[Music] we are joined today by Chase Oliver libertarian for president tell us why are you running for this office well I'm running because I think voters deserve to have uh first and foremost more than two choices in the ballot that I don't feel really represent the full spectrum of the electorate as a Libertarian I'm running to push our policies and principles forward the ideas of limited government and uh the power of individual liberty and really as a 39-year-old I'm running because I think it's time that Millennials have more of a say in our politics and our governance and it's time for us to have rise up in electoral politics so I'm I'm happy to be running for all those reasons you touched on it a little bit but can you describe the platform of the libertarian party yeah broadly speaking the libertarian party uh believes in the non-aggression principle ideally that if you are not doing anything that is causing harm against another person there should be no harm being brought against you and that includes the force of government so we seek to limit government to its uh minimal size uh while still preserving civil liberties for each and every person and uh supporting things like free markets and uh property rights why are you running as a member of the libertarian party as opposed to you know the two main ones that everyone thinks of well I feel like if you look at our platform uh if you go to our website lp.org you can see the libertarian party's platform and I feel like it's the one that most closely aligns with me politically um but what made me a Libertarian was because um I was a former Democrat who was upset about the Democrats not ending the wars after Obama got elected and I happened to find the libertarian party they were doing Outreach at the Atlanta pride festival in 2010 and so uh that's what got me literally waved into the tent hearing about the party hearing about the philosophy and it really just made a lot of things click with me that just really you know with Republicans or the Democrats just didn't really sink in with my own personal values my own personal beliefs what difficulties come with running as a third party candidate well there's the uh the challenge of having to overcome you know the the definite financial and kind of media outsize influence that Republicans and Democrats have I think it's why I'm thankful for being on programs just like this one uh but you know with that comes you know the individual challenges of educating the voters what we're about uh making sure voters know that we're on the ballot and of course doing the challenges of getting on the ballot we just finished a petition Drive in Pennsylvania that took a lot of man hours and a lot of work to get myself and my running mate Mike tront on the ballot Republicans and Democrats don't have to overcome those hurdles so there's a lot of challenges that come with being outside of the two-party system but you know we welcome those challenges and we hopefully will break those challenges down so it's easier for candidates to run in the future what does a Libertarian have to do to get on the ballot well uh here in the state of Pennsylvania it required us to collect thousands of uh ballot access petition signatures um we've had to do that in States all over the country where we don't have automatic ballot access of course the automatic B the automatic ballot access came uh with us winning a certain percentages in elections previously that we had to petition to get on those ballots so um really there's the the challenge of getting out there knocking on doors you know standing outside of post offices to get individuals to sign your ballot access petition signature of course and uh you know even if you're required to get say 5,000 signatures you really need to collect 10,000 because a lot of them will just get thrown out arbitrarily before we get too far let's talk a little bit about you where did you grow up so I grew up in uh Snellville Georgia I was born in Nashville Tennessee but since the age of seven I lived in Georgia and I grew up in a small town called Snellville about 30 minutes outside of Atlanta uh suburban community had the kind of the you know the standard uh you know uh two parent household my both my parents worked throughout my childhood I went to a great Public School Brookwood High School um and that's kind of you know my upbringing is uh you know raised in the Evangelical Church even though I now identify as an Episcopalian uh but yeah I'm a good old southern boy from uh from Georgia what do you do for a living well right now I'm full-time running for president but that's not really a living so much as a task that I'm doing uh but before before I was running for president uh my most recent uh foray were into the world of Human Resources HR management for a company uh and then before that I worked in uh in Maritime Logistics helping to move goods from one side of the world to the other on ships and then I spent 13 years of my life working in restaurants starting out as a dishwasher and then uh kind of working my way through that industry so I I have certainly uh live the life of somebody who's had to you know live that retail and customer service life uh so I know about those stresses and it's prepared me for the stresses of politics that's for sure how did you get into politics well I first got started as an anti-war activist uh when the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq started it was when I was in high school and graduating uh and I saw people that I knew going to go fight these wars that especially in the case of Iraq I knew we didn't need to be fighting at all that you know we kind of uh cherry-picked the intelligence to get into Iraq uh and so that's what got me on the front line being active politically I've always been kind of engaged in politics uh and interested in it but that's what really got me you know off from being uh an observer to an active participant and then from there on uh I've been kind of an immigration rights activist criminal justice rights Advocate uh so I've been doing a lot of activism areas and then for it kind of transitioned into being a candidate who are some of your political influences well when I think about some of the great political influences um certainly uh there's books like a guy named Harry Brown who ran for president as a Libertarian in 1996 and 2000 he wrote a fantastic book uh and he's kind of the model libertarian candidate I think in terms of policy and in terms of uh temperament these kinds of things um you know I've always had uh an affection for Milton Friedman who's an economist uh he had a great program called uh free to choose uh and he also had a book free to choose as well that he a great entryway to libertarianism and uh the late day David Bose who just passed away this past year he wrote a book called The libertarian mind and I think it's one of the best entryways into kind of the libertarian philosophy ever and uh he is a wonderful person to I love to as a mentor and then the guy who brought me in the party John mons he ran for governor of Georgia excellent excellent guy radical libertarian uh you know more house educated uh ran for governor first libertarian to ever earn a million votes so he brought me into the party it's all his fault you previously ran for both Senate and Congress in Georgia what did you learn from these two previous campaigns well my first campaign was a like a 9we break net campaign was a special election uh and there you know I kind of had to learn how to campaign under covid because it was during the height of the pandemic lockdowns and everything uh so I had to kind of be uh kind of innovative and so I started campaigning on walking trails and at public parks because that was the only place I knew people were going to uh the senate race was a wholly different thing it was a whole year of me running um there I learned the value of retail politics you know I knocked on like 3,000 doors in that year um and in the areas where I did door knocking campaigns and Outreach campaigns I did higher in terms of my percentage than the rest of the state so I really learned the value of getting out there and meeting your constituents face to face as much as possible what differentiates you from other people running for the office of President well um I'm not a professional politician that's for sure um I'm quite a bit younger than I think most of the other people even outside of the two- party system that are running for president in this cycle so I think it gives me a different generational insight into what's going on in this country the needs that are go uh of the American people um you know I think what makes me different is I'm a regular working person who's had to work that 40 hours a week who's had to stretch the paycheck from paycheck to paycheck you know uh I I feel the pinch of inflation like very very much so when I go to the grocery store and I think that's something that um my two major opponents conell Harris who's kind of been in government service for 20 years and Donald Trump who was born into wealth and opulence neither of them have really had that that regular that regular working person's life uh that I think really informs me in a way that they just don't have that lived experience and I think that is a good contrast for me uh compared to my opponents what are some concerns that voters are saying to you on the campaign Trail well I think the biggest concern is those kitchen table issues things like the economy and inflation um I think that's the the the number number one issue I hear from folks uh and then from that you know you you have like kind of the other major issues that are Hing our politics I think immigration is a huge one uh particularly for women their right to an abortion or medical Freedom uh and then I think in particular for families uh wanting to know what we're going to do to help uh provide better education for their kids and so I think those are probably the four driving issues in this election is uh is the economy which it always is immigration which has been you know kind of levels and then we see uh abortion and education kind of pulling right up behind those let's talk more about some of those specific issues as they relate to people in Pennsylvania what are your views on abortion so I Am pro choice I fully believe that you know pro-choice Falls right in line with the medical autonomy and medical Freedom uh parts of the libertarian uh philosophy you know we Libertarians we say we want to break down government to its most local level um the most local level in this choice is your individual Choice the individual self-governance you have and so um I would support a legislation to make abortion legal up to the point of viability and then post viability um with the you know with the sign off of a doctor for the health or life of the mother which I think is where most Americans are at while continuing to support the height Amendment which prevents Federal funding to abortion your website says that as president you will quote end Wars how would you do that well I would start by moving the United States uh from the war zones they currently exist in we still have troops all over the world fighting um and I would first and foremost seek to remove them from those battlefields and then start removing our military footprint from things like arm sales where you know we sold uh you know billions and billions of dollars of arms to the Saudis which then were used to persecute a war in Yemen and and starve nearly a million people to death so um there is uh you know huge amounts of suffering that happens because we inject ourselves militarily uh either directly or through armed sales and military aid around the world and I think it's a better form policy to instead focus on diplomacy and free trade as opposed to exporting our values with the bomb the bullet and the Drone so you do not support the Russia Ukraine war like the the United States involvement in the Russia Ukrainian war or the Israel Hamas war no I would like to see our remove ourselves uh militarily from both those areas I think uh in regards to Ukraine Western Europe can take the lead militarily uh there if they so if they deem so uh I think what we need to do is provide amnesty for any conscripted soldier who doesn't want to fight in that War I think if you did that you'd see a lot of Russian deserters uh and you'd see the ability to push back across uh the Russian border and sue for peace with regards to Gaza uh Israel has a right to respond to October 7th I think the manner in which they've responded has been so heavy-handed and destructive that caused the death of tens of thousands of innocent people destroyed billions of dollars with of infrastructure and I don't think the United States needs to be backing that action I think we need to be supporting peace in the region what are your views on gun control in America uh well I am a what I call 2A all day I am a very much SE supporter of the Second Amendment um I would not support any new gun infringements in fact I would fight against the ones that currently exist um I think if you are acting in peace and you're not harming anybody you should be able to own any firearm you want um I think there are things we can do to address gun violence that don't involve infringing upon people's constitutional gun rights lots of Americans are worried about Rising inflation what would you do to help bring those costs back down the first thing the United States president can do is to combat the primary driver of inflation which is debt deficits uh and so if I were elected president I would insist upon a balanced budget if it's not balanced I would veto that budget forcing Congress to act um but I think you know we need to set the goal of uh balancing our budget immediately because when we add trillions of dollars of deficit each and every year our treasury prints that money to make up for the loss and it devalues our dollar which is it is the primary driver of inflation I hate to tell people it's not corporate greed corporations were greedy a decade ago they're going to be greedy a decade from now that will not change but what is changing is the the deficit spending that has exploded over the last few years how would you approach the border and immigration policy uh so I want to see a 21st century Ellis Island I think we need to streamline the process to allow people to come here to work and to start you know uh uh outputting and getting a job and starting their American dream and what have you uh we need to streamline that process by saying anybody who wants to come here come through Port of Entry declare yourself to a background check and a uh and a health check and if you're good to go you should be able to immediately get a Visa that allows you to come here to work that's not instant citizenship that we should streamline that process as well but I think what we're seeing is a bottleneck as as people come here wanting to work they apply for amnesty uh we should just streamline that process Al together into what I call a 21st century Ellis Island you know 40% of Americans can trace their lineage back to the last great migration wave of Ellis Island uh through the 19th and 20th Century um I think we need to put those principles into place in the 21st century your website says to quote fix education we need to abolish the Department of Education what problems do you think abolishing the Department of Education would fix well I think if you just look at the department itself uh in terms of metrics it was created during the Carter Administration we put billions and billions of dollars into this department and what we haven't seen is a correlated rise in reading and math scores uh I don't think it is putting good money after bad I think we can block grant that money back to the States and when you do that you're creating 50 Laboratories of innovation 50 different ways for the states to decide how to educate their young people and what you'll see is the best practices starting to be adopted across the board and the worst practices Falling by the wayside U but what you want to create is a Marketplace of education so you can see all different ways of doing this and providing more choice for the individual parent and student uh and and that's how you're going to get ultimately better educational outcomes the central planning of public education has just proven no matter how much money we throw into it there's just not that correlated rise in uh in performance uh and so I think we need to put putting good money after bad and try something different you quote fully endorsed the voter Bill of Rights what is that and why do you endorse it so the voter Bill of Rights is a uh sort of policy it's a set of policy proposals that was put together by another libertarian who was actually running for the nomination this cycle a guy named Lis mapstead uh and I honestly thought it was a brilliant piece of policy so I wanted to make sure we adopted it into our platform as we move forward to both unify the party but um really it's about changing both how we can get more people on the ballot providing more choices on the ballot but also uh changing the way we vote so that we have broader representation across the ballot so things like ballot access reforms rank Choice voting uh these kinds of things are going to fully uh free up and create a broader spectrum of uh of elected officials I think it would be better for the voter uh and ultimately better for our Republic to have these uh reforms put in place your running mate is Mike terat can you tell us a bit about him yeah Mike uh he's a wonderful guy so Mike dermont is a uh you know he's had two basically uh two kind of large career p in his life for over 20 years he was an economics professor teaching economics at three different universities uh he is uh you know fantastic libertarian economics uh guy if you ever want to get in the weeds that's the guy to do it with uh but he's also spent the last 10 years of his life uh or 10 years of his career rather uh being a law enforcement officer in the State of Florida and so uh he is somebody who has you know both Public Service experience and practical experience in the economic side of things to be a wonderful running mate for me uh in fact I think it's great that uh you know he is an ex police officer I am a former police accountability activist who used to be in the street with like a sign and a bullhorn and yet we work together along the same uh aligned issues on things like Criminal Justice Reform so he's been a wonderful partner in this race uh and you know I couldn't ask for better onlyy M take the last few minutes here to tell the people Pennsylvania why they should vote for you well I think Pennsylvania should get out and vote for me because if they don't we're going to be left with a Republican or Democrat winning the White House and that is the same old same old and repeating these same cycles of voting for the lesser of two evils consistently brings us lower quality candidates and lower quality results I think it's time that we change the way we vote dare to do something different dare to vote for who you think has the best platform uh I urge you to look at my platform next to Donald Trump's and KLA Harris's do a blind taste test test so to speak and I think you would truly find that without bias you would like the libertarian policies the most they would fit most in line with your values and so I urge pennsylvanians to give us a good honest look check us out and please vote for us uh either as early voting or on Election Day this November 5th Chase Oliver libertarian for president thank you for your time thank you so much [Music] [Applause]