An issue which not long ago had only the support of Ron Paul has now become a priority for the Trump Administration: the auditing of Fort Knox. At CPAC last week, Donald Trump took time out of speech to boast that he and Elon Musk were soon to be traveling to America’s largest gold depository “to see if the gold is there. Because maybe somebody stole the gold. Tons of gold.”
The topic of Fort Knox is interesting itself for a number of other reasons. Its gold reserve stands as a monument to the role that gold once played in the international monetary system (most of the reserves believed to be there came from international markets, not FDR-era gold confiscation.) Should there be any discrepancy between the gold that is there and what is reported, the “cui bono?” questions will tie directly back to the lingering value gold has as a financial asset of global importance.
The larger issue, however, is a more visceral one: it is perhaps the most basic measuring stick for the legitimacy of the federal government itself. According to conventional wisdom, it would be unthinkable to suggest that the heavy gold bars, regularly audited on paper by the Treasury, wouldn’t be precisely where they are reported to be. Anything otherwise would require a historic caper, at a scale that could only be done by the greatest thieves in American history: the feds themselves.
Yet Trump himself is the electoral manifestation of distrust of the regime, and Musk’s blitzkrieg through federal departments is the closest we have seen to populist anger translated into a true assault on our institutions. As such, the Fort Knox question is perfect political theater: it is either a demonstration of transparency for a question that lingered among political outsiders for decades that deserves a true answer, or it is the most visceral vindication of every fear one may have about their government.
The inherently populist nature of the Fort Knox Question and its recent rise to prominence creates a valid reason to remember one of the few other members of Congress who ever raised the question: former Democrat Congressman Larry McDonald.
McDonald was one of the last southern self-described “Jefferson-Jackson” Democrats. He rode to Congress after unexpectedly beating an incumbent in the primary, joining the class of “Watergate Babies” - Democrats elected in the immediate aftermath of the fall of Nixon, a generation of legislators that is identified with entering the legislature with a unique skepticism of Washington politics. Of course, most of McDonald’s colleagues lacked a cynical view of government itself, they simply desired “better government,” in the words of Congressman Phil Sharp.
For McDonald, “better government” meant a war on the federal government itself. He viewed the growing welfare state as a “disaster.” He advocated for phasing out social spending away from Washington towards the states. He railed that any time DC passed a law “you got more spending, more taxes, or more control…and the stifling of the American dream.” As such, it’s not surprising to learn that McDonald was one of the first people Ron Paul talked to when he looked at joining him in Congress.
In 1983, McDonald went on to become president of the John Birch Society, replacing its founding Robert Welch. Shortly after, he appeared on CNN’s Crossfire, educating CIA official-turned-respected DC journalist Tom Braden and Pat Buchanan on the World Bank, the IMF, and decades of US-led economy designed to erode national sovereignty and elevate global technocracy. His warnings, equipped with a southern accent near extinct in modern America, are still worth listening to decades later.
Another common point McDonald had with Congressman Paul was a worldview grounded in Austrian economics. McDonald was an early donor of the Mises Institute, and would regularly utilize her prerogative as a member of Congress to insert the works of Austrian scholars on inflation, gold, and the dollar into the Congressional record.
Larry McDonald, like Ron Paul, was a rare 20th century Congressman who recognized that the political power apparatus in Washington simply could not be trusted. Unfortunately, his career in DC was cut short when the Soviet Union shot down Korean Air Lines Flight 007 on which he was a passenger September 1, 1983.
Still, through the continued growth of Austrian economics and the rising tide of anti-Washington sentiment, the spirit of Larry McDonald and Ron Paul is alive in American politics.
A true accounting for the gold of Fort Knox is simply a testament to how political legacies can’t simply be measured by the number of bills passed while in Washington.
