Original article published on IJR by Bradley Cortright (ijr.com) available here
2020 presidential hopeful former Massachusetts Gov. Bill Weld (R) told Yahoo Finance that he hopes Senate Republicans vote to remove President Donald Trump from office, saying it would set a “valuable precedent.”
Weld, who is running in the Republican primary for president, said that he hopes Senate Republicans vote to remove Trump from office if lawmakers vote to impeach him in the House, calling impeachment an “insurance policy.”
He also said he hopes to run against Vice President Mike Pence for the nomination:
“I hope it’s Mike Pence. I hope the Republicans are going to remove this guy. That’s our insurance policy, among other things, against him spending a billion dollars on Facebook ads and essentially buying the election. That sort of thing could happen in this guy’s hands, I worry about that. I think the guy’s a menace to the Republic.”
Weld continued to say he doesn’t think the removal of Trump from office would “be a bad precedent,” rather that it would establish “guard rails for what a president can do”:
“I don’t think this would be a bad precedent having the Senate vote to remove him. I think it could be a valuable precedent against the day when we might have another Nero or dictator come along and try to take away our liberties as a country. ”
In September, Weld suggested to MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough that Trump’s phone call to Ukranian President Volodymyr Zelensky could be treasonous and mentioned that the penalty for treason is death, as IJR has previously reported.
Though Weld proposed a “plea deal” in which Trump is removed from office and spared the death penalty.
Trump has repeatedly argued that his political opponents are using impeachment as a political tool to remove him from office and make it easier for them to win the presidential election.
