Libertarian vice presidential candidate Bill Weld said he was inundated with dozens of phone calls and emails last week telling him to drop out of his campaign for the White House, after rumors were “planted” by Hillary Clinton’s team that he might drop out of the race and endorse Clinton.

“Obviously the call had gone out from somewhere,” Weld, the former Massachusetts governor, said today during an appearance on Boston Herald Radio. “And I’ve got to think directly or indirectly, it’s from the Clinton campaign.”

Asked about speculation that Weld might drop off the ticket after the party’s low poll numbers barred Johnson from inclusion in tonight’s first debate, Weld said that rumor was “completely planted by the Clinton campaign.”

He then recounted how he had received more than two dozens e-mails on a Friday — and 25 calls to his office last Monday — warning him that his campaign could play spoiler to Clinton’s.

“I got 25 emails from people I don’t know saying unless you renounce your candidacy immediately, you’ll spoil this and elect Donald Trump, and you’ll go down in history as a complete pariah and your name will be hissing and a byword over the generations. And your family will be in disgrace forever,” Weld said.

“Then on Monday,” he added, “they must have circulated my telephone at the office because I got 25 phone messages, phone calls — believe me when I tell you I wasn’t taking them — saying the same thing.”

A Boston Herald-Franklin Pierce University poll today found the race in a dead-heat, with the Johnson-Weld ticket at 6 percent — enough to cost Clinton or Trump a crucial edge but far under the 15 percent threshold needed to get on the debate stage.

Johnson, a former New Mexico governor, has had to overcome his own high-profile gaffes, including saying, “What is Aleppo?” when asked during a TV appearance about his strategy for handling the bloodshed in the Syrian city.

Weld said he and Johnson have no intention of dropping out, and insisted the Libertarians still hope to make one of the remaining debates.

“We’re going to press our case to the voters,” said Weld, who governed in Massachusetts in the 1990s as a Republican before joining Johnson’s ticket this year. “It’s not going to kill anybody if we say, ‘OK here’s our position, vote Libertarian if you agree with us.’ We think a lot of people are Libertarians, they just might not know it. … We’re going to play it straight. We’re going to play straight baseball here.”

The Clinton campaign did not immediately respond to Weld’s accusations.

Clinton and Donald Trump are primed for their first face-to-face debate tonight in New York.

Weld said he expects Trump to be his usual “brisk, even flip self” but that the billionaire Republican would be wise to be somewhat restrained.

“I don’t think he’s going to be over the top,” Weld said. “If he avoids being over the top, he wins, in a way.”

Meanwhile, Weld said he thinks Clinton should point out the many inaccurate or embellished statements Trump has made throughout the campaign.

“She’s meticulously prepared and she can say, ‘All right, Mr. Trump, you have to live in the real world as president of the United States. Here are seven things you’ve said in the last 30 days that are flat out not true. … Do you think we want a president who lies consistently?’ That’s better line of attack,” Weld said.