I got the chance to speak with Libertarian Party presidential nominee Dr. Jo Jorgensen during a campaign spot in North Texas on Tuesday. A transcript of the interview with minor edits for clarity is below.

Taylor Millard: Happy to be in North Texas given your history [Jorgensen graduated from Southern Methodist University in Dallas and worked at IBM in Fort Worth for several years]?

Jo Jorgensen: Oh absolutely, I’m back home.

Millard: Are you finding that this bus tour is easier to do during a pandemic versus playing jet hopping?

Jo Jorgensen: That’s a good question, I’m not sure it really makes a difference. I actually prefer the bus because the audiences come to me. I got to a new city, they open the doors, and there’s an audience. Get back on the bus, drive a couple hours, open the doors, and there’s another new audience. I think it allows me to talk to more people than flying would.

Millard: Have you been seeing mostly mixed audiences: libertarians and non-libertarians?

Jo Jorgensen: Yes. We were surprised because my assistant here will sometimes hand out Libertarian Party application forms to join the party. And she’ll just have a couple on hand to see if maybe there are a few people who weren’t in the party. So, we have had rallies where a majority people are not in the party. So, we’ve been overwhelmed and also I’ve noticed that there are a lot of young people, as well.

Millard: You’ve been pretty open about supporting Black Lives Matter but you did get some criticism from Kmele Foster from Free Think and Fifth Column podcast had some issues with your anti-racism tweet. What is anti-racism and couldn’t you just say racism won’t be tolerated.

Jo Jorgensen: I could say, “Racism won’t be tolerated.” Let me just mention though, there was a lot of missed communication and part of that was on our campaign end because somebody inadvertently capitalized “Black Lives Matter” as opposed to keeping it small letters. We, of course, are at complete odds with the national party, the national Black Lives Matter movement…because they are a Marxist organization.

The people who I’ve been meeting with, however, are not part of the national party – the Marxist people. They are people who agree with us that yes, we need to end qualified immunity. Yes, we need to end no-knock raids. Yes, we need to end the racist war on drugs.

In talking with them, I’ve been able to share some libertarian ideas. One man, who…was incarcerated and now he’s a preacher, he’s head of a Black Lives Matter chapter, said that he did not realize that the bus that Rosa Parks was on was government-run, government-owned. And so I was able to explain to him how the free market would do a much better job at preventing discrimination than the government ever could. And he really liked what he was hearing, he said it was a completely different take on it, and he was going to look into it.

Millard: It’s a pretty transpartisan issue too, isn’t it? The basic idea that black lives matter?

Jo Jorgensen: Yeah, I don’t know why anybody would be against that.

Millard: Are you going to get the chance to meet Garrett Foster’s family at all? The LP activist who was killed down in Austin?

Jo Jorgensen: I’m not sure. We just came from Austin and we didn’t so I’m not sure if that would be on a future trip.

Millard: All right, so I gotta ask this. How exactly did the bat thing happen and is this peak 2020?

Jo Jorgensen: Well, I hope that ‘Peak 2020’ would be my being on the debate stage and then elected president. That would be much better.

First of all, no, I did not get bitten. I had an encounter and the bat flew into my neck and it scratched me on the chin. However, it turns out that the bat is the only animal that you don’t actually have to be bitten in order to get rabies.

So, that’s why I went to the hospital. And they said that, yes, anytime there’s a bat encounter, even if you’re not sure if you got a bite or not that they still treat it as though you are bitten because you don’t need to be bitten. And also they said that the bat bites are so small that you can’t always tell if you got bitten or not.

I guess the real answer is maybe I was bitten and I just don’t know it (laughter).

Millard: Just happy to explain freedom and liberty wherever you go, right?

Jo Jorgensen: Absolutely.

Millard: Dr. Jorgensen, thank you so much. Really appreciate it.