Mary Matalin registers as Libertarian, says 'I'm a provisional Trumpster'

Longtime Republican strategist Mary Matalin says she changed her affiliation to the Libertarian Party on Thursday, but insisted that does not mean she will not vote for presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump against Hillary Clinton.

"I'm a never Hillary and I’m a provisional Trump," said Matalin, who is married to Democratic strategist and Clinton surrogate James Carville, in an interview with Bloomberg Politics' "With All Due Respect."


Matalin said she likes Trump's "attitude" and "strategic chutzpah."

"I like that he had the gall to put macro messaging over micro targeting, and I like what I know about his economic policy," she said. "I just don't know enough. I think he could not only win, he would win in [a] landslide if he could stop his high school boy antics with women."

If Trump cannot overcome that, she said, "he's going to force suburban women to Hillary."

"I think he can peel off some African-Americans, some nontraditional, millennial voters if he runs the jobs message," she added. "I think he would be great if he reins it in a little bit."

Asked why she chose to register as a Libertarian on Thursday, two days after Trump became the presumptive Republican nominee, Matalin insisted it was purely coincidental.

"Because I'm a Republican in the Jeffersonian, Madisonian sense," she said. "I'm not a Republican for party or a person, and the Libertarian Party represents — continues to represent — those constitutional principles that I agree with."

Co-host Mark Halperin pressed her minutes later, asking whether there truly is no connection between leaving the Republican Party and Trump becoming the presumptive nominee.

"Let me make this clear here, Mark and my friends there. I am never Hillary, I am always liberty," she said. "As you know, and I’ve said it publicly here and in many places, after two successive blowout elections for conservatives with a nonresponse from Washington, a lot of conservatives are angry with the party. The party was falling apart. I can still vote for Republicans. I will never vote for Hillary and never trump means always liberty. Hence, Libertarian."

"But Mary, you've left the Republican Party," Halperin said, asking again whether it really did not have anything to do with Trump.

She responded, "I said I'm provisional. I'm a provisional Trumpster. I don't know enough about Trump. I know, like, three things about his economic policy. We know everything we need know about Hillary."

Asked what kind of a story it would be if her husband, Carville, left the Democratic Party, Matalin smirked.

"I think it would be a juicy story for me and it would contribute mightily to marital tranquility, I’ll say," she remarked.