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Libertarian VP Candidate Bill Weld Says Trump’s Deportation Plan Like Kristallnacht

The former Massachusetts Governor says some of Trump’s policies are ‘way out there’

by
Jonathan Zalman
May 23, 2016
Luke Frazza/AFP/Getty Images
Former Massachusetts Gov. William Weld, during a press conference at the White House in Washington, D.C., September 15, 1997. Luke Frazza/AFP/Getty Images
Luke Frazza/AFP/Getty Images
Former Massachusetts Gov. William Weld, during a press conference at the White House in Washington, D.C., September 15, 1997. Luke Frazza/AFP/Getty Images

Welcome back to #TrumpWatch, where Tablet presents the daily low-lights of Donald Trump’s attempt to use the dark forces of bigotry to become President of the United States. Today, let’s turn our attention to Bill Weld, a name I’ve not heard since the ’90s, when he was the Governor of Massachusetts. (But hey, it’s the 2016 Presidential Election cycle—’tis the season!)

Last Thursday, The New York Times published snippets of its interview with the former two-term Republican governor, whose politics now align with the Libertarian Party. He’s currently seeking the vice presidency as the running mate of Gary Johnson, the former Governor of New Mexico, who’s running for POTUS on the Libertarian ticket.

“I can hear the glass crunching on Kristallnacht in the ghettos of Warsaw and Vienna when I hear that, honest,” said Weld, referring to the night of November 9, 1938, when the Nazis executed a nationwide pogrom against Germany’s Jews.

Mr. Weld, 70, was not uniformly critical of the presumptive Republican nominee. “I don’t consider myself part of the Never Trump movement,” he said, expressing admiration for Mr. Trump’s success in the primary contest.



“I’m not horrified about everything Mr. Trump has done at all,” he said, adding: “I think he’s done a lot. But when I think about some of the positions, I think they’re way out there.”



Where he differs with Mr. Trump most sharply is on Mr. Trump’s call for mass deportations.



Asked if he believed Mr. Trump was a fascist, Mr. Weld demurred. “My Kristallnacht analogy does evoke the Nazi period in Germany,” he said. “And that’s what I’m worried about: a slippery slope.”



After a circuitous answer, he eventually came to a conclusion. “No, I wouldn’t call Mr. Trump either a fascist or a Nazi,” Mr. Weld said. “I’m just saying, we got to watch it when we get exclusionary about people on account of their status as a member of a group.”

On Sunday, Weld—who served on the U.S. Holocaust Commission under George W. Bush and was nearly appointed ambassador to Mexico by Bill Clinton in 1997 before that—didn’t back away from his comments, telling CNN:

“I’m absolutely certain that, as we said in those years, if we don’t remember, we absolutely will forget.



“And you got to forget a lot of things to think it’s a good idea to round up and deport 11 million people living peaceably, most of them working in America, in the middle of the night,” Weld added. “No, not the United States. China, maybe. Not the United States.”

On Monday, Weld again stood by his comments, telling (again) CNN: “It reminds me of Anne Frank hiding in her attic waiting for the Nazi sirens to pass by and evokes the memory—not the memory, I was not alive, but the notion of Kristallnacht.”

In sum: Though Weld likens a night during which tens of thousands of Jews were sent to concentration camps to Trump’s plan to deport America’s illegal immigrants, he’s also not diametrically opposed to Trump’s candidacy; just that “way out there” bit. This serves as a good time to revisit Trump’s original comments regarding his desire to round up and deport illegal immigrants within, oh, say, 18 months or two years.

Related: Trump Watch

Jonathan Zalman is a writer and teacher based in Brooklyn.