Former Massachusetts Governor Bill Weld, who is running a primary challenge against President Donald Trump, claimed on Tuesday evening that “everything” Trump says is evidence that the president is a “racist.”
Weld, who last week said Trump would prefer an “Aryan nation,” also again insisted that Trump wants “a nation with no immigrants whatsoever.”
“I mean it’s been clear since he started his campaign. He was basing it on trying to stir up vitriol and hatred of immigrants. It started with Muslims and then the whole thing about the wall and the Mexican border,” Weld told CNN host Don Lemon. “And I think… his campaign in 2016, in my opinion, was a series of dog whistles. And that dog whistle about the wall is… you know workers who have economic insecurity. You should be with me on the wall and hating immigrants. Because if you don’t, some brown person may come across that border with Mexico and take your job. I think that was the intended echo of his immigration policy.”
When Lemon, who on numerous occasions has said it is his responsibility to call Trump a racist, asked Weld for evidence of Trump’s racism, Weld replied: “The evidence is everything he says. Are you kidding me?”
Weld, acknowledging that he barely registers among Republican primary voters, revealed last week that his strategy to derail Trump will be focus on the anti-Trump Democrats in the “20 states that permit crossover voting.”
“It’s not just Vermont, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts, it’s 17 other states,” Weld told C-SPAN. “And a lot of those states permit even a Democrat to take a Republican ballot and I’ve heard from Democrats that they’re going to come and vote in the Republican primary for one day so that they can vote for me against Mr. Trump. And then they’re going to go home and take a hot shower because they feel so unclean. But those are votes as well.”