Bill Weld: Clinton camp ‘planted’ idea I’d leave Libertarian ticket

Libertarian vice presidential nominee Bill Weld says Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign is behind the rumors he may abandon his running mate, Gary Johnson, and endorse her instead.

“That was completely planted by the Clinton campaign,” the former Republican governor of Massachusetts said on Boston Herald Radio Monday.

{mosads}Weld said he had recently received over two dozen email and phone messages warning him against inadvertently helping Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, reach the White House.

“[They were] saying, ‘Unless you renounce your candidacy immediately, you will spoil this and elect Donald Trump,’ ” he said.

“’You’ll go down in history as a complete pariah and your name with be a hissing and a by-word, and your family will live in disgrace forever.’”

Fear of Trump has helped drive a number of Republicans to back Clinton, the Democratic presidential nominee. Still others, such as 2012 GOP nominee Mitt Romney, are essentially sitting out the race in silence.

Weld said that Clinton’s campaign had zeroed in on his relative warmth toward the Democratic presidential nominee.

“They know I’m not a fan of Mr. Trump,” he said. “They’ve heard what I’ve said about him. They heard me spend much of the summer defending Mrs. Clinton on her email issue.

“We do differ from the Democrats on fiscal issues, we haven’t made a secret of that, but they could be forgiven for thinking I seemed a little bit milder towards Mrs. Clinton than Mr. Trump.”

Weld said earlier this month that talk of him leaving the Libertarian ticket is “wishful thinking on the part of the two-party duopoly.”

Veteran investigative reporter Carl Bernstein suggested last week that Weld may drop his bid to endorse and campaign for Clinton instead.

Johnson, the Libertarian presidential nominee, flatly denied the idea as “bullshit” during a Facebook Live interview on Sept. 21.