“I know there are some libertarians who have a severe allergy to relevance, but it is an undeniably great thing that Trump is speaking at the Libertarian Party National Convention,” wrote comedian Dave Smith on X. “It will generate more attention on our party and the issues that we care about, than we’ve ever had.”

Perhaps you’re sitting there wondering why the L.P.—which, at this convention, will be nominating its own presidential candidate (contenders include Chase Oliver, Mike ter Maat, and Michael Rectenwald)—would want to host the former president and presumptive nominee for another party. To answer these questions, I called up L.P. Communications Director Brian McWilliams.

All publicity = good publicity? The media attention “is going to be more than we have ever experienced,” says McWilliams. “Do you think libertarians will be happy about it?” I asked, to a firm yes from him: “This gives us an opportunity to get Donald Trump up there, to make him answer questions from our philosophical base.” When I asked who would be moderating—who will be doing the pushing back, and making sure Trump doesn’t turn this into a bloviating stump speech—he said he did not yet know, but possibly the L.P. chair, Angela McArdle.

“RFK [Jr.] was flirting with [the L.P.] because we are a growing bloc. Trump’s seeing that,” says McWilliams. “Growing bloc via what metric?” I asked. “I think we now are getting to a point where we’re representing more Americans,” he continued, to which I pressed: “Do we have data that reflects that?”

“We don’t have data that reflects that as far as party registration or affiliation,” responded McWilliams. “I’m basically speaking from the point of what we’re seeing from a cultural perspective.” Following the Reno Reset in 2022, at which point the Mises Caucus—essentially, mostly anarcho-capitalist edgelords who spend a lot of time online—took over the party, libertarians have widely criticized the nouveau L.P. for its dropping membership and struggles with fundraising.

As for the merch, McWilliams says “it was basically an internal miscommunication as far as timing…some version of merch might be made available, I can’t say if it’s going to be that exact variety.” And, there’s still “a question of whether or not we want to be selling merch for Donald Trump that’s affiliated with the Libertarian Party or not.”

“This was something that somebody clearly spent time and resources on,” I noted, to which he admitted that “without a doubt there was internal thought given to creating the merchandise, you know, that there’s no denying that….[But] this was not something that I wanted to go out the same exact day the same exact time.” All of this struck me as wishy-washy, like they were caught in something that looked bad, and want to save face.

Awfully close? McArdle released a meandering 17-minute video chalking up a lot of the rollout awkwardness to internal incompetence.

“The founders of this party were hardcore radicals. They were anarchists. They hated the government. Many of our members are anarchists; we want total abolition of the federal government. And when we see someone else [Donald Trump] get potentially kicked off the ballot for, you know, not agreeing with the election results, complaining about the federal government, and so on and so forth, that looks awfully close to some of the views we have about the legitimacy of the federal government.”

Well then! So maybe this isn’t an L.P. endorsement of Trump, but boy could you be forgiven for thinking they fancy him and are willing to excuse some of his more election-subverting actions.