On a Saturday night last Spring, Donald Trump gave a speech in Washington D.C.. In some ways, it was like his other rallies — the energy in the room was high as he walked out to “God Bless the USA” by Lee Greenwood.
But in more ways, it was quite different. The crowd was more combative than his usual audience of die-hard supporters, alternating between cheers and jeers. During his speech, he spoke about ideas that he never had before or since, like how inflation is theft and that he’s a believer in the 10th Amendment.
And he also made two promises he never had before. Trump said that on day one of his administration, he’d commute the sentence of Ross Ulbricht, the web developer responsible for Silk Road, a marketplace on the dark web to buy illicit goods. The other? That he’d put a libertarian in his cabinet.
All Trump asked the delegates at the Libertarian National Convention to do in return is nominate him for president on the Libertarian ticket.
They didn’t bite. Of 919 votes cast in the first round of voting, just six delegates wrote in Trump as their presidential nominee. Eventually, after seven rounds of voting, the delegates nominated Chase Oliver for president and Mike ter Maat for vice president.
But that hasn’t stopped many in the Libertarian Party from supporting a Trump victory. And that includes the party’s own chair, Angela McArdle.
“I haven't endorsed Donald Trump, but he has endorsed us,” McArdle said in a video posted shortly after the convention. “Donald Trump said he's going to put a libertarian in a cabinet position. He came out and spoke to us. He said he's a libertarian. He has basically endorsed us, and so in return, I endorse Chase Oliver as the best way to beat Joe Biden. Get in loser, we are stopping Biden.”
Since then, McArdle and other Libertarians have been more explicit about their once-tacit hope for a second Trump term. In an episode of the Decentralized Revolution podcast published in late October, she celebrated Oliver for siphoning votes from Democrats specifically.
“I think he's done a fantastic job of helping Donald Trump get elected, it couldn’t have been better.” she said.
During the same podcast, she said she was in talks with Trump and his team before, during and after the convention, and gave him notes on how to appeal to the libertarian electorate.
“The Trump campaign reached out to me almost a year ago at this point, and they basically said, ‘we want your votes, we want your endorsement, we want your support. What do we get, what can we do to get that?’” she said.
During what she called a 45-minute “surprise phone call” with Trump, McArdle — who initially agreed to be interviewed by KBIA but canceled at the time of the interview and did not respond to further requests for comment — said the former president asked for her endorsement.
“I was like ‘I can't give you a flat-out endorsement. I’m the chair of a competing political party. But I can tell you what I can do, and I can tell you how to win the libertarian, the small ‘l’, vote,’” she said, referring to voters who aren’t necessarily part of the party, but support its policies of limiting government intervention in Americans’ lives.
Why they ran from Chase
In an interview with KBIA, Oliver said he isn’t on board with that strategy.
“I hope that in the future, no Libertarian candidate for president ever has to go through that, where they have a hostile co-opted leadership trying to be in the tank for one party or the other.”
Oliver isn’t convinced Trump will be any better for libertarians, or the country, than Harris. And he’s hoping to take votes from both.
“I'm not trying to play spoiler to one or the other,” Oliver said.
Oliver first entered the national spotlight in 2022, when he ran for U.S. Senate in Georgia. He won just over two percent of the vote, which was enough to prevent either major party candidate from winning a majority, thus causing a lengthy and expensive run-off election.
In 2024, he’s hoping to have a similar impact in swing states, regardless of whether Democrats or Republicans win.
“I don't care which one it is,” Oliver said. “I just want us to beat the spread so that we have an impact this election, so we can get more eyeballs on the Libertarian Party.”
Brian Doherty is an editor at the libertarian-leaning magazine Reason. He has been writing about libertarianism and the Libertarian party for decades. He said Oliver has consistent libertarian beliefs, but significant portions of the party have taken a rightward shift on some issues.
For example, Oliver supports allowing minors, their parents and their doctors to make medical decisions about non-surgical gender-transition treatments such as using puberty blockers and hormone therapy.
In the Libertarian Party platform, the party states it opposes “governments either mandating, or restricting voluntary access to, medical treatments or procedures including vaccines.”
“Chase Oliver has what objectively is the more libertarian position, because libertarianism is about minimizing areas of government interfering with people's personal choices.” Doherty said.
The Mises Caucus, a rightwing faction of the Libertarian Party that McArdle used to be a board member of, said online they believe “(c)hildren cannot consent to sex changes.” But Doherty says the schism is less policy-based.
“This doesn't even have a political valence. This is purely cultural. A lot of them, just like Trumpists and MAGAs, are really, really, really angry about trans people,” he added.
Much of the general opposition to Oliver is more based on personality and identity than policy, Doherty said. Oliver doesn’t have the offensive, edgy disposition that many in the party have come to embrace.
For example, the Libertarian Party of New Hampshire posted on X a picture of Meghan McCain weeping over the casket of her father John McCain on the anniversary of his death, with the caption “happy holidays.”
“It amuses them to state possibly libertarian things, and I think sometimes un-libertarian things, in the most offensive, aggravating manner possible,” Doherty said.
Oliver has also been a target. The New Hampshire state party has called him “an infiltrating leftist snake who doesn't understand the basic principles of libertarianism” in response to him condemning their calls for political violence, before using a homophobic slur. Oliver himself is gay.
“If you scour around the X site, you'll definitely find a lot of people who just seem to be mad at him because he’s gay,” Doherty said.
McArdle herself sometimes plays into the effect Oliver’s sexuality has on his lack of support. Her “endorsement” video was bordered with a rainbow design. And in her recent podcast appearance, she seemed to allude to the idea that it is one reason why some Democrats might vote for him.
“He's mostly gone to gay pride events, and he's done some very small meetups, very small, less than 20 people, usually at each event,” she said.
“Chase Oliver only pulls from the left and a particular demographic of the Libertarian Party,” she added.
Local effects of national schism
Doherty and McArdle both predict Oliver will get fewer votes Tuesday than previous Libertarian nominees. Beyond impacting the results of the election, that could have down-ballot effects that are worrying some Missouri Libertarians.
“We are a third party in a country that's governed by two parties, and it's going to take a lot more tact for the third parties to be relevant in this country and in this state, for that matter,” said Bill Slantz, who’s running for Missouri governor as a Libertarian. “But that doesn't mean that you can't stand on your principles and stand up for what you believe in.”
He said that even though he has some disagreements with Oliver, he’s still voting for him because low turnout could have consequences for the party. In Missouri, the Libertarians would lose their party status if they go two consecutive elections without collecting at least two percent of the vote in a statewide race.
“It's important for us to maintain our ballot access for lots of different reasons,” he said. “Without ballot access, we could shrivel away as a party.”
Going forward, Doherty thinks that if Trump loses, the capture of the Libertarian Party could get worse as demand grows for an alternative to Democrats. But a Trump victory could mean the opposite.
“If Trump wins, I think there is going to be more of a demand for the Libertarian Party, because I do still believe there are a lot of people in the Republican Party who actually do believe in liberty and a non-authoritarian executive and free markets, none of which Trump stands for,” he said.
Oliver has hope that the party will root out its Trump-supporting leadership.
“This is absolutely unprecedented in the history of our party, and it's one of the things I want to make sure that in future election cycles never happens again,” he said. “I've seen what it's like to have to run without the full faith and support of your party's leadership.”
