Trump has built an impressive legacy: he is one of the few Presidents to win the White House while losing the plurality of the vote, he is one of 3 Presidents impeached, he has brought a return to trillion-dollar deficits.
I stumbled across a relevant discussion on a recent "Good Morning, Liberty" podcast, which I think made reference to comments he made in a recent interview with FNC's Ingraham.
Trump's massive ego still cannot handle the fact that he lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton by just over 2 points. So he has a two crackpot idea explanation:
- That massive voter fraud in CA and NY (involving undocumented aliens) accounts for his popular vote deficit
- Gary Johnson's 3.28% of the LP vote was basically stolen from him. He considered himself a very libertarian POTUS.
These are a departure from reality. Whereas I don't claim to speak for all libertarians, and many of us are nuanced on issues, these are probably telling differences:
- We libertarians generally support freedom of migration, i.e., open immigration, vs. Trump's heavily restrictionist policies.
- Tariff man and economics sanctions Trump opposes the concept of free trade.
- Trump regularly asserts unenumerated powers of the presidency (including shifting appropriated funds), even an alleged ability to pardon himself
- Trump has exploded spending, including on the military; if anything, he has supersized drone wars
- We have an expansion of Obama's unconstitutional "pen and a phone" Presidency.
He has bullied companies and individuals who disagree with him, he has often expressed judgments of people before a military court, he has exonerated American war criminals and used pardon/clemency powers where he had a vested interest.
Yes, even those of us oppose him find occasional agreement with certain regulatory decisions and judicial nominees. But we also have a respect for the rule of law.
We libertarians despise the concept of the imperial Presidency.
And Trump is no friend of liberty. He specifically primaried Sanford, Massie and Amash.
I do think there is some weird affection some libertarians have for Trump, including
- a common foe of progressive policies
- the Deep State conspiracy
- discussions of certain Middle East withdrawals.
Ron Paul has rarely ranted against Trump; I'm not sure if he's trying to protect son Rand. But just to give the latest example of Trump's overreach, there's an attempt for a moratorium on evictions.
But I left the GOP in 2016 precisely because of Trump. Yes, I voted for Johnson, but if Johnson weren't there, I would have written in another or voted for nobody.
