The Rationalizations of Libertarian Trump Supporters
Leading to the 2024 election I made the observation that this election was going to be interesting to see just what people who called themselves libertarians were really interested in. Was it libertarianism as a concept or was it just certain policies that they wanted to see implemented that the libertarian movement agreed with them on. And what positions they were willing to give up to achieve those that they wanted to see implemented. This election did not disappoint as people very publicly showed us.
A lot of the right-wing populist part of the liberty movement ended up embracing Donald Trump because he also holds a lot of right-wing populist ideas. Or to be more precise, speaks to the populist’s concerns with a lot of vagueness and assurances that he ‘feels their pain’. At the end of the day, he’ll do what he thinks is best because as we’ve learned through a long examination of his psyche, he doesn’t feel he needs to research things or think much about them, his instinct is always correct. So, he makes promises and assurances that he routinely reneges on. A promise from Donald Trump isn’t worth the paper it is written on.
But knowing this, many right-wing populists felt that they could get something out of a Donald Trump presidency. So, they made deals and convinced themselves that they had to support his election to get those promises fulfilled. These included the release of Ross Ulbrecht from prison and a libertarian in the cabinet. It’s too early to say on the first one, but the second one looks to be already broken as Trump’s cabinet has been ‘filled’ and no libertarian exists anywhere.
You see, Trump has far bigger goals in mind and all he wanted was to get the power he needed to implement them. Those goals are to rule the country at his whim, unheeded by the people who were more concerned about the Constitution and the future of the Republican party that stalled many of his decisions in his first term. And the liberty movement was just a means to an end with no real power or anything to offer him once he got elected. Many of us tried to warn against this obvious inevitability but were scorned and laughed at, called leftists, degenerates, unserious, etc.
Now that the inevitability of this situation is starting to weigh heavily on those aspirations the expected rationalizations of why they chose to support Trump start to appear. For those that were not really interested in liberty to begin with and were just right-wing populists that got sucked in to Trump’s populist rhetoric, they have nothing to rationalize. They are quite happy with the outcome. But for the people who only supported Trump because they thought they would get something out of his presidency there is a real effort to reframe their decision in a way that still gives them the high ground, at least to themselves.
One such example can be found here by Brian Nichols. In this article, Brian writes from a moral high ground he has created for himself, that he is ‘getting the work done’ as opposed to all those silly unserious libertarians who consider themselves the ‘Purity Police’. Still talking down to anyone who didn’t fall for the promises like he did, he gives us a list of the accomplishments that he helped achieved for liberty by supporting Donald Trump’s election. Let’s see what we got according to him.
Cryptocurrency adoption
This is an interesting accomplishment because this is achievable without government at all. In fact, the whole idea behind cryptocurrency is to operate outside of the government completely. I have no idea what he means by accomplishment other than maybe the government starting to use cryptocurrencies itself, which means it will now be regulating them and that doesn’t seem to me to be the kind of liberty accomplishment that cryptocurrencies were supposed to give us.
De-escalation of International Conflicts
Well, Trump’s second term hasn’t started yet, but if we go by the first time this has definitely not been achieved. There has been this talking point that ‘Trump started no new wars’ but it wasn’t for lack of trying. He bombed more people than Bush and Obama did before him combined, bragging about using the MOAB (Mother of All Bombs) on enemies. He took us to the brink of war with Iran but they stepped down and he has promised to ‘Finish Iran’ if elected again. He also says he would end Russia’s war against Ukraine but doesn’t give any specifics on how this would be accomplished. It is hard to see an out there that doesn’t end with Russia becoming more powerful, gaining control of a large portion of Ukraine’s natural assets, while it starts working up moving its eye towards Georgia. Unless he decides to fully commit behind Ukraine to push Russia back out of its borders, but that definitely wouldn’t be a ‘peaceful solution’. In fact, there are a number of International Conflicts that have been ‘on hold’ for years because the United States has been keeping them from escalating, a pull back from the international stage, as many people like Brian want him to do, would likely enflame them. China v Tibet, Taiwan, Hong Kong and its genocide of the Uyghurs. North and South Korea, Russia’s stated goal of reuniting the Soviet Union under Russian control, Israel v Palestine, etc, etc… Retreating to isolationism may be what some want and are expecting, but there is likely no chance that will happen. Trump believes he is the only one who can ‘deal with these situations’ and will likely be sticking the US’ nose into these conflicts more, not less. This is a lot of wishcasting by people who want something and just believes that Trump wants it to.
Increased Visibility of Liberty-minded Thinking among Business Leaders
Seriously what does he mean by this? How does Trump being elected achieve this goal exactly? Brian offers no actual explanation, it just exists in his mind so it must be true. Do we see business leaders calling for more open borders? No. Do we see more business leaders looking to end the regulations they rely upon to keep opposition to a minimum? No. This is baffling to me personally.
Real Policy Shifts Toward Freedom
Again, no examples so we have to extrapolate what he might be thinking here. For instance I know there is a lot of talk about the elimination of the Department of Education, but do they seriously think that Trump is going to give up power to implement all the policies that his real advisors are pushing for? Without the DoE how would he be able to enact policies to all schools to ‘keep them from being indoctrination centers’? It would give the states control over the education systems in their states and that would mean many states would implement policies that his advisors don’t want. It’s naïve to think that Trump is wanting all of this power by filling his cabinet with people loyal to him and has already promised to re-introduce his executive order redefining Schedule F, allowing him to ‘clean out the deep state’ by firing possibly tens of thousands of career executive branch workers and replacing them with his own people who have loyalty to him, not the Constitution, without then having that power at his disposal. It's a lack of understanding about the very nature of the person they supported. And the DOGE? It won’t be an actual government body, will issue a report in six months that will then be largely ignored. It has no power, no ability to enact the ‘gutting’ that people are expecting. I would be surprised to see it amounting to much of anything as Trump and Musk start to butt heads and their egos clash. Let’s put that in the ‘we shall see’ column.
But, let’s say for the sake of argument those things come to pass. At what cost to liberty did it require? There are definite policy promises that Trump did make that are far more likely to happen and by supporting Trump in this election, they have helped ensure that those anti-liberty policies also get implemented. Such as
Mass Deportations – This policy was one of his most often repeated promises on the campaign trail and he has already made strides to see it implemented with bringing back Stephen Miller as Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy and Tom Homan as ‘Border czar’, a position that doesn’t really exist but was made up to convince people that Kamala Harris was somehow in charge of border policy. Not only is this a policy which requires violating a lot of due process laws that exist, but it will cost upwards of a trillion and a half dollars by some estimates. Trump’s incoming administration has already said that this effort will ‘have no price tag’ meaning it will cost as much as it costs without concern for how much. So much for that balanced budget.
The Insurrection Act – Trump has already promised that he will use his power to quell dissent in his first days in office to bring the military in and assist in the Mass Deportation effort. Several states have promised to protect the people in their state against the promised deportations and Trump will not have the power to call up the National Guard in those states (this requires the Governor’s approval) so instead the military could be used, on US soil, for the first time in over a hundred years.
The Press Act – Congress has passed a bill that will give protections for journalists from being spied on or forced to give up their sources. Trump has already told the Republicans in congress to ‘kill it’. Likely he will have it repealed if it does get passed and if not, simply ignore it. After all, who would enforce this law? His Department of Justice that he has already said would no longer be independent. He would just tell his Attorney General to ignore any violations of that law and continue doing what they are doing. If it lands up in court, it would take years to get through the system and eventually make it to a Trump friendly Supreme Court so he is likely willing to take those chances since he is more worried about his legacy than getting re-elected. He has already vowed to strip dissident media of their licenses and currently has a lawsuit against ABC from before the election.
End of Birthright Citizenship – Trump has also suggested that people who were born here by parents who weren’t here legally do not earn the right of Birthright Citizenship, despite the authors of the amendment knowing full well that the amendment allowed that to happen. In their deliberations they agreed that it would give citizenship to Native Americans and Chinese people who were in the US illegally. There was no immigration law at the time, other than the Chinese Exclusion Act, but the intent of the amendment was to allow those people, as well as those born from slaves, to have automatic citizenship. This is the ORIGINALISTS position on this amendment, it is interesting to see how many people who call themselves originalists are trying to do the exact opposite in those cases where it benefits them politically. It would also have the effect of making any descendant from a slave who was not naturalized because they believed to have had Birthright Citizenship would be subject to possible deportation. This will be a very interesting development to watch play out, and a sad one to think that some day being born here wouldn’t afford you the rights the Constitution promises.
Denaturalization of Dissidents – There have also been suggestions of removing the citizenship or visas of people who are in the United States but protest against any of its policies in direct violation of their 1st amendment rights. We keep hearing about ‘freedom of speech’ but apparently that only exists if you are in ‘the in group’. If you oppose ‘the in group’ you are subject to very real consequences.
The Executive Takeover of the FED – Trump has many times stated that he wants more control of the FED. Currently it is a 50/50 board, made up of government advisors and representatives of the banking industry. The chair is selected by the president for terms, but so are many of the other positions in the government that Trump is wanting to have removed, so there is no doubt that he will attempt to gain control over the FED by firing the current chair Powell, who he has been critical of, and replace them with someone loyal to him and will do what he wants done, like keeping interest rates artificially low and creating the type of bubbles we saw lead to the 2008 financial collapse, or policies that led to the stagflation of the 1970s. There is little chance that Trump will be wanting to ‘End the FED’, it has too much power for him to wield, he will not be wanting to give that up.
Spiraling Inflation – Two of Trump’s promised policies will likely combine to create inflation that the US hasn’t seen in decades. Mass Deporting tens of millions of peaceful people who currently contribute to the economy will cost the country between 4-7 percent of annual GDP according to some estimates. On top of that, the promised tariffs would disrupt many industries including electronics and agriculture. Further, promised approved mergers of several large companies will cut back on competition pricing allowing for those resulting companies to charge more for their goods and services. Many libertarians mistakenly think that a ‘free market’ means an unregulated one, when in fact it means that the market is able to operate freely. Large monopolies will keep that market from operating in a way that provides a true supply and demand result.
Assaults on Minority Rights – On top of all of this is the expectation of the new administration to crack down on individual rights that people in minority groups have fought to gain for decades. There is already talk about Obergefell v Hodges being under attack as well as Lawrence v Texas and US v Windsor among others. These are recognition of rights that will likely be challenged with this new rise of populism within the United States and seeing anyone’s individual rights assaulted should be a scary proposition for any libertarian.
These are just SOME of the anti-liberty policies that we are likely to see from a Trump presidency.
This is the problem with populism that many libertarians just can’t seem to get their head around. To a populist, individual rights are non-existent, at least unless it affects them directly. It cuts at the very heart of what libertarianism means and what liberty is. Most libertarians will balk at ‘pure democracy’ because of this, not realizing that this is exactly what populism is, just with a different name. And Trump has already promised many policies that will cut at the very heart of individual liberties.
And that is what the liberty minded people who voted for Trump traded for the vague promises that have yet to be realized and will likely never come to fruition. Even if they did, was it worth it to them? To subject tens of millions of peaceful people to have their lives violently destroyed? Creating the situation that may land US military in the streets of the country? Forcibly tamping down on dissident outlets and the press?
And no, you don’t get to say ‘we got these policies we like’ because you also got all these other policies in that deal. You made a decision that encompasses the whole deal because you felt that the gains you might get were worth the bad things that were being promised as well. You made that choice and it is something you need to acknowledge and not rationalize away what your decision means to the cause of liberty.
But the biggest irony of all? Many of the same people who are now crowing about ‘achieving something for liberty’ by supporting someone so against the ideas of liberty were the very people who were so upset about what they considered the Pragmatists for nominating people like Gary Johnson because he wasn’t ‘pure enough’ of a libertarian that they started a caucus that was used to ‘take over the party’. Which makes you wonder a few things, doesn’t it?