The Karol Markowicz Show: From Libertarian to MAGA: Austin Petersen on Trump, Politics & Changing Minds
4/17/202632 mincomplete
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3:11Hi, and welcome back to the Carol Markowitz Show on iHeartRadio.
3:15My guest today is Austin Peterson.
3:18Austin is the founder of the For Liberty Network and the host of Wake Up
3:22America Show at Rumble .com slash AP For Liberty.
3:26Hi, Austin. So nice to have you on.
3:28Hi, Carol. It's a delight and a pleasure to be here.
3:30Thanks for this opportunity. So I've been a fan of yours for a long time,
3:34but I would say the first time I ever heard of you, you were running
3:38for president. Yeah. What made you do that?
3:43That's kind of a wild and crazy thing to do.
3:46It is, but I think I was deeply frustrated because 2016 was a very weird
3:51year for a lot of people.
3:53I think people didn't understand the Trump phenomenon.
3:56I certainly didn't. I didn't either.
3:58Yeah. I didn't. And I, you know, I'm deeply, deeply libertarian, deeply principled.
4:03And coming out of the Tea Party years, I guess I felt really dejected at
4:09the performance of Rand Paul in the primary because he was who I was supporting.
4:13And I had been a Libertarian Party member, but to me, at the time, I
4:18thought parties didn't really matter.
4:19So I thought, okay, well, you know what?
4:23Gary Johnson is nowhere to be seen.
4:24He had kind of disappeared since 2012 when I voted for him.
4:28So I thought, well, I'm turning 35 years old.
4:30Rand Paul is not dropping out, but about to.
4:34And then there was going to be this seven or eight month long period of
4:37time where there was going to be no Libertarian presidential candidate that was even talking
4:43about our issues. So I said, here's an opportunity to just kind of step up
4:47and at least make the case for our ideas in the short term between the
4:52time when, you know, I announced now and when the nomination and then the election
4:56happens in 2016. So I opposed Trump and I opposed Hillary.
5:01And I've since then, I've joined the Republican Party and I consider myself to be
5:07a Libertarian ideology from an ideological perspective.
5:10But I've changed my mind on some things.
5:12Like, I do think parties matter in a broader sense.
5:16And I do think that Donald Trump has been overwhelmingly a force for good.
5:20And I was very, very wrong in some of my predictions about the president.
5:25And I admit that. And I like to talk about that because it means I
5:29learned something and I'm capable of learning and changing my mind, which I hope is
5:34a good thing. But it isn't good for you politically.
5:37As a matter of fact, that is a very harmful thing politically to change your
5:41mind publicly. But I don't care because I'm fine.
5:45I have everything I need in my life and I don't need millions of people
5:49to tell me how smart and beautiful I am online.
5:52But it's nice when they do.
5:53It is nice. Yes. It's funny because you're really discouraged from changing your mind publicly.
5:58And I really don't understand that.
6:01I think that changing your mind as circumstances change is something good.
6:06Look, I also was very Trump skeptical in 2016.
6:10I wanted him to win, but I didn't go out and vote for him.
6:13It was kind of where I was on it.
6:16And then I thought his first term was good, but not amazing.
6:21And I thought that he was big government in so many ways and I didn't
6:25love it. And there was a lot of things that I liked and a lot
6:27of things that I didn't.
6:28But his second term is much more up my alley.
6:32I mean, just even just starting with Doge, which I never had any faith in.
6:35I never thought things were really going to change.
6:37I mean, somebody just won a bunch of money by betting that the government would
6:40grow despite Doge. I didn't know that was an option to bet on that because
6:44I would have bet the farm.
6:45Of course, it's going to grow.
6:47It's the U .S. government.
6:48But things have gotten, I think, in a lot of ways.
6:51He's become more conservative. And that's really where I like to see him go.
6:58Well, I also think that like there needed to be an attitude change on the
7:01right. There certainly was a defeatist attitude amongst many people on the right.
7:06You know, they say I think Michael Malice always said the job of conservatism or
7:10conservatism is progressivism driving the speed limit limit.
7:13Right. And Trump not being a conservative, he was not bound by the old rules
7:19and norms of the Republican Party and the right.
7:22Generally, he was able to bend those rules and to to take risks and to
7:27do things that was very in a way, it was kind of like the Silicon
7:31Valley startup. It was disruptive.
7:33And we needed that. In some ways, he was people will say he's toxic.
7:37And I'll be like, yeah, kind of like chemotherapy is toxic, you know, but we
7:43needed it. That's a really good way to put it.
7:45So when you ran for president, now you ran to push, you know, your ideas
7:50and you didn't think you were going to win, obviously, or maybe not obviously, but
7:55you were attacked. I remember this so clearly.
7:58You were attacked as if you were right there in the mix with the big
8:02candidates. Did you, were you surprised by that?
8:05Yes. I truly thought that I was going to run out of money six weeks
8:11after I launched. Now, I didn't raise tons of money, but because I have a
8:15really good attitude towards money, I was able to budget my finances to where I
8:19think I raised $100 ,000 for the campaign.
8:21But I was able to go everywhere in the United States that wanted to have
8:24me. And I competed with Gary Johnson and right up there with John McAfee, you
8:29know, cybersecurity maverick and billionaire.
8:32But, but I think at the time I represented something, you know, of the youth
8:35movement. This was back when millennials were really starting to come of age in politics.
8:39And so people, people who were inspired by Ron Paul, like I was, were starting
8:43to be able to vote and to, to, they, they were looking for someone who
8:46could represent that, that viewpoint.
8:48And I think to some extent I was an avatar for those people in that
8:52generation. And now I do think that that, that time has moved on and things
8:55have changed and, and progressed.
8:57But yeah, I was surprised to be attacked, but, but that was a good sign
9:00because, you know, it wasn't until like three or four weeks in the, after, after
9:04Ted Cruz, once, once he had dropped out, that was when things really changed.
9:10Because the conservatives were looking for someone other than Trump and there just wasn't enough
9:15time for me to rally all of the disaffected conservatives.
9:19But, but because I was starting to receive higher profile endorsements and because the Republican
9:24party was starting to break away.
9:25I think I was told there was a bit of a conspiracy and that Roger
9:29Stone came in and was, cause he's a buddy who's with, with Trump and tried
9:33to make sure that I didn't win because it would have harmed Trump to have
9:36a more conservative libertarian. Right.
9:39Libertarian. I could see that.
9:41Yeah. So how did you get into this crazy thing of ours?
9:44I joined a cult, you know, that's how it always starts.
9:48The Ron, the Ron Paul cult.
9:50The Ron Paul cult. Oh yeah.
9:51I remember them well. Yes.
9:54I was a Palestinian. They called me a fascist many, many times.
10:00Yes. I'm friends with a lot of the people who at the time were like,
10:04if you don't support all of these policies, you're a fascist.
10:07Yes. We were very cultish in our early, earliest forms and iterations.
10:11But of course, you know, I moderated as I got more experience and, you know,
10:15with age came wisdom, hopefully.
10:17Or at least I learned the extent of my ignorance to some extent.
10:19But I guess I started, I was very deeply inspired by Congressman Paul.
10:24I saw him as a pure figure acting out of selflessness and for a desire,
10:29a conscience. He was very much a hero figure to me.
10:33And I had been inspired by Ayn Rand and had started to read her books
10:37at that time. And of course, this is kind of the early days of YouTube
10:41and social media where everybody still had a MySpace page back in 2008.
10:45I loved my MySpace page.
10:47Yes. Yeah. Ron Paul was definitely in my top eight.
10:50Of course. But, uh... But, uh...
10:52But one thing I led to another, you know, I got some jobs in politics.
10:57It turns out that there is actually a dearth of impressionable young people who are
11:02willing to join the libertarian movement because for the most part, most young people get
11:07involved in left wing or Democrat politics.
11:09So there was no girls.
11:10Let's be real here. That's where the dearth is.
11:14Yeah. And yes, to a large extent, although I really worked very hard to change
11:18that and to declude women.
11:19And and I've been a part of of leading, like starting up, you know, women's
11:23libertarian organizations to try and and do that.
11:26But most of most of I think where libertarianism, you know, has the best opportunities
11:30for change is either if it's in politics, then it's in coalitions with MAGA, with
11:36populace, with, you know, Republicans.
11:39But in terms of where our best opportunities lie, they probably lie in the culture.
11:44They probably lie in changing hearts and minds by being parts of projects and fighting
11:49woke, fighting DEI on college campuses and things like that.
11:54That's probably our best bets in the short terms.
11:56But now now as Ron Paul has sort of faded from public life, I am
12:01I'm now I have a new crush, political crush, and it's Javier Malay of Argentina.
12:07Oh, yeah. He's so great.
12:08Yes. And and here is somebody to me who is so deeply inspiring because not
12:13only is he passionate, not only is a libertarian, but he's also someone who's able
12:17to take these principles and operate in the real world, which my frustration has been
12:22after 20 years of political activism is that the people who share the beliefs that
12:26I have are deeply unserious, I think, about bringing those policies into the real world.
12:30And there's a sort of there's an antibiotic response to power, which I think is
12:35really our greatest weakness is our allergy to power.
12:38We're going to take a quick break and be right back on The Carol Markowitz
12:41Show. I want you to pause what you're doing for just one minute, and I
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16:07I always saw libertarianism as like the gateway drug to conservatism.
16:12And I know that that enrages libertarians.
16:14I remember when I had a blog back in the early 2000s, I said something
16:18like that. It's like, you know, this is.
16:20It's the step before becoming a Republican.
16:23And a bunch of my Cato friends were like, you know, you know, that's not
16:26true. You know, we're not going to become Republicans.
16:29The truth is they actually went and became Democrats.
16:32And so it's a gateway drug to something.
16:34It's the, I consider myself a libertarian in a lot of ways, but overall, I
16:40still call myself a conservative.
16:42It just, to me, that encompasses more things.
16:45Does that make sense? Yeah, but also I think, you know, we look at things
16:50through our American lens and it's really important to understand that when you talk about
16:54conservatism and in the meta, in the larger perspective, there is not a libertarian strain
17:00of conservatism in the United Kingdom or in Italy, not in any shape or form.
17:07So when we talk about a gateway drug, I kind of see in some ways
17:11libertarianism acts as a moral anchor for American conservatism, where without libertarianism, conservatism would be
17:20just like any conservatism in the world.
17:23Interesting. We're having this conversation.
17:25Yeah. Yeah. Well, like Sanae Aitakeichi, right?
17:28So I've been studying her administration.
17:30If you look at the administration of Sanae Aitakeichi, you know, from a larger perspective,
17:36wow, it's definitely they're moving in our direction.
17:38You know, she's she's probably the most conservative prime minister they had.
17:42They call her the Iron Lady.
17:43But even she is not even conservative in the way that Margaret Thatcher was conservative
17:47from a fiscal perspective. Yeah.
17:49And Margaret Thatcher, in many ways, you know, not a libertarian in the sense that
17:54American libertarians exist. So it's all kind of a matter of degrees.
17:57But without like the libertarian grounding of American conservatism, we would just be like any
18:02other it would be like Japan or the UK or anything like that.
18:05So that's what I think actually makes American conservatism exceptional.
18:08So interesting, because that's such a good point about the UK having very little in
18:13common, our conservatives or their conservatives.
18:15But do you think that and, you know, it's funny because I normally don't make
18:19these such policy conversations, but I think you're very interesting and you have a lot
18:23of cool things to make me think about.
18:25But do you think that we've lost the argument about fiscal conservatism?
18:30Like Margaret Thatcher was able to make it in the UK.
18:33I don't think any conservative, I don't think any even reform party member is making
18:37any kind of argument that they should spend less money.
18:41It's almost like populism won everywhere.
18:43And we no longer I just feel like defeated on that.
18:48But I'll keep saying, well, we should spend less money.
18:51But then again, we have doge and then we have higher spending.
18:53It's never really happens. Have we lost the argument here in the United States?
18:58Yeah, to some extent in much of the Western world.
19:00Sure. But back to my crush, Javier Malay, here we see the libertarian policy, the
19:06libertarian experiment. You know, the seeds are actually planted and they're starting to bear fruit.
19:10So take, for example, the rent control argument before before Javier Malay enacted rent control
19:17policies to to get rid of rent controls.
19:19Essentially, you couldn't rent an apartment in Buenos Aires.
19:22There was no there was no supply.
19:24Now, they were there, but no one was renting.
19:27So once they abolished rent control, once they instituted the libertarian economic policy, all of
19:33a sudden everything's for rent.
19:35You can get an affordable you can get an affordable apartment in Buenos Aires.
19:38So we haven't lost the argument from a technical perspective, but from a I guess
19:46from a populist perspective, from the perspective of like hearts and minds.
19:50Yes, I do think you're right that we have lost we have lost the hearts
19:54and minds. We don't have champions of our ideas in this country that are making
19:59effective arguments that are winning policy debates, which is not to say that we're wrong,
20:03but it does it does say that politically.
20:06Yes, we we've lost those arguments.
20:08All right. To bring it back to you, the person, what are you most proud
20:12of in your life? Um, being a good son and father, um, you know, be,
20:20I come from, how many kids do you have?
20:22Just one, but we're working, working on it.
20:25And, uh, she's, she's almost two years old.
20:27She's got red hair just like her mother.
20:29Uh, we met because of our shared passion for politics and for liberty.
20:32She was a Ron Paul or two.
20:34Oh, see, there's very few girls.
20:35You snapped one of those up.
20:36Oh yeah. I had to run for president to find her.
20:39See, um, that's how it goes.
20:42Yes, but, um, no, I think, you know, I live a very normal life here
20:47in the Midwest, other than this shoe closet that I stream my, my program from.
20:51But, um, you know, I, uh, I love, uh, being able to contribute to my
20:55community in small ways. I, I get so much more done here in my local
21:00community and on my state level than I ever did when I was running for
21:03president or the national politics.
21:05Um, but most of it comes because of the personal relationships that I have with
21:10the people in my community.
21:11I, you know, I, I can accomplish so much more for my cause in many
21:15ways, simply by being a volunteer for a local civic organization and, and building relationships
21:22there than I could from, you know, straightforward campaigning, which I think is a, is
21:27a real lesson for politics and libertarians here in the United States.
21:31But, but to, to talk about it from a personal perspective, I mean, I feel
21:34like I have some respect in my community.
21:37Like when I say I get recognized when I go everywhere, it is a very
21:41small town, which helps, but I'm like, I'm the local martial arts instructor.
21:46So, so that's awesome. Yeah.
21:47So I have. All of these kids who are growing up and have spent, you
21:51know, a year or two years now with me and I've trained and, you know,
21:54I've seen them grow. You know, they're kind of my kids in a way.
21:58They look up to me and they admire me.
22:01And then I give them, I guess, not spiritual guidance, right, like a priest or
22:05a pope, but like, you know, a different type of guidance, right, a physical type
22:10of guidance that I think a lot of young people, because they're not as engaged
22:15as they were, they're a lot more, you know, on their phones and things.
22:18Is there really is a need for this physical outlets, especially for young, young, most
22:24of nine out of 10 of my, my, my students, of course, are boys.
22:29And I can see that, like, there's a, there's a lack of father figures.
22:33And maybe I kind of, maybe I feel like I kind of have that dad
22:36energy to spare. So I share that with my community.
22:39And I think that's something that I'm very proud of.
22:41That's so beautiful. And I, I love that, you know, local is what it's all
22:45about. Like, we can have all these big ideas and hope that they work on
22:48a national scale. But what's working locally is all that really, really matters in our
22:53everyday lives. Yeah, my karate students have no idea that they're since they're in for
22:57president of the United States.
22:59They have no idea. I feel like they need to find out.
23:02Yeah, I'm sure they will one day.
23:05Give us a five -year -out prediction.
23:07It could be about anything at all.
23:09Oh, boy. I think there's going to be, I think that the, the, the conflict
23:13in Iran will probably get worse before it gets better.
23:17But I do think that we're going to find more allies around the world that
23:21we, than we thought we have.
23:23And maybe we're actually going to build a few of them.
23:24I think Cuba will be free.
23:26I think Cuba will, you know, within, I think within five years, we'll see a
23:30free Cuba. Yeah, yeah, because a lot of bad things happen all the time.
23:35But it's kind of like a reverse insurance policy sort of thing where everybody's betting
23:40one way that things are going bad.
23:43I'm, I'm definitely going to bet.
23:44I'm, I'm not a perma bull per se, but I do think we do live
23:49in a time of like where perma bears are kind of dominant.
23:54So I'm, I'm betting on the other way.
23:56I'm, I definitely, I definitely see opportunities, bright spots that are out there in the
24:01medium to long term. What do you think happens with Iran?
24:05I mean, if, if things do get better there, like, is it really going to
24:10be a peaceful Middle East?
24:11Is it crazy to even imagine that?
24:13Yeah, I do think it's crazy to imagine a peaceful Middle East.
24:16But I do think that Iran, more than other Middle Eastern countries, has a capacity
24:21for self -governance that, say, Afghanistan does not have.
24:25I think, you know, Afghanistan will probably be a tribal nation 500 to 1 ,000
24:30years from now. But I think that the Persian community in Iran has the, you
24:35know, has the potential to govern.
24:37A lot of this has to do with, like, our willingness to sort of stomach
24:40the upcoming conflict with Islamism.
24:44You know, I think most Americans, to some extent, sort of understand the conflict between
24:48communism and capitalism. And that's, you know, it shows itself in the battle between China
24:53and the United States. But I think that we're probably, we're probably in for more
24:58bloody struggle and conflict with Islamism.
25:01And what that looks like, it probably involves some kind of a, of an enforced
25:07enlightenment rather than a voluntary enlightenment.
25:11I know that there was an Islamic golden age.
25:14I don't know how we return to something that looks like that.
25:17But, yeah, we are in for some dark days ahead.
25:20And I do think that there will be more violence from the Middle East.
25:23Part of this, I think part of the problem, Carol, lies in a lack of,
25:27lies in ignorance because our educational system has not, it's really not equipped Americans to
25:33understand. Even after 9 -11, you would think that we would have more of an
25:37educational understanding of the conflict between Islam and the West.
25:43But I think still to this day, most people don't understand, you know, the forces
25:48that are sort of playing out in the meta, right?
25:51And you see it on the micro level in places like Minnesota with Somalia and
25:56the welfare fraud and all of that.
25:58But on the macro scale, we're not understanding the civilizational conflict that we're faced with
26:04in the Middle East. There's a sort of, there's an underlying ignorance that I think
26:09has, it's only slightly gotten better since 9 -11 with a little bit more understanding
26:14of an awakening to the Middle East.
26:16Sort of like how in Vietnam, we knew nothing about that country until the war.
26:21More people are starting to learn about it.
26:23But I still think we haven't sort of looked at the magnitude of the challenge
26:26that we're faced with right now.
26:27Yeah, I think I really do think it's partly because Americans are so good and
26:33welcoming that we can't adjust to, there's a civilization that wants us dead.
26:40There's a, you know, a culture that wants us dead.
26:42And they go through great pains to say, Americans in general, I think, to be
26:48like, well, not all Muslims are like this.
26:50And of course, they're not.
26:50It's absolutely correct to say that.
26:53But there is this giant force that is.
26:56And it's very hard for the average American, I think, to accept something like that.
27:01It is. And it has to do a lot with the, you know, the tribalism
27:06that we exist in. You know, everybody exists in their groups.
27:09So your view of this conflict is going to be heavily influenced by whichever tribe
27:13you adhere to. If you're a Christian.
27:15conservative, say, fundamentalist Protestant, then your view of that from an existential conflict is going
27:25to be quite different than, say, Christopher Hitchens.
27:28You might agree with them.
27:30You might not. So like Christopher Hitchens was a perfect example, you know, an avowed
27:36atheist, you know, despised Christianity, but had a special disdain for Islamism, had a special
27:43disdain for that religion. So arrived at a lot of the same conclusions, but from
27:48a completely different tribe. So the question is, can we find this synchronicity of agreement
27:54across tribes in the United States in order to put together a coalition to resist,
27:58you know, incursions of fundamentalist, you know, Islamism into the United States?
28:04I don't know. That remains to be seen.
28:07Austin, you are so interesting.
28:09I really enjoyed this conversation.
28:12Leave us here with your best tip from my listeners on how they can improve
28:16their lives. Baby steps, baby steps.
28:19Listen to your Dave Ramsey.
28:21Like nothing good comes immediately.
28:23I tell my young kids, you know, the first thing that I teach my young
28:26students is I ask them all, you know, raise your hands if you think you
28:31can stand on one leg.
28:32And they all raise their hands because they all think they could stand on one
28:34leg. And then when I tell them to stand on one leg, all of a
28:37sudden they start wobbling all over the place.
28:40So it doesn't matter what it is.
28:41They get so frustrated because they can't do it or they can't do maybe a
28:45more complicated thing. But if there's something that you don't understand, or if there's a
28:49challenge, whether it's accounting, maybe your business is faltering in some way or a relationship,
28:53right? Ask yourself, what is the absolute minimum that you need to do in order
28:58to take one step in the right direction?
29:00And if you can just take that one step and make that one step, that
29:03simple thing, a habit, then over time, your actions will compound.
29:08People have a hard time seeing the victory because it looks, you know, they don't
29:14understand that opportunity comes, you know, wearing hard overalls.
29:18It looks like hard work.
29:19All right. So simple baby steps, you know, but you also have to have a
29:23self -confidence. You know, you can't be a nihilist.
29:25You can't think that nothing matters.
29:27What you do matters. What you say matters.
29:29How you treat people matters.
29:31So be conscientious and thoughtful and take small steps in the right direction.
29:35And after six months to a year, two years, you'll see you've made great strides
29:39towards your goals, whatever those are.
29:41So I love that. Thank you, Sensei.
29:44He is Austin Peterson. Check out the For Liberty Network and check out his Wake
29:51Up America show at rumble .com slash AP, the number four Liberty.
29:56Thank you, Austin, for coming on.
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