by Kitty Testa
After a bizarre spate of articles, which started by a piece in the Boston Globe, Bill Weld was forced to affirm to the country that he is solidly backing Gary Johnson for President and that he is enthusiastically still running for Vice President.
Here are some of those headlines, beginning with Boston Globe, and some of those that picked up the story and ran with it, The Daily Caller, New York Magazine and the New York Daily News.
The problem with all these headlines is that they’re simply not true. Weld told Reason magazine that the Boston Globe took his comments out of context by excluding all of his statements related to why Hillary Clinton is not the best candidate for President.
The same rumor was started back in September, to which Gary Johnson replied, “That’s bullshit.”
After the first time the rumor was floated, Weld assured the voters that these were just rumors to derail the Libertarian ticket. Weld stated on Boston Herald Radio, “Obviously the call had gone out from somewhere, and I’ve got to think directly or indirectly, it’s from the Clinton campaign.”
In addition to asserting that Weld was focusing only on defeating Donald Trump, several articles made the claim that Weld was attempting to see if a role swap putting him at the top of the ticket was allowable under the party rules. This is absurd, of course, because ballots have been printed in 50 states and early voting is underway in several states already.
This time Governor Weld took to his Facebook page in an effort to put the rumor to rest.
Additionally he championed Gary Johnson on Twitter.
The eagerness on the part of the press to undermine the Johnson-Weld ticket with baseless lies is absurd, and the willingness of so many publications to run with the story shows that their intentions do not lie in fair and impartial journalism, but in an attempt to create a false reality for political purposes.
The days are over when the Libertarian Party can be dismissed as inconsequential as more and more disaffected voters are looking for an alternative to the two-party duopoly. Clearly, Johnson and Weld are a threat to the duopoly, and the duopoly is fighting back.
