A Date with the Devil-Rendezvous at Mar-a-Lago
The operation to neutralize the LP began with a text message in November 2023. Ric Grenell, Trump’s former Director of National Intelligence, reached out to then-Libertarian National Chair Angela McArdle, asking a simple question: What do Libertarians think of Donald Trump?
Within weeks, Grenell flew to Texas to meet McArdle. During that trip, McArdle was put on a 45-minute phone call with Trump himself. Shortly after, she was invited to Mar-a-Lago for a face-to-face meeting.
According to McArdle, this is where Trump asked to speak at the 2024 Libertarian National Convention. She claimed she used the opportunity to leverage a promise from Trump to free Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht. However, as Reason’s Brian Doherty later pointed out, McArdle’s timeline was riddled with contradictions:
“…she told Tom Woods on his podcast in June 2024, Trump in fact already signed a pardon for Ulbricht in 2020 but was somehow foiled by underlings…”
McArdle kept the LNC and the party membership entirely in the dark about her meeting with the Trump campaign. It wasn’t until April 2024 that she publicly framed Trump’s attendance as a standard invitation sent to both major candidates. In reality, the deal had been cooked up months prior at Trump’s personal request.
Sabotage from the Chair
Once Chase Oliver secured the 2024 Libertarian presidential nomination, McArdle didn’t just fail to support the party’s nominee she actively campaigned against him.
In a series of stunning admissions on Twitter, McArdle openly bragged that she treated the LP presidential campaign as a tool to aid Donald Trump, while hurling homophobic slurs at Oliver who is openly gay.
On May 13, 2026, McArdle explicitly stated her goal:
“Excuse me, I ran that jerkoff so that he will pull votes from Kamala. You’re welcome.”
When questioned by party members as to why she aligned with Trump over Oliver, she doubled down, citing Trump’s poll numbers over political alignment:
“It doesn’t matter who is more Libertarian on paper.”
She went on to mock Oliver’s campaign as a “Grindr hookup tour”.
The RFK Money Machine and the Pro-Trump Pivot
In 2024, the LNC entered into a highly controversial Joint Fundraising Committee (JFC) with Robert Kennedy Jr. Even after RFK Jr. lost the Libertarian nomination and subsequently dropped out of the race as an Independent to endorse Trump, the fund kept moving money.
The JFC became a conduit to boost Trump, funding bizarre, thinly veiled campaign promotions like the “Day of Falconry” advertisement promoting RFK Jr.’s joint event with Donald Trump JR.
Furthermore, Kennedy-aligned PACs and the JFC funneled cash into a pro-Trump event hosted by “Rescue the West, Inc.”—a brand-new organization founded by McArdle herself. Molly Ball of the Wall Street Journal described the gathering as a “Coalition of the Weird” mobilizing for Trump. At the event, RFK Jr. took the mic and gave his marching orders:
“You need to go to the polls… and get Donald Trump and me into Washington,
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