Libertarian Party presidential candidate Chase Oliver is on a mission to shrink government and promote free market solutions to America’s problems.
It’s an ambitious goal in an era of rising government spending across the board, but Oliver has already defeated both Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Donald Trump to win the Libertarian Party nomination.
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He was recently interviewed by Fox News Digital at Freedom Fest in Las Vegas.
The Libertarian Party, often described as the third largest political party in the United States, considered the appeals of both Trump and Kennedy Jr. before endorsing Oliver as its candidate after seven close votes at the party’s national convention in Washington, D.C., in May.
Oliver is a former Democrat who supported Barack Obama in 2008 but later became disillusioned with the party’s foreign policy.
Libertarian Party presidential candidate Chase Oliver said he was running because “voters have a right to more than two choices on the ballot.” (Associated Press)
Oliver argues that the two-party system is corrupt and that both parties have fundamentally failed Americans when it comes to personal and economic freedom.
“Well, I’m running for president because I believe voters should have more than one choice on the ballot,” he said. “Voters should have a choice to fight for every single individual’s freedom, who supports free market forces and voluntary exchange and doesn’t try to use government as a solution for left or right. So I’m happy to be that choice for voters.”
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Before being selected as the Libertarian Party’s nominee, Oliver was a notorious disruptor who allegedly helped force Georgia’s 2022 U.S. Senate election into a runoff. Oliver disputes the term “disruptor.”
“I always say you can’t spoil what’s already spoiled, and that’s what a two-party system is. But I was happy to be the voters’ choice. That’s what we have a runoff system for. That’s why I encourage preferential voting, instant runoffs, ranked choice voting, whatever you want to call it,” he said. “Because it eliminates what’s called the spoiler effect and allows voters to put their first choice first and then rank them. So I was happy to pause voting for about four weeks, but in the end the winner was whoever was leading on the first ballot. So I don’t think I spoiled it.” [the race]”
Georgia Democrat Rev. Raphael Warnock won the 2022 U.S. Senate race against Chase Oliver running for the Libertarian Party. (Paras Griffin/Getty Images)
Oliver said he would begin to significantly reduce the size of government on his first day in office.
“The first thing I want to promise you is that any budget sent to me that is not balanced will be rejected. I have to ask Congress to actually cut the government budget, and it has to start from the other departments, not just one,” he said. “In fact, we could cut entire departments. Something like the Department of Education could be quickly dismantled and we could take it off the federal taxpayer balance sheet. But there are at least some redundancies in every department of government. I would cut everything, including Social Security, the third barbed wire of American politics.”
Oliver believes Social Security is an unsustainable “pyramid scheme” and wants it to be replaced by a system based on market investment.
“It’s broken. It’s a Ponzi scheme. We paid into this program. We’re not getting what we were promised. And ultimately, it’s going to break because the math doesn’t add up. So it’s a failed federal program, like a lot of federal programs,” he said. “It costs too much and it doesn’t deliver. I think we’d be better off as younger voters, especially younger people, taking our money back and investing it in the market. I don’t want to take money away from my parents and grandparents who are living off these benefits, but I’m not going to get these benefits, even if I pay into retirement.”
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On the issue of immigration, Oliver said he believes market equilibrium will solve the immigration problem. He is an advocate of the free movement of people across borders, but is adamantly opposed to the welfare state.
“The free market will bring jobs here… If there is free movement of people, if there are jobs here, people will come. If there are no jobs, they won’t come. I understand that we have to eliminate welfare benefits, which is what libertarians have been fighting for for over 50 years,” he said. “We can walk and chew gum at the same time. We can dismantle the welfare state and still allow people to come and work here.”
Oliver’s foreign and economic policies converge with a vision of American leadership in which economic engagement and trade, not military engagement overseas, advance our values and interests.
“Some of the most patriotic people are fleeing dictatorships in Latin America and around the world,” he said. “We need to bring them here and use their economic productivity, their economic power, here, and ultimately export our values, not with bombs and bullets and drones, but with market forces and free and voluntary exchange.”
People stand on a section of the Berlin Wall at Potsdamer Platz. (Fox News)
“This actually helped bring down the Berlin Wall. It wasn’t just Ronald Reagan saying, ‘Tear down the wall.’ It was Wrangler Jeans and McDonald’s and Coca-Cola and the American exceptionalism that people wanted on the other side of the Iron Curtain that helped destroy these things and exercise those powers.”
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Finally, Oliver said he was excited by the election of fellow libertarian Javier Milley, a self-described “anarcho-capitalist,” to the presidency of Argentina last year, and hoped it was a sign of growing global support for libertarian ideas and principles.
“Hopefully, eventually we can weaken them and see people in their home countries rise up against socialism, like they did in Argentina and the Peronists,” Oliver said. “We have a liberal head of state in South America, and hopefully he won’t be the last, and we can export that liberalism and bring it to North America.”
