September 30, 2016 | No Comments
Bill Weld, Libertarian Party presidential nominee Gary Johnson’s running, suggested Friday that Hillary Clinton may be the best-qualified candidate for president.
“I’m not sure anyone’s more qualified to be president of the United States than Hillary Clinton right now,” Weld told MSNBC’s Chuck Todd on Friday.
Weld, the former governor of Massachusetts, had been asked by Todd whether he considered Johnson to be more qualified than Clinton, but he declined to explicitly vouch for the top of his own ticket.
Weld did couch his Clinton praise, adding “that’s not the end of the inquiry.
And he. said Johnson would make a better president than Clinton because of his command of fiscal policy and ability to deliver balanced budgets. “I think the next president has to do that or we’re going to hollow out the economy, and we won’t have the strength economically to do all the wonderful things that Senator Sanders and Secretary Clinton have promised are all going to be for free.”
Johnson, a former New Mexico governor, is running a distant third in the tight race between Clinton and Donald Trump. He has argued that neither is an acceptable option.
The Johnson campaign downplayed Weld’s statement. “Governor Weld was simply referring to her resume as a Senator and Secretary of State. It’s nothing he hasn’t said before, and he didn’t say he is voting for her,” communications director Joe Hunter said in a statement.
Yousef Saba contributed to this report.