By Ben Johnson
The Washington Stand
President Donald Trump has put the issue of world government at the forefront of the 2024 presidential race, vowing to “protect American sovereignty” and the U.S. Constitution from the designs of unelected global bureaucrats.
President Trump took aim at global governance institutions in general, and the World Health Organization (WHO) specifically, on Saturday, promising to shred and annul the WHO Pandemic Agreement unless Joe Biden submits the document to the U.S. Senate for ratification, as required for treaties.
“As we speak, Joe Biden’s minions are in Geneva, secretly negotiating to surrender more of our liberty to the World Health Organization,” President Trump told the Libertarian Party National Convention, eliciting a fulsome chorus of boos. “Drafts of the agreement show that they want to subjugate America to foreign nations, attack free speech, [and] empower the World Health Organization to redistribute American resources.”
Multiple drafts of the proposed accord show the WHO limiting national sovereignty by demanding nations follow its regulations on “routine immunization” and “social measures,” turn over 20% of all vaccines for global redistribution, and abide by the agreement’s terms even after they withdraw.
“They’re going to take our money and send it all over the world to other countries that we need for our own citizens,” in the event of a pandemic, Trump told the crowd in Washington on Saturday, warning that a pandemic “could happen again” in the United States. His comments came just days after the Department of Health and Human Services took the first steps to deny future federal grants to the EcoHealth Alliance, a U.S.-based NGO which funded gain-of-function research at China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology before the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I will protect American sovereignty from the creeping hands of global government,” promised Trump. By contrast, the Biden administration has signaled its desire to sign the agreement, which WHO downgraded from a “legally-binding treaty” after Biden realized the U.S. Senate would never ratify the controversial document.
“I am hereby demanding that Joe Biden submit these monstrosities to the Senate as treaties,” declared Trump on Saturday. “If he does not, I will rip them up and throw them out on day one of the Trump administration.”
Opposition to the WHO pandemic treaty-turned-agreement has spread throughout America, including all 49 Republican U.S. senators, two dozen Republican governors, and 22 state attorneys general.
“The globalists are making a run over American sovereignty,” said Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-La.) on the most recent episode of “This Week on the Hill,” hosted by Tony Perkins. “We can’t allow these global organizations to dictate to us what our policy is going to be.”
Although the body tasked with drawing up the agreement, the Intergovernmental Negotiating Body, failed to finalize its text before the World Health Assembly commenced its annual meeting in Geneva on Monday, WHO Director-General Tedros Ghebreyesus insisted the globalists would eventually prevail. “I remain confident that you still will” complete the global power transfer and have it adopted, he told delegates Monday. “Where there is a will, there is a way.”
But the internationalists compiling the sovereignty-destroying agreement will proceed from a radically government-centered philosophy alien to the American founding, experts say. “Some of these nations come from a very different governance perspective than the United States,” one which “says it’s normal to look to the federal government to deal with these problems,” Travis Weber, vice president for Policy and Government Affairs at Family Research Council — who is currently in Geneva monitoringthe WHA proceedings — told guest host and former Congressman Jody Hice on “Washington Watch” Tuesday.
“Constitutionally, there are areas enumerated to the federal government under our Constitution. If they’re not, the issue in theory should be left to the states,” Weber told Hice. “We have a philosophy of government going back to our founding which depends on a self-governing, moral, and religious people. So, this really sets the stage for people in the United States to say, ‘Why should the federal government be tackling [this] issue in the first place?’”
President Trump also cited constitutionalist themes in his pitch for libertarians to endorse his candidacy at Saturday’s convention.
“I unbound the United States from globalist agreements that surrendered our sovereignty. I withdrew from the Paris Accord. I withdrew from the anti-gun U.N. Arms Treaty. And I withdrew from the corrupt and very expensive World Health Organization,” saidTrump, emphasizing that any institution of global governance is “not a good thing, not a good thing.”
Trump delivered a message precision-targeted to libertarian concerns. “Marxism is an evil doctrine straight from the ashes of Hell,” said Trump. “We believe that the job of the United States military is not to wage endless regime change wars around the globe.”
“We will shut down our out-of-control federal Department of Education and give it back to the states and local governments. I will return power to the states, local governments, and to the American people. I am a believer in the Tenth Amendment,” said Trump. “I will always defend religious liberty and the right to keep and bear arms. And I will secure our elections.” Trump also pledged to put a libertarian in his cabinet and in senior posts of his administration.
“What you’re witnessing under Biden is a toxic fusion of the Marxist Left, the Deep State, the military-industrial complex, the government security and surveillance service, and their partners all merging together into a hideous perversion of the American system,” he said. “The great liberation of America begins on November 5th, 2024.”
Libertarian Party Chair Angela McArdle also invited Joe Biden and Independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to address the convention. RFK Jr., who has said the WHO Pandemic Agreement “should be dead in the water,” delivered extended remarks to the delegates Friday afternoon. Biden demurred. Former Republican presidential hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy, former Congressman Ron Paul, and Senator Mike Lee (R-Utah) also spoke at the convention.
Trump vied for the party’s backing, quoting at length a Deroy Murdock article, “The Libertarian Case for Donald J. Trump” and encouraging delegates to nominate him — but only “if you want to win. If you want to lose, don’t do that. Keep getting your 3% every four years.”
The 3.3% of the 2016 vote, won by former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson (R), actually represented an outlier for the Libertarian Party, which typically claims to 0.5%-1% of the presidential electorate.
Ultimately, the collected Libertarian Party delegates nominated Chase Oliver, an Atlanta-based activist who describes himself as “pro-police reform, pro-choice,” as well as “armed and gay.” Oliver supportedCOVID-19 lockdowns and mask mandates, opposed bills protecting minors from transgender injections and surgeries, and posed with a drag queen. The Georgian, who forced a run-off in the 2022 Senate race that saw Democrat Raphael Warnock defeat Republican Herschel Walker, plans to gear his campaign toward young people, “in particular those who are upset with the war going on in Gaza.”
Some hope liberty-minded voters will ignore the Libertarian Party’s official endorsement and support Trump out of prudence. Walter Block, an economics professor and prolific libertarian author, urged libertarians in swing states to vote for the 45th president this November. “In Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, we could make the difference,” wrote Block in a Wall Street Journal op-ed Tuesday.
He reminded readers that “Libertarian nominee Jo Jorgensen received roughly 50,000 votes in Arizona in 2020, when Mr. Trump lost the state by about 10,000 ballots.”
Absent a more conservative government, America may be yoked to the WHO Pandemic Agreement without Senate ratification, circumventing the democratic process. “It only breeds more public distrust when people are not able to fully share their concerns and air their grievances,” Weber told Hice. “The people of the United States need to be heard in terms of their concerns about the WHO, about the way the COVID-19 pandemic was handled, about the way their health information might be distributed or shared, or given over to some government program.”
FRC Action has created a form allowing voters to contact their senators, urging them to oppose the WHO Pandemic Agreement.
Originally published at The Washington Stand!
