 This new leadership came in. They came in pretty hot. They've dialed it back a little bit. I looked into some of the numbers coming into this. Some of these were compiled by the Mises Caucus' enemies, the classical liberal caucus, but what they compiled here is that revenues are down historically when you adjust for inflation and not only big donors, but monthly donors are down. And I looked into the actual reports behind the numbers and it's all accurate, except the LP did not adjust for inflation, which seems like something you should do. Well, what do you mean, raise prices? Like the- Raise the membership cost? They're showing, like in the LP reports, the revenue looks kind of like slightly up because inflation, but if you adjust for inflation, revenue is at historic lows. Yeah, but so what's your takeaway from that? My takeaway is that revenues are down, monthly donors are down. That's like if you have a job where you're making 100 grand a year and then you just keep your job and someone's looking at that and go like, dude, your income is way down from there. I mean, yes, that's true, but that's, I mean, if you're blaming the Federal Reserve, then I'm with you, but if you're blaming the Mises Caucus- No, no, I'm- I'm saying- I'm blaming the Federal Reserve and the Mises Caucus. Okay, we're- I'm saying technically, I mean, usually when organizations measure their historic revenues, they would adjust for inflation. That's not true. Coca-Cola puts out earning statements. They're not gonna adjust for inflation. Coca-Cola isn't going like- They'd be like, no, we took in three billion this year, 3.2 billion this year. We'll leave it for the audience to judge whether that is a good or bad number, but what do you think is going on here internally? Well, I mean, just to be clear, I'm not, I have no position in the Libertarian Party and if you talk to Angela or someone like that, I'm sure she could give you a much better answer than this. I'm not on the LNC. I just do stand-up comedy and podcast about this stuff, but from what I understand about it, there was- They did have this major problem with like this software thing. I don't exactly know the details of it. This is something that started before the Mises Caucus took over and all through them where- A big, basic disaster of transferring data. So I think that hurt them a little bit, but regardless of any of that, it's like this. I think that the state of the Libertarian Party was no matter what happened at Reno, going to, it was going to be a rebuilding, you know, like a couple of years in this sense, that there's a lot of people who were very turned off by the Mises Caucus in the Libertarian Party and there were a lot more people who were, you know what I mean, willing to go to fight for them and that's why we won. In terms of the stuff with donors walking away, again, like I said, it's just to me if the calculation is gonna be that, well, like, let me say it like this, right? There are kind of these storms that come in where things are very sensitive to talk about. Like right now it's the Israel-Palestine storm that we're living in, where it's like, kind of takes a little bit of courage to talk about these things because you know you're gonna get this backlash. The storms end and then it's like no one cares. Lableic theory. Any of us worried about talking about that now? You worried about your YouTube channel getting- No, it's fine. You can totally talk about it. We were in a storm a couple of years ago where you couldn't talk about that. Ukraine is like that, right? And for me, libertarians are, when we have value at the most is when in those storms we're willing to stand up and say the courageous thing. This is why Harry Brown writing When Will We Learn on September 12th is like the most amazing thing ever because the day after 9-11, he had the courage to say that. The only way this libertarian party thing is ever gonna work and grow is if in those storms we have the courage to say things. Now, I'd agree with you- But that's what I'm- That could come without some of this other stuff that's not helpful. I wanna stop there though. But that's not what the Mises Caucus is doing. I would say, I would argue they are. How? I mean that I'm talking about every single one of these conflicts. So like the Ukraine storm when that came, they were the first one standing up opposing that policy. Right now in Israel doing the exact same thing. So like that's the type of thing that I do think the Mises Caucus has that they bring to the table. Is there use in that if nobody takes them seriously anymore? Right? Well, I don't think that's true that nobody takes them seriously anymore. You think people still take them seriously? Yeah. I don't. I went from being like, yeah, maybe I'll vote for the LP presidential candidate to now. It's like I would sooner vote for anybody else available on my ticket than these people. Because I don't think it's for my votes. So what is their crime that's worse than Joe Biden and Donald Trump? I mean, I'm just, I'm stunned by the shift toward, I don't believe if you actually, I think put any of these people in power. I'm not sure they would know the first thing about what to do with it or how to actually craft any sort of policy. I mean, you have text exchanges from Angela McCartle and Michael Heist talking about how personally bankrupt they are and how much money they've lost in the process of doing this. I'm sorry, but if you can't run an extremely small, just speaking candidly here, political party and you're not able to, keep your supporters in any way, what, why would anybody trust your competence overall? Like I'm just very, I mean, who's even running for president this year, right? Like if the idea is, you know, you are a political party and you are putting candidates up for election for political office, surely they should be people with some amount of name recognition. Dave was gonna run for president and you didn't run for president and now they're kind of flailing. Is that kind of a- Many of libertarians. I mean, I think you're kind of overplaying this kind of like no one takes them seriously and it's like- They have the text messages, there were those text messages and it also came out where they're personally- I don't wanna comment on private text messages that people like put out there. I also just think that's lame and wrong. No, and that's why- And Dave, you'll note that that's also why- You could look, I bet I could find, if I found private text messages, right? Like let's say I just had access to all of your texts with your wife and your texts with your husband. I bet I could cherry pick them and put them out there and be like, look, their marriage is failing. Look at this one exchange that I found here. So we never talk about how we're out of money. Yeah, okay, well, fair enough. But I'm just saying like, so I don't know. Like you're telling me you got one exchange. But these weren't messages between spouses, right? And I also- No, no, no, but the messages between coworkers still, they're messaging between, I mean, I don't know even technically what you would call them but the fact that in a moment they're like complaining about something, I'm not gonna like draw too much of a conclusion from that. I do think like, yeah, like there's been, their membership and money is down. The libertarian party historically has had lots of different periods before where membership and revenue have been down. In fact, they've had points where revenue was very down but membership was very high. They've had points where the vote totals were the highest but the membership was very low. There's been, the truth is that the libertarian party- They're all trying to map in a bunch of different ways. Yes, but also for the entire history, they've largely not been successful. That's the truth. We took this thing over a couple years ago and it's a huge restructuring that's been going on. Now in terms of like me not running, yeah, look, I mean, there's definitely something to that. Like I was considering that, that was kind of like a rallying point for a lot of our guys and I decided not to do it. And so there's been some disappointment about that but I do think that like I'm hopeful that over the next year and over the next couple of years, this is gonna like, I almost think of the Mises Caucus as like, it was like this cleansing thing where we had to like return to like radical principles that are what the party was started on to begin with. And then kind of like now out of that has to grow like candidates because that's really what rallys people. That are radical principled candidates. I want to take this seriously because I agree with you, right? Like there was a reason why I didn't choose to like tweet and take a little gleeful victory lap about the text message and email revelations about all the trouble that LP was in, right? Like I agree with you that it's important not to draw overly broad conclusions about that but say you wanted to take your argument seriously and you wanted to look for these small green shoots that are poking up through the dirt as to the ways in which the Mises Caucus takeover has been successful. Where would you tell us to look? Like what should we look to as evidence of, actually it's pretty good. Well, I mean, look, there have been like actual, what the libertarian party always kind of has only is that there have been local elections that they've won and that stuff does matter. I mean, there are people where we've gotten like on school boards and on city councils and mayors, I think a couple of sheriffs, you know what I mean, throughout the country. Again, I'm not like Heises a better guy to talk to about all of this stuff to like rattle off all the names. They have launched this, the Mises Caucus has launched this project decentralized revolution thing, which I think is a really great like template for how the libertarian party should run. And it's very different than the way it's been used before where kind of like the strategy for the libertarian party would be like, you know, you show up to like your state affiliate and they're like, what can I do? And they're like, I don't run for something. And whereas this is now targeting like winnable elections with nullification powers. So that's kind of like the idea is building this thing where the national is kind of like messaging and then trying to funnel that into like the local winnable elections with nullification powers. Which is a precise strategy of like the sunrise movement, I believe, which is like the organization that initially put a bunch of money behind Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, right? Like there's, you know, a specific, there's like a big infrastructure on the far left. Yeah, but they're going even more local than that, which is like, I mean, Heises was saying sheriffs are a big one because they've got a lot of power or like a city council member or something like that. Things that are- Yeah, well the idea is people, positions where you can nullify federal laws or federal mandates, that's kind of what you want to target. And there's relatively low voter turnout, so you actually have a chance of winning. Right, so that's kind of the plan. Interesting strategy. And then the thing is that, you know, again, like I said, the other thing to me is just that it is like, look, I'll take responsibility in some way that a lot of my guys on Twitter are like, can fly off the handle and say some wild shit. But the one thing I will say about my guys is they don't compromise on the libertarian stuff. And they're not gonna be afraid to like, you know, say the thing that will get you a lot of backlash when it really matters. Now, I wish, like I said before, I'm not for a lot of the edge-lording stuff. I don't like that. That's not how I run my Twitter. I mean, I'll insult people sometimes if they insult me first or stuff. But I'm not like- And non-aggression principle applied to insults. Yes, kind of, right. My version of that. You're like, if provoked, I suppose. I can be a little bit vicious on there sometimes. So I'm not like saying I'm perfect or anything like that. Have you ever in fact been vicious to anybody in this room about say- Was I vicious to you? RFK Junior? No, just K. I think it was- I don't think I was that vicious to you. You know what, honestly, I don't think you were either. It was Michael Malus who was vicious. Oh yeah, well, Michael Malus is a furious woman. You gotta be careful about him on Twitter. No, I mean, it's all in good fun. I'm also the type of person where I can just take it. Like, I don't care. Twitter also kind of does that to all of us, you know, like it just, it is this thing that it's, Yeah, it's just, and it's hard not to like get sucked into that. But I don't think, I don't think like, but I don't think that, I don't think I've gained like a following in the libertarian side of things because of any of that. I think like people, like me, because I'm good at explaining this stuff. And like, to me, that's always, that's the way people are converted to, you know, like people will bring up like that one time Ron Paul was on a Morton Downey Junior and he kind of snapped at those people, but that's never anyone's origin story. No one ever goes, I'm a libertarian because I saw Ron Paul on Morton Downey Junior. They go, I saw him explain history to Rudy Giuliani. Dave, I think you're possibly unintentionally making my precise argument. I am so in favor of being bold and aggressive and courageous and truth telling and saying that unpopular thing at an important time. I mean, I felt very riled up in the COVID days and it sometimes felt like I was maybe not at recent, but like, you know, one of the only people in my sort of social circles, very comfortable sticking my neck out and being like, no, fuck no, you shouldn't be forcing me to show my vaccination status at the door to enter a New York City restaurant. No, how dare you? And to the extent that you are going to force that, everybody should forge them. I'm sorry, but like the Lizwell Forging Services are open, I'll do it for the low, low price of $0. Hey, thanks for watching that clip from our new show, Just Asking Questions. You can watch another clip here or the full episode here. New episodes drop every week, so subscribe to Reason TV's YouTube channel to get notified when that happens or to the Just Asking Questions podcast on Apple, Spotify, or any other podcatcher. See you next week.