William Weld Calls For Trump’s Resignation
William Weld, the former governor of Massachusetts, is challenging President Trump in the 2020 Republican primaries. But in a new op-ed, Weld makes it clear that he wishes the president would leave office even sooner.
“It’s Time for Trump to Resign,” Weld writes in the piece, published Wednesday at the conservative website The Bulwark.
“How can a president function if he instinctively lies to not only the public but to his own staff?” Weld asks in the piece. “There is one essential truth that leaps from the pages of the Mueller report: No one can trust Donald Trump.”
Weld went on to say, as he has in the past, that the president is “a one-man crime wave.” The former governor cites various incidents that he describes as misdeeds by Trump, including the various times in the Mueller report that Trump is alleged to have ordered underlings to obstruct the investigation, as well as the five Trump associates who have been convicted of crimes.
While the ex-governor believes that the question of impeachment is a matter for Congress to consider, he believes that if the president is a patriot, he should voluntarily resign the office.
“The American public, our international allies, the very rule of law itself would all be better served with a President Mike Pence,” Weld concludes. “So, the question is a basic one: Is Donald Trump truly an American patriot?”
The president doesn’t appear to have responded to the op-ed, nor has he acknowledged Weld’s candidacy at all.
Weld was governor of Massachusetts from 1991 to 1997, as part of a long run of GOP governors in that deep blue state. While he won two elections for governor in that state, Weld has had less luck in elections since then. He ran for the U.S. Senate in 1996 against John Kerry and lost, and when he resigned as governor in 1997 to become U.S. Ambassador to Mexico, his nomination was blocked.
After some time in the private sector, Weld ran for governor of New York in 2006 but dropped out of the race during the Republican primaries. In 2016, Weld left the Republican Party to run for president for the Libertarian Party, ultimately taking the vice presidential slot on a ticket with presidential candidate and former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson.
Weld endorsed Barack Obama for president in 2008 but backed Mitt Romney — also a former Republican governor of Massachusetts — in 2012.
https://t.co/kcGB7skqAe. #Weld2020
— Gov. Bill Weld (@GovBillWeld) April 24, 2019
Larry Hogan, the vocally anti-Trump Republican governor of Maryland, has also been mentioned as a possible GOP challenger to Trump in 2020. And while there is much appetite in the media for a GOP challenge to the president, Trump has remained highly popular among Republicans in most opinion polls,
