52 Time May 18, 2020
8 Questions
‘
THE CULTURE
OF DONALD
TRUMP THAT
HAS BECOME
DOMINANT IN
THE REPUBLICAN
PARTY IS NOT
GOING AWAY
ANYTIME SOON
’
Is there anything that your friends
in the Republican Party could do
to redeem themselves now in your
eyes? I don’t think that there’s any way
to pull them back from where they are.
The culture of Donald Trump that has
become dominant in the Republican
Party is not going away anytime soon.
It’s probably here for at least a decade.
It’s a very different tone; it’s a very dif-
ferent style. There’s not much focus
on principles anymore, it’s a focus on
personality.What makes you think that there’s a
viable path for you? When you think
about whether Republicans are firmly
behind Trump, yes, they’re firmly be-
hind Trump because they don’t see
an alternative. And they view the al-
ternative right now as Joe Biden, and
that’s not a viable alternative for most
Republicans. So there is a path for a
third candidate to receive votes from
Republicans.Michigan has been in the news re-
cently for the protests against the
governor’s coronavirus policies.
Can I ask what you made of them?
I support people protesting. I support
their right to protest. I think people
are very upset in Michigan about much
of the overreach. I do condemn and
denounce things like using Nazi
flags or Nazi symbols at protests.
Or coming into the state capitol
holding weapons in a way that
might be intimidating to many
people.What about the protests
where folks haven’t been
adhering to social- distancing
practices? It shouldn’t happen
where people don’t keep away
from each other by at least 6 ft.
I mean, we’re hearing from
doctors and epidemiologists
and others. We should adhere to
those guidelines.
—Lissandra ViLLaA
s a presidential candidate,
what would the core idea of
your campaign be? The core
idea is liberty and representative gov-
ernment. And what we have right now
in Washington is a very broken system.
What happens right now too often is a
few leaders in Congress negotiate with
the White House, and they decide ev-
erything for everyone. And this leads to
a lot of frustration and a lot of partisan-
ship because when Congress can’t de-
liberate actual policies, when you have
most members of Congress left out of
the process, then they start to debate
personalities.Is it still possible to advance the
things you want to talk about as a
third-party candidate? It is possible to
do that, and the way I’m going to do that
is by getting my message out there. And
if I do that, I feel confident that people
will see that among the three candidates,
the one running as a Libertarian Party
nominee right now, or seeking the Liber-
tarian Party nomination, is the one who
will be the most compelling and quali-
fied candidate of the three.Do you think your presence in
the race will help or hurt either
candidate? I think it hurts both
candidates. The goal is to win, so you
obviously want to take votes from both
candidates. There’s a huge pool of voters
who aren’t represented by either of the
parties, and a lot of times, they just stay
home or they settle for one of the two
parties, but they would be happy to vote
for someone else if they felt there was
another candidate that was compelling.Have you thought about whether
you’d vote for Biden or Trump?
I would not vote for Biden or
Trump. Getting rid of Donald
Trump does not fix the problems
because Donald Trump is just a
symptom of the problems. The
problems will still exist with Joe
Biden in the White House.Justin Amash The Michigan Congressman
on the culture of the GOP he left and why
he’d run for President as a Libertarian