Bill Weld compares Gary Johnson to Lincoln

Bill Weld compared the gaffe-prone presidential contender on his ticket, Gary Johnson, to Abraham Lincoln in an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper on Wednesday.

“He kind of — don't laugh. He kind of reminds me in many ways of Abraham Lincoln, another great truth-teller of his time,” Weld said.


He was defending Johnson’s previous blunders, including the infamous “Aleppo moment” when the presidential candidate pleaded ignorance about the beleaguered Syrian city. “Okay. I'll give you that. We would like to have those two sentences back. No question," Weld said when Tapper challenged the notion that Johnson is simply bad at pop quizzes. "Gary is quick to assign blame to himself and to take responsibility. Not always the hallmark of a practicing politician. But he is a very humble guy. He is very ambitious and very strong, but he has tremendous humility,” he said before making the Lincoln comparison.

Weld also pushed back against Democrats who he says have been contacting him to drop out of the race. “I’m certainly getting a lot of free legal advice from Democrats, some who I know and some who I don't know, who are sending me e-mails and telephone calls at private numbers saying you got to get off the ticket, you’ll be a disgrace, it will be a shame on your family if Trump is elected. But that’s just because they don't want millennial votes peeled off from Mrs. Clinton,” he said.

He continued, saying, “Everybody wants us off this ticket, you know, it's kind of flattering in a way. But I think there’s more — like to go hunting where the ducks are. I mean, I’m a duck hunter. And I think there’s more ducks to be hunted on the Republican side of the aisle. Which is why I'm going to focus on Mr. Trump's foreign policy pronouncements without failing to say I think the fiscal and military policies of Mrs. Clinton are not what's called for here."