Trump promises Libertarians a cabinet slot — and to free a notorious drug kingpin

Donald Trump promised members of the Libertarian Party that he would “put a libertarian in my cabinet” and commute the life sentence of Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht, a top demand of a political movement that intends to run its own candidate against him.

“On day one, we will commute the sentence,” Trump said, offering to free the creator of what was once the internet’s most infamous drug clearinghouse. “We will bring him home.” His speeches more typically include a pledge to execute drug dealers, citing China as a model.

“It’s time to be winners,” said Trump, asking rhetorically if third party delegates wanted to go on getting single-digit protest votes. “I’m asking for the Libertarian Party’s endorsement, or at least lots of your votes.”

It was an unexpected offer from an unprecedented speech — one of several by non-Libertarians who the party invited to address its nominating convention. Trump’s own supporters were outnumbered by Libertarian delegates who resented his presence.

A chant of “We Want Trump” was drowned out quickly by “End the Fed!” When Trump called Joe Biden a “threat to democracy,” some delegates shouted: “So are you!” He got a better reception when joking that the criminal charges against him made him a libertarian, and that he started “no new wars” in four years.

Trump wasn’t just competing with Libertarians on Saturday. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., speaking to a smaller Friday crowd, praised Libertarians for opposing COVID stay-at-home orders, vaccine mandates, and online censorship, while saying he’d pardon Ulbricht, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, and NSA leaker Edward Snowden.

Vivek Ramaswamy, a Trump surrogate who challenged him for the GOP nomination, told delegates that they should form a “Libertarian-Nationalist” alliance, an idea drowned out by boos. And Trump’s promise of a commutation for Ulbricht fell flat with his biggest Libertarian skeptics.

“Trump lies to everybody else,” said Nicholas Sarwark, a former LP chair who attended the convention as a commentator. In 2018, he’d urged Trump to consider clemency for Ulbricht, and got no response. “Why would you think he’s telling us the truth?”

Trump walked into a fairly hostile room on Saturday, with plenty of advance warning, and uncertain benefits for a candidate currently leading most swing state polls.

From the campaign’s perspective, the GOP nominee was crossing another stop off of his “unity tour,” after a meeting with the Teamsters, a rally in the South Bronx, and an appearance at Philadelphia’s SneakerCon — where he got a different kind of Bronx cheer while hawking his branded line of high-tops.

“Every single person in that room is going to vote against Joe Biden,” senior Trump advisor Jason Miller told Semafor before the speech. “If you want to compete for untraditional votes, you have to take risks. You go where the audiences are; you don’t expect the audiences to come to you.”

At the convention itself, the reception for Trump wavered between skepticism and contempt. Candidates for the party’s nomination got instant applause when they denounced Trump; some delegates denounced party chair Angela McArdle for inviting Trump and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

“We are the party of principle and we reject you outright,” says Lars Mapstead, a Libertarian presidential candidate whose campaign placed signs promoting his plan to deny either Trump or Biden an electoral college majority in the hotel’s lobby, until the Trump campaign got them taken down. “Great for coming. Thanks so much. But now, be gone.”

It could have been worse. Dozens of pro-Trump Republicans, not attending the convention, grabbed seats for the candidate’s speech. In the hours-long run-up, some accepted signs reading “FREE ROSS,” and chatted with Libertarians whose shirts read “TRUMP/FAUCI 2024: Give Us Another Shot.”

But when a critical mass of delegates arrived, McArdle asked Trump’s supporters to move out of the front rows. Later, three party activists delivered short speeches about where the two sides might agree, but why Libertarians didn’t automatically trust Trump — “a great source of comedy,” said LP presidential contender Michael Rectenwald — after creating Operation Warp Speed to fight COVID and adding trillions of dollars to the national debt.

“The question isn’t just: Can Trump appeal to libertarians?” said Kentucky Rep. Tom Massie, a Republican with strong libertarian views who attended the convention on Friday. “It’s also: Can libertarians appeal to Trump? This could be a two way street. To get some of their votes, I think he needs to offer something.”

One way Trump could do that, said Massie, was to offer a pardon to Ulbricht — as well as Julian Assange and Edward Snowden.

Most of the paid-up members of the Libertarian Party were unhappy with the Trump appearance. At best, it was a chance to push a potential president on their issues — which worked, when it came to Ulbricht. At worst, it made the party look like an appendage of the MAGA movement.

“Nothing that he did during his term was remotely libertarian,” said Daniel McGee, 39, a delegate from Georgia. “You get people chanting End the Fed, Free Ross in a room, but these people watched him rule for four years and not do all of those things.”

Derek Williams, a 44-year old delegate from South Carolina, said that Trump’s commutation promise was “just words” from a candidate who’d said lots of them. But the attention paid to the party by Trump and Kennedy, and the promises to deliver on even a handful of their issues, showed that the LP was relevant.

“I do like the fact that we’re actually having the other major parties pay attention to us,” Williams said. “We are a powerful voting bloc. We matter.”

McArdle told reporters on Saturday that “the stuff I’ve polled” had brought “a national media spotlight” to the party, with more media attention than it had ever gotten for a conference, and one of its best three-day fundraising hauls — $159,000. But that wasn’t worth the Trump invite, for some delegates.

“Trump sold gold high-tops at SneakerCon; maybe he can sell us gold dildos to f— ourselves with,” said Thomas Knapp, 57, a delegate from Florida.

As soon as Trump accepted the Libertarian invite, it was obvious he’d be booed. I’ve covered the LP on and off for 16 years, starting with former Rep. Bob Barr’s successful bid for the 2008 nomination. People who will spend years of their lives and thousands of dollars of fiat money on a third party don’t appreciate Republican politicians showing up and promising to save them.

Saturday’s speech might not have moved many Libertarian voters; the party will pick its nominee tomorrow, and no delegates I met planned to abandon them for Trump. He got plenty of applause for promising to defend cryptocurrency, but even that sounded more like a reach for some Kennedy voters and anti-establishment independents who were disappointed in Trump’s first term. They had little reason to trust him on clemency power, which he’d used for allies and politicians who he felt were railroaded in his first term — not on people like Ulbrich.

“I’ve been indicted by the government on 91 different things,” Trump said. “So if I wasn’t a libertarian before, I sure as hell am a libertarian now.”

• For more on the internal Libertarian Party divide this election cycle, check out my piece from February on RFK Jr.’s active courtship of its members.