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Trump challenger Bill Weld warns that refusing to condemn the president’s racism would cost Republicans.

From The Guardian’s Lauren Gambino who is at the NAACP-hosted town hall in Detroit, Michigan:

Former Massachusetts governor Bill Weld, who is challenging Donald Trump for the Republican nomination, warned that his party’s refusal to condemn the president’s racism could inflict lasting damage.

“Unless the national Republican Party in Washington expressly, expressly rejects the racism of Donald Trump, it will become universally viewed as the party of racism in America,” Weld said at a presidential town hall hosted by the NAACP in Detroit.



How to respond to Trump was “not a political choice” but “a moral choice,” Weld said.



Weld is the only Republican challenging Trump for the nomination, a reality that underscores the president’s enduring popularity with the party’s base. Trump’s most outspoken critics in Congress have virtually all resigned or lost re-election – a warning sign to any member who considers speaking out.

After Trump’s attacks on four congresswomen of color last week, most Republicans simply shrugged.

A Reuters poll found that Trump’s support among Republicans climbed in the days after he told lawmakers to “go back” to the countries where they are from, a slur that is often directed at non-white Americans and immigrants. All four Democratic congresswomen – Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar and Ayanna Pressley – are US citizens and only one, Omar, was not born in the US.