Libertarian VP Candidate Bill Weld Will Focus on Preventing Trump Presidency

In break with running mate, Weld thinks president should know what Aleppo is. Photo: BRYAN R. SMITH/AFP/Getty Images

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/10/libertarian-vp-candidate-just-wants-to-stop-trump-presidency.html

As some presumably small portion of Americans sat through a dull debate 
between the Republican and Democratic vice-presidential nominees on Tuesday 
night, a far more interesting drama was unfolding within the Libertarian 
ticket. VP candidate Bill Weld told the Boston Globe that he plans to focus 
on attacking Donald Trump for the remainder of the campaign — essentially 
admitting that running mate Gary Johnson can not become president.

Trump has Weld’s “full attention,” he explained, because his agenda is so 
terrible it’s “in a class by itself.” “I think Mr. Trump’s proposals in the 
foreign policy area, including nuclear proliferation, tariffs, and free 
trade, would be so hurtful, domestically and in the world, that he has my 
full attention,” Weld said.

Apparently he avoided acknowledging that his new mission amounts to working 
to make Hillary Clinton president. He pointed out that he disagrees with 
Clinton on fiscal and military issues, though last week on MSNBC he said he’s 
“not sure anybody is more qualified than Hillary Clinton to be president of 
the United States.”

It’s unusual for a candidate to admit defeat five weeks before the election, 
even though Johnson is at just 7.4 percent nationally in the Real Clear 
Politics polling average. However, Weld’s move doesn’t exactly constitute 
“going rogue,” since earlier in the day Johnson admitted in a CNN interview, 
“I guess I wasn’t meant to be president.” The Libertarian nominee was trying 
to argue that his lack of foreign-policy knowledge is an asset five days 
after he was unable to name a world leader he admires. Johnson described 
that as another “Aleppo moment,” referring to a previous gaffe in which he 
failed to recognize the name of the besieged Syrian city.

The gaffes led many to say Weld should be at the top of the ticket, and Weld 
strategists reportedly looked into the possibility of doing that, only to be 
shot down by Johnson.

Weld insists that he’s not abandoning Johnson, and that his running mate is 
fully in support of his strategy shift. “I have had in mind all along trying 
to get the Donald into third place, and with some tugging and hauling, we 
might get there,” he said.

However, Weld’s claim that there’s no discord on the Libertarian ticket wasn’t 
very convincing. He also suggested to the Globe that he may abandon the 
Libertarian party in the future. “I’m certainly not going to drop them this 
year,” he said.

Weld, a former two-term Republican governor of Massachusetts, said that 
after blocking a Trump presidency, he’d like to work with Republicans like 
Mitt Romney and Haley Barbour to rebuild the GOP.

“Maybe somebody is going to come up with a new playbook, and I don’t know 
who it’s going to be, but it would be fun to participate,” he said.

Maybe Mike Pence? Both vice-presidential candidates seem pretty eager to 
move past the humiliations of the 2016 campaign.