do not think it was the most difficult set of circumstances ever for an LP presidential ticket.
This is awesome to see. Real libertarians are making an impact. The Sarwark/Bilyeu/Harlos wing could never even dream of having this kind of impact.