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New Yorker: The Republican Planning to Run Against Trump in 2020
There aren’t many Republicans like Bill Weld in national politics these days. Weld is a lawyer and a former Justice Department official, and he served as governor of Massachusetts for much of the nineteen-nineties. In 2016, he ran as Vice-President on the Libertarian Party ticket. He’s a New England moderate—that is, fiscally conservative and socially liberal. But Weld is not at all moderate in his views on Donald Trump.
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NY: I think some Republicans have comforted themselves by thinking that Donald Trump is an aberration within the Party. But other people think that he’s the logical end result of decades of the Party élite, the G.O.P. élite whipping up the base, whether it was the Tea Party movement or other aspects of the Party. And you’ve got this very, very strong racist strain that’s come to the fore. How do you battle that? How do you kill it?
BW: Well, I’m going to publicize it. I’m going to remind everybody that during the 2016 campaign the Trump campaign circulated images of George Lincoln Rockwell. George Lincoln Rockwell was the founder of the American Nazi Party, and the white supremacists who saw those knew exactly who George Lincoln Rockwell was, and they heard the dog whistle loud and clear. It was almost like a clandestine campaign, because so much of it was conducted with words that weren’t uttered publicly.
Just to be clear, you’re putting the President of the United States in the same basket as the late head of the American Nazi Party. Am I correct? That’s tough stuff.
I’m putting them in the same sentence, but, you know, I think the President, he makes no bones about the fact, he says “America First,” which was Charles Lindbergh’s fifth column before World War Two, and he says “I’m a nationalist.” Well, it is the Party that took over in Nazi Germany in the nineteen-thirties. So that’s the Nationalist Worker’s Party.
Governor, you’ve broken with the President and, really, the rest of the Party on climate change. What do you see as the best policy to reduce carbon emissions, considering the scale that they’re on and the sense of emergency that surrounds it?
Well, I think we should rejoin the Paris climate accords, for openers, and adopt percentages that are consonant with our responsibility. On the issue of climate, there is a divide between the developed nations and lesser-developed countries. I think what President Trump would like to do is say, “Well, we’ve gotten the benefits of the industrial revolution. Now you have to agree, you and your rainforests, not to emit any carbon dioxide, and we don’t care if you ever develop, because we’ve got ours.” Again, that’s an unattractive point of view.
...................................................................
NY: I think some Republicans have comforted themselves by thinking that Donald Trump is an aberration within the Party. But other people think that he’s the logical end result of decades of the Party élite, the G.O.P. élite whipping up the base, whether it was the Tea Party movement or other aspects of the Party. And you’ve got this very, very strong racist strain that’s come to the fore. How do you battle that? How do you kill it?
BW: Well, I’m going to publicize it. I’m going to remind everybody that during the 2016 campaign the Trump campaign circulated images of George Lincoln Rockwell. George Lincoln Rockwell was the founder of the American Nazi Party, and the white supremacists who saw those knew exactly who George Lincoln Rockwell was, and they heard the dog whistle loud and clear. It was almost like a clandestine campaign, because so much of it was conducted with words that weren’t uttered publicly.
Just to be clear, you’re putting the President of the United States in the same basket as the late head of the American Nazi Party. Am I correct? That’s tough stuff.
I’m putting them in the same sentence, but, you know, I think the President, he makes no bones about the fact, he says “America First,” which was Charles Lindbergh’s fifth column before World War Two, and he says “I’m a nationalist.” Well, it is the Party that took over in Nazi Germany in the nineteen-thirties. So that’s the Nationalist Worker’s Party.
Governor, you’ve broken with the President and, really, the rest of the Party on climate change. What do you see as the best policy to reduce carbon emissions, considering the scale that they’re on and the sense of emergency that surrounds it?
Well, I think we should rejoin the Paris climate accords, for openers, and adopt percentages that are consonant with our responsibility. On the issue of climate, there is a divide between the developed nations and lesser-developed countries. I think what President Trump would like to do is say, “Well, we’ve gotten the benefits of the industrial revolution. Now you have to agree, you and your rainforests, not to emit any carbon dioxide, and we don’t care if you ever develop, because we’ve got ours.” Again, that’s an unattractive point of view.
https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-new-yorker-interview/bill-weld-the-republican-planning-to-run-against-trump-in-2020
6 replies
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always did. I don't think he can make much of a challenge - but that someone tries is important.
This picture is of him, diving in the Charles River - which he promised to do, once it was cleaned up.
