Presumptive Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump took a shot at William Weld this weekend, calling the former Massachusetts governor an alcoholic, according to The New York Times.
But despite the comment, Weld appeared conciliatory toward Trump during an interview Monday on CNN.
“I think Mr. Trump deserves a lot of credit for a lot of things he’s done this year, and I did not join the ‘Never Trump’ crew in Massachusetts, despite many invitations to do so,” Weld told CNN reporter Carol Costello.
The barb came after Weld, who is in the running to become the Libertarian candidate for vice president, compared Trump’s immigration plan to Kristallnacht, which refers to a 1938 pogrom where Nazis in Germany and Austria destroyed synagogues and Jewish owned-stores.
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“I can hear the glass crunching on Kristallnacht in the ghettos of Warsaw and Vienna when I hear that, honest,” Weld told the Times earlier this month.
On Saturday, Trump dismissed that criticism and took a dig at Weld.
“I don’t talk about his alcoholism, so why would he talk about my foolishly perceived fascism?” he told the Times through a spokeswoman.
Weld was reported to have famously enjoyed “amber-colored liquid” during his time in office. He has reportedly appeared publicly inebriated several times, including at a Rolling Stones concert in 1997 where some said he was so intoxicated that he had trouble walking, according to Globe archives. (Weld denied being drunk, saying he had only one glass of wine.)
But in an interview on Monday morning on CNN, Weld appeared to turn the other cheek on Trump’s comments.
“We’re not going to do the exchange of insults that characterized the Republican primary. I’m just going to let that ride,” Weld told CNN’s Costello, who asked Weld about Trump’s statement.
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Weld did criticize Trump for his proposed wall along the Mexican border, which Weld likened to the Berlin Wall, calling the latter “ a symbol of everything that is wrong about foreign policy.”
But Weld still offered credit to the GOP frontrunner, and repeatedly said he did not call Trump a fascist.