“In the past year I’ve been indicted by the government on 91 different things,” President Trump declared at the Libertarian Party’s convention at Washington. “So if I wasn’t a libertarian before, I sure as hell am a libertarian now.” That’s the sentence that jumps out at us from Caroline McCaughey’s dispatch. How does the 45th president fit in with the Libertarian movement, whose followers could yet prove critical in the vote in November?

We get that Libertarians are prepared to stand apart. The last time we sent Ms. McCaughey to a Libertarian event, it was to an annual retreat in New Hampshire. She spotted one man who attended the gathering while dressed with nothing but a holster and a gun. He was, we took it, for open carry. At the parley at Washington, Mr. Trump got plenty of jeers but at least one standing ovation — when he promised clemency for Ross Ulbricht.

“Free Ross Ulbricht,” Ms. McCaughey reports, tops the list of issues the Libertarian Party said it hoped that Mr. Trump would address in his speech to the convention. She notes that Libertarians advocate for drug legalization and freedom from fiat currency. So Ulbricht’s conviction and life sentence in 2015 for several charges, including laundering drug money and running the Silk Road cryptocurrency drug sales site, has become a cause célèbre.

It’s not our purpose here to endorse the Libertarians — or anyone else. It’s merely to remark on Mr. Trump’s embrace of at least elements of the Libertarian program. And to contrast it with President Biden, who is an anti-Libertarian and, in any event, is apparently not making a bid for the Libertarian vote — though had the Libertarian vote gone to Mr. Trump in the last election, Mr. Trump might have won a second term in 2020.

Mr. Trump, after all, lost to Mr. Biden in the swing states of Arizona, Georgia, and Wisconsin by fewer votes in 2020 than those cast for the Libertarian Party candidate, Jo Jorgenson. In other states like Pennsylvania, had the Libertarian candidate gotten 2,000 more votes that would have been the margin of victory. This year’s Biden-Trump rematch is expected to be close again, with a small number of votes in swing states deciding the election.

It’s not just the vote counting that interests us. The Libertarian movement has emerged as a factor in, say, foreign policy debates in Congress. It’s no small thing that a reluctance to get more deeply involved in the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East helped hold up the foreign aid bill for months amid two desperate wars. At Washington this weekend, we were looking for, among other things, clues as to how much of this affects Mr. Trump. 

“Dismantle the FBI” and “End the Fed,” two popular Libertarian slogans, also echo in the MAGA world. The online right and right-leaning new media have embraced these elements of the Libertarian platform. Vivek Ramaswamy spoke at the Libertarian convention as well. When the crowd at Mr. Trump’s speech chanted “End the Fed,” it was one of the few moments of the whole parley at which no faction booed. 

Many Libertarians will not vote for Mr. Trump, whom they say violated their constitutional rights in response to the most important test: the Covid pandemic. Yet there is a portion of the liberty movement for whom Mr. Trump’s willingness to, say, meet and pardon Ulbricht are enough to garner their votes. “What is the purpose of the Libertarian Party getting 3 percent?” Mr. Trump asked the crowd Saturday night.

The point strikes us as well put. Is it better to vote for a candidate that aligns fully with one’s ideology? Or does it make, in this case, more sense to elect the most pro-liberty candidate who is capable of winning? The question is particularly apt for those of us who are partial to the big-tent Republicanism of the Reagan era. It’s a strategy of inclusion, rather than division, with which Reagan won 44 states for his first term and 49 for his second.