Angela McArdle on Negotiating with Trump

Last updated on May 14, 2025

The following is a transcript of a recent speech by Angela McArdle on how she negotiated about the Presidential Election with Donald Trump. The speech was scheduled to be given at the 2025 New Hampshire Liberty Forum in Concord, New Hampshire on Saturday, April 26 in the late afternoon.

My thanks to Jordan Willow Evans and Dan Fishman for handling technical aspects of the electronic and computing issues.  Your Editor did read the text against the spoken words, and believes that the following is reasonably exact as a capture of what McArdle said. There are some interesting quotes in here:

We present a Transcript of the Recent Speech by Former National Chair McArdle.

So in early November of 2023, I got a call from Rick Grinnell. I don’t know if you guys know who that is. Rick Grinnell is the former acting director of National Intelligence and he’s currently the, I believe it’s called the Special Envoy. He’s basically the diplomat to North Korea and a bunch of other problem countries — according to the United States, which is, you know, quite a thing.

So I should start by saying, you know, Rick Grinnell made a lot of what I’m going to talk about happen. He is a master diplomat and he should be doing a master class in diplomacy. It’s quite an experience to get a call from the former director of National Intelligence, or a text message first, early in the morning, so I had a cup of coffee before I responded, because it did freak me out a little bit. It turns out that we do have a few mutual acquaintances through like the Freedom Fest conservatarian movement so there’s that, you know,and Rick basically said he wanted to know what the libertarians thought of Donald Trump.

And I was very diplomatic in my response. I said that we liked some of the things he did. We appreciated that he didn’t start any new wars. We liked that he pushed back against corporate media and called it fake. We thought there was  perhaps some room for improvement in a few areas, like, you know, the Sulemani drone strikes assassination thing, COVID stimulus spending. And you know, here and there, there was room for improvement  And I, importantly, I said that we were sympathetic to him  regarding the weaponization of the justice system against him, and we thought that was terrible and hoped he would beat it. And I think that that was a very important thing that I said right there.

So anyway, Rick, who was living in LA at the time, he flew down to meet us in person a couple of weeks later in Austin, TX. He was not on the campaign. He was a friend of President Trump, as he would call him Rick, is soft spoken. You know, we had dinner at this small. It was really surreal. We had dinner at the small hole in the Wall restaurant, not far from my place. He held Arthur, Baby Arthur, who was like a little over a year old at that time while we talked some more. My husband Austin also shared his views on the 2016 Trump presidency and talked about what libertarians wanted to see in the next president, you know.

And then Donald Trump called me. So that was crazy. He just called. You know, Rick was like President Trump is calling right now and he’s calling to talk to you. So I just passed my baby to Austin and then to Rick Grinnell. So like Rick Grinnell is holding my baby while I’m talking to Donald Trump in this, like, fried chicken restaurant. And he asked me all sorts of questions about libertarians, which I’m sure some of you can, can, you know, guess on. What was really fascinating is he knew all about me. I said I liked how he made the worst people’s heads explode. And he was like, oh, you know, I say the same thing about you. I’ve been reading on the Internet. You make a lot of heads explode. You make a lot of libertarian heads explode, so that was really interesting, you know?

And he’s like, you know, what do we do to get the libertarian vote? You’re not going to win. You know, it’s like, well, I don’t really care about winning the presidency. You know, we care more about the local level and you know, other changes, you know, things that we can feel in our life. Not that we don’t, you know, think you can make changes for us, you know, trying to watch my words carefully. But I chatted with him for 45 minutes. He really did take time to talk to me. And he had done his homework. So, you know, after that Rick was like, we’re going to get you to Mar-a-Lago. So a couple of weeks later, we did get an invitation and I thought, how do I, you know, I’m still breastfeeding my baby, who’s just a little over a year old at that point. What do I … like how do I do this? And it’s Mar-a-Lago, you have to have, you know, Secret Service, background check and they’re we’ll get you a babysitter in Mar-a-Lago. So, you know, we roll up to to Mar–a-Lago. And this is funny.

You know, one of the things that I got, one of the allegations against me is that I took party money to do this, which is not true. You know, I paid for it out of my own pocket. I accidentally booked the worst motel in Palm Beach to stay at. Did not look like what I booked on hotels.com. So we roll up to this place where it looks like I don’t know, Popeye the sailor man got murdered or something like this is the most brutal. Hotel. So we’re getting ready and you know, in this, like, place where someone’s clearly tried to bust into the room. You know, we’re like, wow, we’re going to see the president. OK. Fascinating weekend I had.

So we get to Mar-a-Lago. I passed my baby off to this woman who is going to babysit for him, and we go to dinner with the President and his two senior advisors and Rick, and that’s it. And we chatted for over 2 hours. And President Trump was a little bit late because he was testifying in court, the same court at that time, who had prosecuted Ross Ulbricht. And so I had a really great chat with Susie Wiles and another person. You know, we talked about people we would like to see pardoned. You know, I hadn’t brought up Ross’s name yet. We talked a little bit about Julian Assange. I heard some opinions that I won’t share on Edward Snowden. So I was like, well, you know, that man’s already walking around outside. Maybe that’s not for this year. And then Donald Trump walked in and when he walked in the room, you know, and it’s like a small. It’s a small little space, right? That’s blocked off for him. If any of you have been to Mar-a-Lago, he’s got a little private dining room, and he just breezes in. And he’s got such a presence. And the first thing he does is he comes and you can tell he’s really paying attention. And I took a lot of notes. Like, this is a really good way to behave. And I’m working on it. Right.

And he goes and he shakes everybody’s hand and he gives me a hug. And he apologized for being late. He was like, but I was on the stand and I got a lot to say, which is just like. Such a nightmare scenario if you’re an attorney, you’re like, geez, no. So it was fascinating. You know, people wonder what was dinner like? Well, he was super friendly, and he hung on every word we said. And he asked my husband if he’d ever smoked cannabis and was just like, he was like, you could just, you know, tell me. And Austin, you know, kind of gently was like, well, you know also is like putting people to death for fentanyl. Like it might be like not a good idea. It was very. It was so receptive and and sweet and grandfatherly and warm and he was really kind to his wait staff and when my food came out, my steak came out, he told. He asked them to send it back because it was not cooked and Rick said, Oh no, President Trump, it’s OK she ordered it that way. And yeah, he was like, oh, I’m sorry. I’m sorry. You probably you’re probably healthier than me, so that’s fine.  And he did eat his his steak very well done and with ketchup. And he drank a Diet Coke. You know what a trip?

So here he’s like. I want to get the libertarian vote. So we’re talking economics. We’re talking the Federal Reserve. We are talking about. You know anything and everything, right? The drug war. Maybe we could move cannabis from Class 1 to Class 2. I’m trying to think about this from the perspective of, like, what could he deliver on? And, you know, before I went into this, you know, Rick advised me he’s like the President is a deal maker. He’s not a regular politician. You need to think about in your own terms like what are the libertarians want and you need to ask for it and make a big ask. You know, like don’t be shy, make an ask.

So I took that into consideration, you know, and I was really thinking about it. And I knew. What I might ask was going to be, but you know, you’re still kind of exploring it, right? You know, try not to put people to death over fentanyl. No, no death penalty for drug dealers. You know, decriminalize cannabis and like, can I only move beyond that? What’s something he can do? And so he wanted to come speak at our convention. And I said, you know, I think if you were to come to our convention and you were to go on stage and say that you’re going to free Ross Ulbricht or political prisoner people would lose their **** and everyone would vote for you. And it was crazy, like the first thing he said he was like. Who’s Ross Ulbricht? And then he said. I’ll do it all for you. I’ll just. Walk out and I’ll say Free Ross Ulbricht. Throw us over mic shot.

And I know its just kind of sounds crazy, but in that like 20 seconds that that happened, I just knew he was going to do it like he was kind of casual about it. But he just seems so serious. And then the next thing he said was, I love freeing people. He said I’ll do it. And I love freeing people. And it was in a span of like 30 seconds total that all this went down. And it was so surreal. You know, so why did I choose Ross? Why did I make it about Ross Ulbricht? You know, Donald Trump knows the art of the deal. I took a copy of that book, by the way, and had him sign it, which he loved because I was like, I want to give him Scott Horton’s book. I want, like, he’s not going to read that, you know, no offense to him, but what can I do that he would really enjoy? And it was autographing his own book. And he gave me the pen, which I gave to my mother-in-law, which she was very excited about. So, you know, it all worked out, right. And I have the book, so he knows the art of the deal. But what I know is like the heart of the deal, like this, it’s like this.

So let’s think about this. Put yourself in my position for a moment, back in 2023. It is a high stakes conversation I’m having. I’m chairing one of the most highly disagreeable organizations in the country. There are people in the organization actively trying to ruin my life. Let’s not be like, you know, white women making everything about me. But it is a thing. There are people who will absolutely sue me and try to remove me from my position for even making the trip. And that did happen 2 lawsuits twice. Very nice. It’s a very contentious election, you know. While I’m complaining about two measly lawsuits, Donald Trump had 91 felony counts by an entire judicial system apparatus that was weaponized against him.

Like he’s going to be choosing his moves very carefully. And he’s not just, it’s not like he’s running against Joe Biden at that point. He’s basically running against a regime that has so much contempt. You know, not just for him, but for us. That they’re willing to prop up brain dead Joe Biden a second time like they just have so much contempt and scorn for the American people. So there’s a lot at stake. I’m sitting in Mar-a-Lago, like having, you know, steak. But there’s a lot at stake. So I need to come out of this deal. I need to make a deal right and I need to come out with a prize that’s going to touch every heart in my organization too, you know, and touch his heart. So how do you do that. You have to choose something with maximum emotional impact. It has to have high emotional appeal, because think about how asymmetrical the bargaining power is right now. You have to choose something that people will emotionally invest themselves in. This is something very real at stake here.

We all know Ross’s story. Is there anyone who’s not familiar with Ross? Work OK, We’ve got one person, Ross Ulbrich, who is a lifelong libertarian. Are you being? Are you being sarcastic? No. OK, just making sure. Just making sure you know, it’s libertarian autism sometimes I can’t tell. So he was like one of the The Pioneers, the original guy of using Bitcoin for free market commerce, you know, outside of the control of the federal government, specifically the Federal Reserve. And he created this website called Silk Road where you can buy and trade anything. Now that happened to include things like illicit drugs. You know, people sell drugs and worse things on Facebook and Instagram all the time. The creators of those websites don’t go to prison for life, but Ross did. Ross did two life terms plus several years, and they did it to make an example out of him and say, do not try to use Bitcoin to circumvent the power of the Federal Reserve. We will find you, we will come for you and we will ruin your life. So he is like he is our martyr, right, libertarians and bitcoiners. He is our guy. We’ve met his mother, most of us. We see his social media status updates from his wife. You know, he’s a real, living, breathing person, the embodiment of our movement and our own relentless pursuit of freedom. And he bore the punishment, basically for all of us who were early adopters of Bitcoin and alternative markets.

When you see his mother show up at event after event, making every connection, every call, every plea, never giving up on her son after 11 years, when you see side-by-side photos of him the time before he was incarcerated. You know, over 10 years later in prison, like it is, it tugs at your heartstrings. You know, that’s heart of the deal stuff. So you have to you got to set, you got to set the tone, right? You want everybody buying in on the proposition you’re making. What else did I do?

I activated reciprocity. Politics is not a zero sum game. We think about elections as a zero sum game and that’s fine. You win or you lose. But politics in general as a whole, it’s not zero sum, so reciprocity is the practice of exchanging benefits where both parties, you know, give and receive something of value, mutual value maybe. And it fosters cooperation and hopefully appreciation. And I gave Donald Trump something that would activate two significant voting blocks for him. It’s not one. It’s not just the libertarian vote. It was two. Libertarians were one and the non-voting Bitcoin community was another, and that was something I pointed out. I said it’s not just going to be the libertarians that vote for you. All these people who don’t vote. Maybe they voted once or twice in their life and they have money. They are going to vote for you. And the data was there. The votes went to Trump and not to Chase Oliver. Down -ticket libertarian votes in Pennsylvania went to down ticket libertarian candidates. More than 60% of those same votes at the presidential level went to Donald Trump. That swung the election in Bucks County specifically, that’s how you make a deal.

I didn’t just turn out voters. I turned out donors. And when President Trump spoke at the Bitcoin Conference and promised to free Ross, the money flowed in. You know, he was very, very happy with that.

Attainability you have to choose an attainable goal. That’s not to say I don’t appreciate everybody’s heartfelt activism. But you need to choose an attainable goal. I gave Donald Trump something he could attain, something he could do without Congress. I gave him something that wouldn’t take much time. It’s like, you know, a signature. I gave him something that was simple. Not, you know, it’s not overly complex, right? He’s a. There’s reason I didn’t give him like Scott Horton’s books. Right? Like, like, let’s just make this easy. Don’t make things hard on yourself. You need to set yourself up for success.

You know, like, libertarians, we have room for improvement there. So what are the mechanics of that? You know, what does it look like? You’re not just giving someone else a goal in a negotiation. You’re setting a goal for yourself to reach, so you set yourself up with an attainable negotiation goal. You set a goal that’s within the realm of your capacity to negotiate. You know that means it needs to be within the realm of your competence, right? And to a certain extent, within the locus of your control, which is sort of I was sort of like flying on the edge of my control when I made this goal. But but I knew that libertarians were going to vote for Donald Trump over the LP candidate one if Trump promised to free Ross and two if we delivered a sub par candidate, and I will tell you that I am so proud of the Chase Oliver campaign and I thank him so much.

And I hope in 2028 we have good enough reason to do it again. So, you know, I knew I was confident that I could negotiate this with this whole situation going on, you know, and in the backdrop, that’s Dave Smith, as I already knew, had dropped out and I’m going to come back to that. And I knew that people like Rick Grinnell and Roger Stone and Charlie Kirk and David Bailey were all going to assist me. And they would intercede on Ross’s behalf. And those guys are really awesome. And so is Susie Wiles and Cash Patel. They all help to make this happen. I just like I can’t. I cannot say enough how much of a class act his entire campaign was working with me. They were so professional and sweet and friendly, and it is just night and day working with them versus the pack of wild thugs that I have to deal with in the LP. So. It’s just, you know. Ohh. She’s a nasty woman. Like he. He’s whatever, he’s so chill, he’s so chill.

Pick a goal that other people want to support. Pick something that other people are going to feel passionate about so they will lend you support. You just you gotta set yourself up for success and that’s the problem with some of the radicals in our movement. And I love radicalism. Which I distinguish from certain radicals, but they don’t. They don’t set themselves up for success. They set themselves up for failure. There’s no there’s no path. If there’s no pathway to success, you know, it’s like there’s only rejection of things they don’t like. And that’s a really interesting mindset. So here’s the implication for that. If you are determined to reject any and all attainable positive outcomes, you spend lots of time engaged in political activity, though, but you consistently reject every positive opportunity. Then then you have rejected all positive outcomes, not just of your political endeavors, you know, but for yourself, because it means you don’t really want a way out of this. You want to occupy an authoritarian state because it’s where you’re comfortable, right? You love complaining about the state. And that’s a horrible place to be to find out that you actually love authoritarianism and being its victim.

It’s just, yeah. So what does it feel like to bargain with someone’s life? Because that’s basically what I did. It feels it was very surreal. It still is, and it felt like, honestly, very inappropriate at times. I don’t know how to fully articulate it. It’s not something you should do casually, because when that person whose life is at stake hears about it, they’re going to be understandably like, very invested in the outcome. So when you do, when you do that level of bargaining like you’ve got to deliver results. It is life or death. When I got a note from Ross before he was released from prison, you know, talking about Donald Trump’s commitment to freeing him like **** got very real for me. The pressure like, really solidified. It’s the rest of the noise, right? ****** lawsuits, whining of sociopaths on Twitter, you know, like. Anxious or or angry party members that all just sort of fell away. It’s just like, you know, can you deliver on your promise to save this man’s life? Yes or no, you know, are the voters going to show up. Is Trump going to keep his word? You know, or  is it all gonna end in heartache? It’s a very high stakes game.

Very stressful and it’s like, you know, I was sort of wondering. So his staff was in, you know, very consistent communication with me for like like a year and a half, you know, but it got less and less as we got closer to the election because they’re very busy. You know, he wasn’t able to. I was on the phone with someone and his staff, when the assassination attempt happened. It was nuts. I’d actually stepped out of Chase Oliver’s talk at Freedom Fest to talk about, to beg and plead for help getting him on the ballot in a couple of states. Ironically, and I walked back in the room and it was like it happened right before I hung up the phone. He was supposed to speak at rescue the Republic too, but after the assassination attempt there was no way that we can configure the event that was going to work for security. So I almost had him at 2 events. I did get nervous though. You know, in the weeks leading up where I was hearing from them less, I’m like, Oh my gosh, am I going to be, like, BLM with Biden, where I just get ghosted, you know? And they’re, like, standing outside of the White House.

It was it was nerve wracking, but. It was like a week, less than a week before. The inauguration, one of his staffers, reached out to me and they were like, OK, so was that was it commutation or was it a full pardon? And I was like, I was like, it was like, Angela set the phone down. Don’t **** this up. Because we had mostly talked about commutation and so I like, composed myself and was like there’s literally no one in the room with you here giving you some weird look. Like you could do this. And it was like a full pardon would be so amazing. And we would be so grateful if there’s any way that that’s possible. We would love it. Thank you so much. And the response was just like, OK, we’ll do it, you know.

That’s amazing, right? Less than a week, it was like 5 days or something, right? And so then I’m, like, sweating it and sweating it. And like, you know, like the day of the inauguration, I fly out there, you know, supposed to be in the room. I have, like a seat. And then it rains. So no one’s in the room. Just like, oh, geez, you know, so I’m watching it. Like Jack Russell Books watch party at some Polish delegation hotel, you know, across. Whatever. And I’m waiting and I’m waiting and everybody’s blowing up my phone, you know, and obviously I’ve, you know, been in constant communication with his mother, who is also, you know, just been a true believer. And talking with the staff back and forth and they’re very responsive and they’re like, Yep, it’s coming, it’s coming, it’s coming. It’s going to be this evening, if not, you know, very early in the morning. There’s just things, things just kind of got pushed back by like a couple of hours here and there. So it’s not like we weren’t a high priority. It’s like. Literally just a schedule issue.

So finally, 36 hours in, you know, they message me, it’s done. Promises made, promises kept. And like I go to call Lynn and she’s on the phone with the president. Like when I’m calling her, he reached out and called her. And like they told me just as soon as it was signed, I just like. I mean I I just, I don’t even know what else to say. You know, it’s like. When you have this sort of opportunity, make a deal and you know and do it from your heart to the heart of someone else, because that’s the most. That’s the easiest, most solid, predictable way to get it done.

You need to build on your wins, because that’s what I’m going to do, right? And keep going and I am lobbying for the freedom of two other prominent Bitcoin libertarians as well right now. Doing it slightly differently, you know. It’s a thing in the hiring process is very slow moving, but I am working to get into the administration and I’m getting the administration staffed with libertarians. There were a bunch of others, you know, smaller commitments that they had made to us and they are pretty much delivering on everything.

Now, I was very grateful to the Chase Oliver campaign for doing what it did, and I still am, but I want to present a painful truth. A reality and then I. But I want to present you with a very optimistic problem, you know. Let’s let’s work on our framing, right? And here’s the reality. Everybody saw what Kennedy did, right? Everybody’s familiar. Kennedy ran. I have a good working relationship with him. Still. The other thing I did was I got the Libertarian Party signed on to his joint fundraising committee so that he could open up his Max Max donor amounts. Because when you run as an independent, you can only take like 3300 bucks. But thanks to the LP and our state affiliates, you can Max out at like, I don’t know 100K or something. So he ran and then basically dropped out in exchange for being on the transition team and getting a cabinet position.

Dave Smith should have been on the transition team. Imagine what that would have been like. So much I don’t say this in a critical way, but so much complaining aggrieved comments about Israel and Palestine. You should have been there. Filling the cabinet. That’s the missed opportunity here. So, for the next race, I am recruiting all of you. For the next presidential race in 2028. The Libertarian Party needs a presidential candidate who is actually running to be on the transition team, or to become a cabinet secretary. It needs to be a person of high quality, high caliber, someone who is going to take at least 10%. You must be a threat and you must be willing to have a mini ego death and drop out publicly of most races. You know, even if you stay in one or two states. And endorse whoever it is who gives you the best deal. So let’s let’s mow that over. Let’s start our recruitment. I don’t care whether or not you join the Libertarian Party, especially not right now, but you should all help me recruit our next presidential candidate, so that we can get more people out of prison who are there wrongfully, so that we can put an end to most foreign conflicts that the United States shouldn’t be meddling in, and so that we can preserve the future of this beautiful country for our children, so let’s start working on our next heart of the deal. Thank you guys.