BANGOR, Maine — Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s lewd comments are “just another illustration of who he is,” said Libertarian Party vice presidential candidate Bill Weld during a town hall meeting on Saturday in Bangor.
Yet no one should underestimate Trump’s political skill at appealing to disaffected Americans, Weld told an audience of about 125 supporters at the Spectacular Event Center and about 1,700 more over the internet.
Trump has done a remarkable job of stirring “envy, resentment and rage wherever jobs have been lost,” the lawyer and former two-term Republican governor of Massachusetts said. “He has played that very skillfully, to the hilt.”
“It’s not an attractive picture,” Weld added.
Weld is running with former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson on the Libertarian ticket this year.
Johnson and Weld also made a campaign appearance in Maine in late August, stopping in Portland and Lewiston.
The pair fell short of their goal to reach the polling threshold to appear in debates with Trump and Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, but they still have hopes of gaining enough political support to have a definitive impact upon the presidential race, Weld said.
Weld, who has said he hopes of denying Trump the Oval Office and giving himself a role in helping rebuild the Republican Party, answered questions from the audience and moderators Chris Dixon, a BDN blogger, and Mark Brewer. His responses gave the audience a tour of local, national and international issues during the two-hour meeting.
Speaking of the Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument, Weld said he felt that President Barack Obama should have consulted more with state residents before issuing an executive order creating the monument on Aug. 24. That answer drew a round of applause.
He declared that if elected, he and Johnson would make China and Russia their foreign-policy priorities. Neither country’s government is “all that stable,” Weld said, but China could be useful in tamping down North Korea’s aggressiveness.
He said he would work to use China’s powerful influence on North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un to keep North Korea in check.
“There are all kinds of conversations you could have with him [Kim Jong-un] with everybody who is friends of his,” Weld said.
He called Putin “the worst actor” among foreign leaders on the international stage and said that America has to get much tougher on Russia than Trump would be — or the Obama administration has been.
“We have to think about what Poland and Hungary are going to say when we say that we’re not even going to defend them against attack when our NATO treaty compel us to,” Weld said.
Under Trump, Republicans have “cut loose from decades of preaching fiscal responsibility and restraint,” calling the GOP “quite mean-spirited.” Democrats, meanwhile, are pursuing a “nanny-state” philosophy of big government.
Obamacare should not be repealed, he said, but refined. Weld applauded it getting 20 million people added to health insurance rolls but said that it’s ruled too much by insurance companies and not enough by doctors and patients.
He favors allowing Americans to shop for pharmaceuticals in Canada and health-care plans across state lines.
Though support for the Libertarian presidential ticket is dwarfed by support for the major-party candidates, it could be a banner year for Libertarians, particularly in Maine. Recent polling has shown Johnson with around 10 percent support here.
Parallel with the presidential race, Libertarians are in the midst of forming an official political party in Maine. The next step in that process is for at least 10,000 registered Libertarians to vote in the Nov. 8 election.
BDN writer Christopher Cousins contributed to this report.