Bill Weld Campaigns Against Donald Trump

William Floyd Weld (born July 31, 1945) is an American attorney, businessman, and Republican politician who served as the 68th Governor of Massachusetts from 1991 to 1997. Weld is running for the Republican nomination for President of the United States in 2020.

A Harvard and Oxford graduate, Weld began his career as legal counsel to the United States House Committee on the Judiciary before becoming the United States Attorney for the District of Massachusetts and, later, the United States Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division. He worked on a series of high-profile public corruption cases and later resigned in protest of an ethics scandal and associated investigations into Attorney General Edwin Meese.

Weld was elected Governor of Massachusetts in 1990. In the 1994 election, he was reelected by the largest margin of victory in Massachusetts history. In 1996, he was the Republican nominee for the United States Senate in Massachusetts, losing to Democratic incumbent John Kerry. Weld resigned as governor in 1997 to focus on his nomination by President Bill Clinton to serve as United States Ambassador to Mexico; due to opposition by socially conservative Senate Foreign Relations committee Chairman Jesse Helms, he was denied a hearing before the Foreign Relations committee and withdrew his nomination. After moving to New York in 2000, Weld sought the Republican nomination for Governor of New York in the 2006 election; when the Republican Party instead endorsed John Faso, Weld withdrew from the race.

Weld became involved in presidential politics in later years. In 2016, he left the Republican Party to become the Libertarian Party running mate of former Governor of New Mexico Gary Johnson. Johnson and Weld were the first presidential ticket since 1948 to consist of two state governors. They received nearly 4.5 million popular votes, the best-ever showing for a Libertarian ticket and the best showing for any third-party ticket since 1996. After returning to the Republican Party, Weld announced on April 15, 2019 that he would challenge President Donald Trump in the 2020 Republican primaries.

2020 Presidential Campaign

On January 17, 2019, Weld rejoined the Republican Party, increasing speculation that he would run for President. On February 14, 2019, Weld announced that he was launching a presidential exploratory committee for the 2020 Republican primary, against incumbent Republican President Donald Trump. Appearing on Bloomberg News, Weld suggested that he could beat Trump in 2020 with help from independent voters. He accused Trump on CNN the same weekend of having "showed contempt for the American people".

On Monday, April 15, 2019, Weld announced his candidacy for President of the United States on [the television program] The Lead with Jake Tapper.

Other Activities

Weld is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He co-chaired its Independent Task Force on North America, which studied the liberalization of markets and free trade between the US, Canada, and Mexico. He was a principal at Leeds, Weld & Co., which describes itself as the United States's largest private equity fund focused on investing in the education and training industry. Weld serves on the board of directors of Acreage Holdings. For a time, he wrote thrillers and works of historical fiction.

In February 2013, Weld publicly supported legal recognition for same-sex marriage in an amicus brief submitted to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Weld joined Our America Initiative's 2016 Liberty Tour a number of times, speaking alongside other libertarian leaders and activists such as Law Enforcement Against Prohibition executive director and former Baltimore Police Chief Neill Franklin, Free the People's Matt Kibbe, Republican activists Ed Lopez and Liz Mair, Conscious Capitalism's Alex McCobin, Reason Foundation's David Nott, Foundation for Economic Education's Jeffrey Tucker, the Libertarian Party's Carla Howell, and author and journalist Naomi Wolf; the tour raised "awareness about third party inclusion in national presidential debates" and "spread the message of liberty and libertarian thought."

Throughout 2017 and 2018, Weld appeared at several state Libertarian Party conventions and endorsed various Libertarian candidates in the 2018 United States elections. In January 2019, Weld changed his party affiliation back to Republican, in preparation for his presidential run as a Republican.

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