Myrtle Beach, SC, Orlando, FL and Washington, D.C. October 8, 2024—Thinking Outside the Boxe announced today its endorsement of Donald J. Trump for President of the United States in the 2024 election.
In 2016 we endorsed Mr. Trump because we believed the country needed someone willing to confront immigration, spending, over-regulation, tax policy, and national security from outside the isolated habits of Washington. In 2020 we endorsed his re-election on the basis of the record as it then stood. The last four years have not caused us to revise that judgment. They have confirmed it.
The border is not a theoretical dispute. High encounter numbers, strained cities, and an asylum system that cannot process what it receives are facts. The cost of living is not a talking point. Households experienced a surge in prices that official language was slow to describe honestly. Energy policy that constrains domestic supply while adversaries use energy as leverage is not sophistication; it is a vulnerability. The increasing use of the legal system against a leading political opponent has become, for a large share of the public, a question about equal application of the law. We take that question seriously.
We do not claim Mr. Trump is a tidy or conventional figure. We claimed in 2016 that he was not. We claimed that the conventional path was the greater risk. The intervening years have not made the conventional path look safer. They have made the costs of drift more visible: at the border, in household budgets, in energy markets, in the credibility of once-neutral institutions, and in the country’s strategic posture.
Our tendency remains Libertarian. We would still prefer a durable limited-government party with a real path to governing. That is not the choice on this ballot. Support for a candidate with no viable path to the White House would, as in 2016, improve the odds of the outcome we consider more damaging. Too much is at stake to treat this election as a protest.
The next president will have to restore operational control at the border, take household costs and energy supply seriously, set clearer priorities abroad, and begin to confront a fiscal trajectory both parties have preferred to defer. We believe Mr. Trump is more likely than his opponent to pursue those tasks.
About Thinking Outside the Boxe— Thinking Outside the Boxe is a private, independent research and commentary organization dedicated to examining politics, finance, economics, world affairs, law, public policy, and the conduct of institutions from perspectives often absent from conventional media and public debate. Through original research, commentary, symposiums, and contributions from a diverse group of correspondents, Thinking Outside the Boxe seeks to broaden the parameters of public knowledge, challenge prevailing assumptions, and encourage thoughtful debate on issues of national and international importance.
Thinking Outside the Boxe is independent of political party donors, universities, media organizations, and institutional orthodoxies. Its work reflects a continuing commitment to limited government, lawful borders, fiscal seriousness, open inquiry, constitutional principles, and the belief that a free people are best served when arguments are tested against evidence rather than restricted to an approved range of opinion. Its correspondents may disagree with one another, but they share a willingness to examine difficult questions, reach conclusions, and say what conventional institutions sometimes will not.
