This is in many aspects a follow-up to the initial post I ran here. To unfamiliar readers, I've been listening to a backlog of "Good Morning Liberty" podcasts hosted by Nashville libertarian hosts Nate Thurston and Charlie Thompson. More recently, I've been listening in descending sequence of episode size (I have gigabytes on episodes on disk), not necessarily in order of recency; I think the episode where they discuss impeachment II is #386 (as a mathematician I love numbers, and 386 is a well-known label for Intel's 32-bit chip architecture).
Any reader familiar with my essays over the past 18 months or so know I've gotten increasingly annoyed by fellow right-libertarians making excuses for Trump's behavior resulting in his impeachments, and Nate and Charlie fall in that group. Also I've opposed Trump's Presidential ambitions from the get-go. I was never more than a nominally registered Republican when I as a rare Southern Democrat left the Dems in the 1980's over their political attacks on the Bork nomination, but Trump's rabid anti-immigration policy, protectionism, and toxic populism were anathema to my principled conservatism. I had struggled with Ron Paul's 2008 and 2012 POTUS candidacies; even to this day, I'm somewhat selective in clipping Ron Paul videos for my daily blog because he gets somewhat repetitive, strident, with touches of conspiracy theories and discussions of blowbacks. He has his own flavor of populism, including immigration restrictions, and can get downright preachy in his advocacy of Austrian economics. But he was philosophically consistent The point is, we libertarians notoriously disagree among ourselves.
One of more intriguing, exasperating things I have found in Ron Paul's Trump era/post stage commentaries is his soft approach to most of Trump's over-the-top behavior. Maybe it's Paul's more even-tempered personality, and I'm sure some Paul apologist can cite chapter and verse of subtle rebukes of Trump somewhere. But you would think that Ron Paul would have had serious issues with Trump's aggressive foreign policy (out-bombing Obama in Afghanistan, refusing to acknowledge collateral casualties and damage, the Soleimani assassination, hiring Mattis and Bolton, his support of Saudi intervention in Yemen (including veto of Congressional restrictions), his claim of unenumerated Presidential powers, his abuse of budgetary authority (transferring funds from DoD to congressionally-rejected Southern wall building), his abuse of "emergency powers", his many executive orders, his mammoth deficits (trading domestic spending increases for expanding the Pentagon budget), his demand that the Federal Reserve compete with the EU with negative interest rates, etc. I do think he was better on "Tariff Man" and "Economic Sanctions" Trump.
The point is: Ron Paul has given mixed messages on Trump, e.g.:
Paul hasn’t always been critical of Trump. The former Texas congressman asserts that in 2016, Trump “upset the Washington apple cart” and “set elements of the Deep State in motion against him.” But Paul quickly adds that Trump has since become part of the “Deep State” he once challenged.
And why did Paul buy into the Deep State conspiracy against Trump? Because Trump paid lip service to "America First", little more than a soundbite for jingoist nationalism, not a limited global footprint? This is a guy who saw diplomacy and trade as universally manipulated against gullible American interests, who argued the only real issue with American power was that he himself wasn't leading it, who not only threatened American adversaries but traditional allies. Never mind libertarian critiques that military spending was grossly overextended for legitimate defensive needs, that when goods do not move across borders, armies will.
Now, Nate and Charlie are sympathetic to Ron Paul's take (I think Charlie often opines how at least Trump hasn't started any new wars, never mind Trump's aggressive moves against Iran and Syria. I thought my eyes would roll out of their sockets when Nate and Charlie seriously tried to argue that Trump was the most libertarian President in their lifetimes, when, in fact, Trump specifically primaried or tried to primary Amash, Sanford, and Massie. Now I'm not a fan of Clinton's initial tax hike and attempts to nationalize healthcare (among other things), but you could argue that NAFTA was better than any Trump trade initiative (don't get me started on Trump's USMCA, which was a variation on Trump protectionism), the Internet was lightly regulated, Clinton was good on regulation and investment taxes, and Clinton was the last POTUS to actually balance the budget.
Now as to the events of Jan. 6, Charlie doesn't seem to get the difference between statutory law and Constitutional law. No, this is not a criminal trial in the ordinary sense. I think in part the Democrats muddied the water in terms of focusing on mob incitement. But let's be clear: Trump wanted his mob to confront the Congress in session. He scheduled his rally on the morning of the vote count. He knew there were violent protests over the state electoral college counts a few weeks earlier. He knew that some allied organizations were planning to do more than cheer him in a rally; the media, law enforcement, etc., had all issued warnings that protests could get out of hand.
Trump had a Constitutional responsibility to protect the Congress, full stop. He took an oath to uphold and protect the Constitution. Regardless of the outcome of the Jan. 6 vote, Trump had a mandate to honor the process. There should have been contingency plans, under due diligence, to protect the Congress in session. By any objective point of view, Trump was derelict in duty. It was an unprecedented failure in leadership, not seen in DC since the War of 1812. It doesn't matter whether Trump specifically advocated protest violence, whether the type of protest was specifically identified in some definitive law, whether or not protesters acted under their own volition. For someone who focused on his role of Commander of Chief, he did nothing to quiesce the riot, apparently balked at intervening and had to be talking into calling off the remnants of his mob. There is no excuse for Trump's failed leadership. I know the Founding Fathers themselves would have impeached and convicted Trump.
