Why Trump let himself be booed

His Libertarian Party speech is a sign of deep concern about third-party candidates

Given how unpopular Donald Trump is, he doesn’t face many hostile audiences. He mostly speaks at carefully-controlled rallies to die-hard supporters, the sort who don’t mind his incessant rambling or racist screeds. One reason is obviously optics. Campaigns tend not to arrange events in which their candidate gets booed. But Trump’s notoriously thin skin is another reason he likes to play it safe. A candidate who is as obsessed as Trump is with mongering grievance against the media and refusing to admit any weakness is not going to welcome going in front of a critical audience.

Yet over the weekend, that’s precisely what Trump did by speaking at the convention of the Libertarian Party. The modern Libertarian Party is a strange beast comprised of a mix of civil libertarians and free-market enthusiasts who want to do things like abolish the Federal Reserve, end all taxes, and institute completely open borders. Their convention tends to be a wacky affair, and this year didn’t disappoint. One candidate to be the party’s nominee for president got high before making his convention speech (he was high “on liberty”, he said - also a weed gummy) and there was lots of profanity and out-there policy ideas.

Into the maelstrom went Trump, a figure whose politics has only the barest of overlaps with the Libertarian Party faithful.