July 26, 2019

Former Massachusetts governor Bill Weld is primarying Donald Trump. And unlike Trump (natch) Weld accepted an invitation to speak at the NAACP convention on Wednesday. What he said was noteworthy:

BILL WELD: Good morning, everybody. My name is Bill Weld, and I'm running against Donald Trump in the Republican primaries. [ applause ] So, let's get one thing out of the way right at the beginning. Donald Trump is a raging racist, okay? He's a complete and thoroughgoing racist.

Unless the Republican party in Washington expressly, expressly rejects the racism of Donald Trump they are going to come to be universally viewed as the party of racism in America.

His interview with Lawrence O'Donnell expanded on that theme. In addition, as a former federal prosecutor (and Robert Mueller's boss at the Justice Department), Weld said he WOULD have indicted Trump and kept the indictment under seal, so that the statute of limitations would not run out.

ON THE FUTURE OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY AND TRUMP'S RACISM

If the Republican Party doesn't distance itself from the unbelievable racism of President Trump, it's going to be stigmatized throughout the country as the party of racism, and they are not going to be a national party anymore. They may be able to win the Dixiecrat states from 1948 and that George Wallace won in 1968 but as a national party, not so much. That's a message I wanted to deliver to the Republicans.

You know, I said that the president made the choice to be a racist along time ago when he boasted in the housing business with his father, "we have ways to keep people like them, people of color out of our projects" but now the Republican Party has a choice. They act like they think sometimes it's a political choice. It's not a political choice. It's a moral choice, and they will be judged by the results of that choice.

ON THE MUELLER TESTIMONY:

I think he confirmed what we all knew there is an overwhelming case of obstruction of justice in Volume Two of the Mueller report. Myself, if I had that case I would have charged the president. These Office of Legal Counsel opinions that everyone is pointing to are not like a judicial opinion with the same force of law. The Assistant Attorney General is the lawyer for the president and the lawyer for the attorney general. Those are his or her only two clients. So it's like a brief instead of a judicial opinion to cite that office of legal counsel opinion that's the basis for not indicting the president. I think you could have charged him and suspended and sealed the indictment so the statute of limitations would not run out. And I would have, if I had the case.

ON REPUBLICANS BLOCKING ELECTION INTERFERENCE LEGISLATION:

Yeah, I thought that was extraordinary unfortunate timing for Mitch. The one thing that Bob Mueller did do handsprings on, was he said, "Look, this Russian interference was real and went on and on and it's going on right now and it's the most serious thing I've seen in my life." That's Bob Mueller talking and, you know, the bill that is getting bottled up is a bill that would simply say, that when election officials see evidence of foreign tampering, foreign efforts to tamper with the election, they should report it to federal authorities who obviously have superior investigative capability. And now we know Russians aim to target all 50 states and that they got their hands into the Illinois database. Well, they could easily delete precincts where they thought there were minority voters if they wanted to say favor Mr. Trump in the next election, or just say well, we were all over this election, the states that president trump lost there by casting into doubt the election results.

Memo to Weld: You're not going to get far having a cozy first-name relationship with Mitch McConnell. But we sure hope you beat Trump in New Hampshire. That would throw the GOP into a real tizzy. Good luck.

Fox is already trying to downplay Weld.

Can you help us out?

For nearly 20 years we have been exposing Washington lies and untangling media deceit, but now Facebook is drowning us in an ocean of right wing lies. Please give a one-time or recurring donation, or buy a year's subscription for an ad-free experience. Thank you.

Discussion

We welcome relevant, respectful comments. Any comments that are sexist or in any other way deemed hateful by our staff will be deleted and constitute grounds for a ban from posting on the site. Please refer to our Terms of Service for information on our posting policy.
Mastodon