Former Massachusetts governor Bill Weld, who’s thrown his hat into the ring as a contender for the 2020 Republican party nomination, has said that President Donald Trump is using his border wall rhetoric as a “scare tactic” to keep his voter base “angry” at others.
“The president has used that as a scare tactic to try and make people people who feel some economic risk in the United States,” Weld said last month, according to the Hill, about the president’s push for a border wall. “That there are all kinds of brown people coming across the Mexican border who are going to take their job and ravaged their wife, so that they are filled with resentment.”
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“He thinks it’s in his political interest to have everybody in the United States angry at some other group,” he concluded.
While Weld said that securing the border with Mexico is important, he claims that Trump isn’t going about the task in the right way.
“We do need a secure border,” he told Hill.TV. “Most experts—Homeland Security experts—will tell you that you get that with more people, more border patrol agents, more judges so you can process the claims for refugees and asylum.”
“There’s some real brick-and-mortar construction to be done there as well but not a fixation,” he added later.
Weld is one of two Republican challengers competing against Trump for the 2020 Republican nomination. The other is Joe Walsh. Both bids are considered longshot chances as the Trump’s voter base has remained secure throughout his presidency. Weld is currently pulling in one percent, compared to Trump’s 86 percent in a FiveThirtyEight 2020 Tracker poll. Four states have also recently cancelled GOP debates, angering Weld and Walsh’s campaigns.
Weld told Hill T.V., “if I win the New Hampshire primary, all bets are off… That would ordinarily be fatal for a sitting president.” Trump thinks he “can persuade people—certainly the farmers in the Midwest,” he added. “The president’s tariff policies has been bad for them and they know that now.”
Plans for the President’s border wall, a long-promised dividing line along the U.S.-Mexico border, has been delayed numerous times after plans to have the Mexican government pay for it fell through. Trump promised that Mexico would pay for the wall during his 2016 campaign.
Jared Kushner has allegedly been placed in charge of mounting the next phase of the border wall project, which will involve multiple eminent domain purchases as the next 450 miles of fresh wall are built. The President allegedly considers it paramount that this be done by Election Day 2020.
