In a video monologue released this week, Libertarian Party Chairman Angela McArdle, framed by rainbows, announced her intention to use the campaign of the newly nominated Libertarian Party presidential ticket of Chase Oliver and Mike ter Maat to ensure that presumptive Republican Party presidential nominee Donald Trump is elected president this November.
McArdle said in the video that libertarians should be trying to make sure Trump wins because Trump said some things libertarians like in his speech last month at the Libertarian Party National Convention — a speech met by repeated boos and other expressions of derision from a large portion of the assembled delegates.
The way for the Libertarian Party presidential campaign to accomplish this goal of electing Trump, asserted McArdle, it to strategically work to win votes away from presumptive Democratic Party presidential nominee Joe Biden in “blue states,” thus delivering more Electoral College votes to Trump.
Before the Libertarian Party National Convention, I wrote about the perplexity of the Libertarian Party, at the convention at which it would nominate its own presidential candidate, having speak to delegates the presumptive nominee of another party who the new Libertarian presidential nominee will be running against and who Libertarian presidential nominees had run against in the immediately preceding two elections. The speech opportunity for Trump makes more sense if considered as part of a plan to convert the Libertarian Party from a real opposition party to a party that helps elect another party’s presidential nominee, namely, Trump.
McArdle was a major booster for Trump speaking at the Libertarian Party National Convention. Indeed, she boasted of arranging Trump’s speech. In another video monologue that McArdle posted before the Libertarian Party convention she stated regarding the then forthcoming Trump speech, “it’s been a rough time announcing it, it’s been very stressful planning it, it’s been a huge political risk for me, but it’s the right thing to do, and it’s 100 percent worth it.”
While McArdle, in her new video monologue this week, says she wants to use the Libertarian Party presidential ticket’s campaign to elect Trump because of things Trump said in that convention speech, she had in the lead-up to the Libertarian Party National Convention made clear her strong preference for Trump over Biden. In a May interview at the Wake Up America Show before the Libertarian Party National Convention, McArdle, in response to host Austin Petersen’s question of what she thinks of Trump, complemented Trump and added, “as chair of the national Libertarian Party, I’ve got to support our Libertarian candidate.” Later in the interview, McArdle replied “certainly” and “absolutely” to express agreement with Petersen’s assertion that “amongst libertarians and Donald Trump we do all share the same enemies.” Continuing her answer, McArdle also declared:
I mean, my loyalty has to be to the Libertarian Party, right, because I’m literally like I am the fiduciary. But, Donald Trump is a much better person and president than Joe Biden. There’s no contest, you know, and, you know, we’re all hoping and praying that if he’s elected he does, you know, a good job.
It looks like McArdle has found an approach she is satisfied comports with her duty to support the Libertarian Party presidential candidate and her desire to help Trump beat Biden. Will many Libertarian Party members and the Libertarian National Committee put up with this?
