Despite the hostile crowd, Trump received his warmest response when he said if re-elected, he would pardon Ross Ulbricht, the mastermind behind the online drug market Silk Road, who was sentenced to life in prison in 2015.
Libertarian delegates jeer Republican presidential candidate and former president Donald Trump as he speaks at the Libertarian National Convention at the Washington Hilton.Credit: AP
Tensions were high in the room ahead of Trump’s speech as libertarian delegates entered to discover that Trump supporters were already seated in the front rows where they had planned to sit.
Organisers pleaded with Trump fans to move in order to allow delegates who paid to travel to their convention to sit. Most Trump supporters reluctantly gave up their seats.
Libertarians unloaded on Donald Trump at a convention in Washington.Credit: AP
Still, the two factions in the room at times battled by chanting. Some with Trump T-shirts and red baseball caps chanted their candidate’s name, while Libertarians chanted “Free Ross.”
In the midst of Trump’s address, a fistfight broke out between a Trump supporter and Libertarian activist, and the Libertarian was escorted out by security guards.
Libertarian chair Angela McArdle previously told The Washington Post she decided to invite Trump to speak to her members. She did so along with Biden, independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy jnr and other non-Libertarian candidates in what she described as an attempt to garner more national attention for the party.
Kennedy accepted, receiving a lukewarm response Friday as he appealed to Libertarians’ shared concerns with coronavirus public health requirements. But many in the audience took issue with Kennedy’s interest in reforming government agencies rather than disbanding them.
Before he spoke, McArdle requested the Libertarian delegates “behave themselves” at the Trump event.
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“The party has been largely irrelevant for 50-plus years and all of a sudden we have … a national media spotlight on us because of Trump,” she said.
McArdle, who is part of a right-wing faction of the party called the Mises Caucus, has faced criticism from left-leaning Libertarians for inviting Trump and recently commenting that he is “better” than Biden. (McArdle was re-elected as the party’s chair with 53 per cent of the vote shortly before Trump’s speech.)
In the week after his invitation was announced, libertarians, including some within the party’s leadership, sought to disinvite Trump, but McArdle refused.
Many of the Libertarians berated Trump’s four years in the White House, shouting “hypocrite” and “no” at Trump’s suggestions he would reform the US government. “You had your shot,” Daniel McCarthy, a Texas delegate said. “It’s just more pandering, just like RFK pandered last night.”
The Washington Post
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