NATIONAL HARBOR—Despite losing the presidential election by more than 58 million votes, Gary Johnson seems extremely … chill? The former Libertarian Party nominee spent the past year skiing (Sun Valley, Jackson Hole, Lake Louise) and riding the Continental Divide bike race with his girlfriend of 10 years. He is tan. His eyes are undemanding. At CPAC, he can’t take more than a dozen steps without a fanboy hounding him for a photo.

“Hundreds per day,” he estimates. “Life is good. If you saw my house in Taos, you’d say life’s good.”

On Thursday afternoon, Johnson settles in to a corner table at the National Pastime sports bar for an hour-long lunch. He drapes his blue blazer over an empty chair and orders a farmhouse bacon salad with chicken, no croutons. In multiple conversations, he jokes that he may live to be 135. He’s not stoned right now, but he’s been known to consume cannabis back home.

“The potency of pot now, one or two hits, boom! You’re satisfied.” He’s an old school toker. “I think there’s something wrong with vaping. I don’t know about you, but I don’t do that.”

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Johnson is an icon within CPAC’s metastasizing libertarian coalition. As the former governor of a border state, New Mexico, he has a compassionate view toward immigration, he believes in small government, and he owns two firearms—a 12 gauge shotgun and a .38 caliber snub nose revolver. He’s here at CPAC to appear on a Friday tax panel, and he’s surprised when one of his two handlers notifies him that the event will take place in the main ballroom. “Center stage? Wow.”

Just over three percent of American voters cast their ballots for Gary Johnson two years ago. A handful of these people stop to tell him so in person. “I would have really enjoyed being president,” Johnson says between extremely slow bites of salad. “I think I would have done a really good job. But I also came to the conclusion that I’m not the guy when it comes to third party.”

“Life is good. If you saw my house in Taos, you’d say life’s good.”

Who that guy or girl will be in 2020 remains a mystery. One name you hear floated is Peter Thiel, the tech titan who spoke at the 2016 Republican National Convention and recently left Silicon Valley for Los Angeles. Johnson is friendly with Thiel, but he cannot speak to his ambitions. In fact, Johnson has largely removed himself from the day-to-day political morass.

“I don’t Google my name anymore. I stopped with six weeks to go [in the election] because the person that you Google is not recognizable, not to me anyway.”

Johnson believes there was a smear campaign to belittle his intelligence, and he says he read reports claiming that Hillary Clinton spent as much as $50 million to discredit him when he started gaining in the polls. (The Clinton campaign spent roughly $1 billion on the 2016 election, but it's unclear how much—if any—was spent discrediting Johnson.)

“For a while, we thought we were going to win," Johnson says. "It didn’t last long, but the possibility existed.”

That possibility receded on September 8, 2016, shortly after MSNBC’s Mike Barnicle asked Johnson about his strategy for dealing with the Syrian city of Aleppo. "What's Aleppo?" Johnson replied.

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“I had my Aleppo moment,” Johnson says flatly. “I would say Trump had 150 of those moments.” He’s not smiling as we talk about this, but he’s not frowning, either. He doesn’t seem bothered bringing up what many would view as an international public humiliation.

“I forget my mother’s name occasionally. We all do. I went in there and there was no context. So when he said 'Aleppo,' I was thinking acronym. Wrong, but nonetheless ... was that going to happen during the campaign? Yes. And in office? Yes. In my tenure as governor? All the time. But my overriding get-out-of-jail card was just honesty and integrity.”

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He still can’t believe that Donald Trump is president. In the mornings, when he wakes up, he doesn’t feel as though he lives in Trump’s America.

“I feel like I live in Gary Johnson’s America. Trump describes an America that I’ve never seen. I’m just ... I’m slain by it. He’s the worst, he’s the epitome of the worst politician you could possibly elect. And if Hillary had been elected, I think we’d be talking about Hillary right now. Different issues, but the same kind of atrocities.”

During his Thursday morning speech, Vice President Mike Pence doubled down on the administration’s promise to “build the wall.” Johnson believes the wall will be both an engineering and philosophical quagmire. “You do know that the border between Mexico and Texas is the Rio Grande river? So we build it right down the middle of the Rio Grande? How’s that going to work?” His eyes widen and he shakes his head. “If we build a wall at some point in the future, we will tear it down because of the stain that it represents.”

After CPAC, he has no immediate plans beyond skiing. He clocked over 100 days on the mountain last year. Before running for president and serving as governor, he attempted to make it as a ski racer “at the B-pro level.” His former constituents out west still ask him to stop and pose for photos, but only a handful per day, nothing like the mobs here. What's one thing about campaign life that he does not miss?

“That someone would get in my face and have the worst breath in the world, and I’d have to stand there and take it all in. It was numbing. And there are some people with some horrible dragon breath. Why don’t you brush or floss your teeth??”

John Hendrickson Deputy Editor John Hendrickson is the Deputy Editor of Esquire.com, where he oversees the site's 24/7 news operation as well as all politics coverage.

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