Gov. Weld i almost ran for president in 1996 and i thought about it before. Ive been a longtime student of the conduct of the office of the presidency. I knew mr. Reagan, both bushes. I was involved in both of mitt romneys campaigns, so not a stranger to the general precincts here, i have a lot of domestic experience, a lot of International Experience which i will tell you about but im not running because i think im the only person who can make a difference, im running because im troubled by the situation of our country and i think we are at something of an Inflection Point and i think the most urgent duty facing the next president is to seek to unify the country as opposed to dividing it. [applause] gov. Weld there are a bunch of things you can do there. One is to do what Ronald Reagan did and the bushes and certainly eisenhower who i dont really remember, but a past generation wanted to make all americans feel good about being americans and thats not what the Current Administration is doing. So part of whats being is lack of unity is washington is trying to divide this as opposed to unifying it starting with religion with the muslims going onto race with the mexicans being murderers and rapists and an effort is made to have us be resentful about people from other countries and even resentful about other groups of americans and that is not the way to go. I think a start in achieving this objective of unifying people is to realize that in our country today as a result of a lot of things, the rich are too rich and the poor are too poor and thats not good for social cohesion. So i do think effort has to be made to make the federal income tax burden on the poor less heavy than it is now. It is really not fair and im not one of those who say we are going to give everyone a guaranteed basic income it regardless of whether theyre willing to work, that is not my cup of tea. When i was in office i put in a work requirement for welfare and welfare rolls immediately dropped in the state of massachusetts. That begin the model for the federal law. I think we need to increase the earned income tax credit for the working poor to make sure the door to the middle class is not slammed in their face of the working poor. That would again be very bad for social cohesion. We are all one country and we should feel that way, we should not spend all of our time listening to someone try to persuade us that some brown person is going to come across the southern border, the Mexican Border and take our jobs. Further kindling economic insecurity or harm or wife or children. It is demagoguery of the firstorder. I think it is a move may i say on taxes, ive never met a tax cut i didnt like. I cut taxes 21 times in my years in massachusetts but never raised them and the result was that the Business Community got the confidence to build a plant next door, to increase employment, to invest in a plant or equipment and that helped unemployment. In my first term we went from the highest Unemployment Rate in the industrialized states to the lowest. So that is number one. Unification of the country. Number two, i dont think we should seek to divide people by generation. The current policy. Really disfavoring millenials into gen xers, they will pay the bill for all these excessive things being done in washington. They will pay the bill for the 1 trillion a year in deficit spending. It will pay the bill for the 9 trillion added to the deficit by the president s last budget. Its going to be the millenials who are now the largest voting bloc. They will also reap the whirlwind from any failure to make any effort to reduce the Carbon Emissions of our country in order to prevent the polar ice caps from melting in the relatively near future. Climate change may be something of a misnomer, because climate does go back and forth and this plays out in geologic terms, but it is not a misnomer to say that if we make no effort to reduce co2 emissions between now and 2040, 2050, that polarize cap is going to melt if we go up two degrees fahrenheit every year. The result is a huge storm surge on our coast. Rearrangement of our coastline. A lot of shore run just shorefront property that isnt now that doesnt want to be. The melting of every Mountain Glacier around the world which is the sole source of Drinking Water for 300 million people. We have to get more realistic than a one word platform. The right is having oneword platforms. Wall, hoax, you dont have to argue the issues because he doesnt have a deep bench so to speak in terms of being able to debate big on that. [applause] host those were 8 gov. Weld those were a couple of issues. Politically, my strategy is to trying get more people voting as opposed to less. No more voter suppression. [applause] gov. Weld get more people in, get more millenials voting, get more women voting. I dont just mean suburban moderate women, i mean all women. If i were a woman today i would be plenty exercised by the statutes that have been passed recently saying if you are raped, you own it, you have to go bear the child and support that child. I would like to see a 99 year sentence not for the doctor who performs an abortion, but for the rapist who doesnt support that child. [applause] gov. Weld other issues i think we need to Pay Attention to, obviously the deficit spending, cant have a trillion dollars a year. Unfair to the millenials. I was ranked the most fiscally conservative governor in the United States when i was in office. I kind of think it might be mr. Trump who is the rhino, the republican in name only, because he is not a fiscal conservative. He doesnt believe in conserving the environment. He doesnt believe in free trade , he doesnt believe in all of the things the Real Republican Party used to stand for. Im unapologetic about challenging him here because i dont think he is a real republican bird [applause] republican. [applause] gov. Weld im going to fight in those states and go to some friendly states, back to the midatlantic states, when i only when i almost ran before i concentrated on new jersey and new york and there are plenty of electoral votes to begotten. The last bridge to be crossed will be the rust belt states were mr. Trump won the election. Now we know a lot more about mr. Trump than we did the day after the election last time. And if this was just early 2017, i wouldnt be standing in front of you saying im challenging mr. Trump for reelection, because we didnt know enough. It was just one speech, now it has been backed up by two years of action, steve bannon says if trump is reelected you will have four years of uninterrupted payback. Payback for what . The truth is they will continue to lash out at people and i really cant sit still with that kind of approach to the government of the United States. So that is why im running, that is what im going to focus on and i would love it since i have to get to know you in order to have traction in iowa, i would love it if you ask me your questions. Sir . What kind of spending cuts do you have in mind to control the deficit in the out years . The answer is nothing can be sacrosanct. Entitlements cant be sacrosanct, the military cant be sacrosanct and doesnt really need to be. On the military, i believe in a robust engagement. I think it is mr. Trump who is the isolationist. On the other hand i dont believe that boots on the ground to go into another country every time we see something we dont like. [applause] gov. Weld in terms of entitlement programs, and other cuts, what you have to do is what i did massachusetts which is zerobased budgeting. You have to assume every account in the budget starts at zero unless it can prove that it did good work the previous year. In washington they assume anything other than blasters appropriation plus 5 , they call it a cut. What happens is the ds want to raise social spending and the rs want to raise military spending. So they decide to raise everything 10 . And the president , this president is absolutely not only sitting still for that, but he is cheerleading it. My motto when i was in office and to this day as there is no such thing as government money, only taxpayer money. It is not government money. Believe me when i tell you, those members of congress and in the administration think it is their money, they dont think it is your money. It is your money, that will be my approach in cutting the budget. Ive reduced spending my first year in office. Cut absolute dollars. I didnt know there were sacred cows littering the landscape. I didnt even know there were cows. I was able to do that and i would bring that to washington. What do you think about the trump plan to zero out the refugee and Asylum Program . Gov. Weld its another inhumane example of the inhumanity of the trump administration. If an countries have different approaches towards asylum, i might not go all the way to france which has this unbelievable asylum and refugee tradition, but we can do our share and pull our weight. Thank you for mentioning climate change. 40 of our electric is done by wind. 2000 jobs in the solar industry. What you think about a 100 Renewable Energy economy . Gov. Weld i think we are heading in that direction. We are heading for the electric economy, we are definitely heading for a renewables fuel economy. I think wind and solar and in my part of the country hydro, we want to have all of that. The one place where i get off the boat from the boat from the Green New Deal terms of the composition of the element of the grid is i think we should go back to nuclear and im not talking about huge Nuclear Plants built on top of the barrier reef, im talking about smaller plants. I know in upstate new york, counties there are hungry for small Nuclear Plants with good employers and good neighbors. People say why dont they invent something that has zero Carbon Emissions and can produce almost limitless amounts of energy and power . The answer is they did a long time ago, it is called nuclear. Im well aware of the primacy of the wind industry in iowa and i would be in your in your corner mixer wind is is and said as incentivized as possible. [applause] gov. Weld i was sharing with some of you earlier that when the gis who fought world war ii when they came home, they are two sets of needs paired education and health care. Congress took different approaches. Educationally past the g. I. Bill which means anyone could go to any college they want and it was a voucher system and it worked perfectly. Probably mosys successful Domestic Program in history. For health care, Congress Went the other way. The government has to control everything, im on the libertarian side of the Republican Party. I want the government to control as little as possible. I want to maximize individual liberties which includes choice, not just freedom of being enslaved. My view is better and should be able to go anywhere they want with their health care and not have these waiting periods and difficulties in care. [indiscernible] if you are elected president [indiscernible] mr. Weld the burden of cancer . One thing i can say is that may that may sound trivial is that the pain that is associated with cancer can be treated with cbd, which is an ingredient of marijuana, but it is not hallucinatory. It is pretty harmless. It has been legal to study cannabis in israel for a long time. They have essentially been running a human trial of 20,000 people for the last 30 years. We know what it can do and cant do. It has been illegal to study in the United States because it reaps madness. It cuts pain of Cancer Patients by 90 90 percent. When cbd is introduced with cytotoxins which are the tumor killing agents, their efficiency is doubled in cancer victims. And that is not palliative. That is not just addressing the pain caused by cancer. That is curing cancer. Killing the tumor cells. Yes . Cant talk about climate change, you put 5000 people on one train. One train a day to springfield. What . Come on. Mr. Weld i have actually been hi spieler highspeed rail buff. I went all the way to japan and rode the train peered you do not even know you are moving. You are going 505 kilometers an hour. It is a wave of the future. Im afraid it is awfully expensive in the u. S. I ride the Commuter Rail to work every day. If you live in the south shore of massachusetts, you pretty much have to. I have long been a rail buff. The only question is expensed. I ran trains out west to houston. I get it. Speaking of trains that are going to phase out, we are going to an economy of electric vehicles, it is the electric society. If you look at the projections of fuel consumption, even over the next decade, they are projected to go way down. Our highways will look very different not so long from now. Electric vehicles and driverless cars. Yes . What do you think happened to the rest of republicans like you . Mr. Weld you might call them new england republicans. We are people who are fiscally conservative, worried about taxpayers money, but socially we are embracing and welcoming. I was invited to address the republican contract convention in houston in the early 1990s. I summarized my political philosophy as being i want the government out of your pocketbook and out of your bedroom. For this, i was bood at the convention. Maybe that was a sign of things to come. That is what i think. I think there are a lot of them still out there. Particularly in New Hampshire. I have high hopes for that state to launch me past mr. Trump in an arc. There are a lot of people i know, old friends of mine in the senate, and washington, who are keeping quiet because they think it is not in their political interest to stand up just now. Im not rubbing their nose in anything and saying louis, how can you . Dont you remember the good old days . I do not ask anyone to do anything that is not in their own political interest. Once i get traction and movement, i will increasingly be making news about where the other folks are here. I think if they do not stand up and be counted, they will be defeated. What is your stance on assault weapons . Mr. Weld assault weapons, there are 300 million rifles out there in private hands. My stance is not to have a supercharged background check on everybody every time they buy a gun because i do not think that is where you reach the shooters. I think the red flag laws, coworkers, family members say this person has been making threats, have a list of people he wanted to kill since high school, has violent behavior, is exhibiting neurotic behavior, yeah, get that person in front of a judge. You do need to have a due process protection for the accused. I think that would be a giant step toward preventing the Mass Shootings that we are talking about. And you can do research. 90 of mass shooters grew up in a household without a father. A very good predictor of Mass Shootingss previous violent behavior. Give the fbi more money to scout out these instances with the help of people who can talk about it. I hate to say it, it may disappoint some, but the idea of universal background checks and trenching on someones rights to own a gun i have been a gun owner and a hunter my whole life. Would you ban semi auto semiautomatics . What about magazines . Mr. Weld no, that is different. That is getting torn an automatic weapon. It is already the law that you cannot own an automatic weapon. Unless you are a federally licensed firearms dealer. I would not allow them to become freely salable at all. Thank you so much, everybody. [applause] [background chatter] thank you. Thanks. I think they are coming down. Look forward to seeing you. Great remarks, sir. Absolutely. Hi, everybody. Any questions . This is your first trip to iowa. Mr. Weld no, it is my first trip on the cycle. As a president ial candidate. Why should iowans take your president ial run seriously . Mr. Weld the proof of the pudding will be in the eating. They will not be able to take my candidacy seriously unless i am here and i meet them. We will do the necessary things to make to be a possible contender in the caucus. If you mean why should they take it seriously because mr. Trump is massively popular among the republican structure in each state, i would say that is because the republican structure in each state is the trump organization. Of course they are not going to get out and salute me. I will keep talking to people about what i think needs to be done in this country, and what im going to do and they can make up their own mind. American voters are very smart. Over time, im hopeful that what i will sketch out is going to sink in and i am awful also hopeful that it will sink in that mr. Trump is getting more and more antic in his striking out at people and do people really want that in the white house . Not to beat a dead horse, everyone is aware of those aspects of mr. Trumps very public wrestling with his own demons. The main thing is what do i want to do . You dont have to buy my dog food but im hopeful over time, people will. Does your party have a race problem . Mr. Weld absolutely. Trumps not racist mr. Weld i said in detroit that the naacp on july 24, he is an extreme racist. If the Republican Party in washington, i think the states in washington, but the Republican Party in washington does not as a vow his racist tirades, they will go down in massive defeat in 2020. I saw this happen in the nixon year when a lot of people, very honorable republicans who engaged in the draining effort of defending Richard Nixon all year long and then it turned out when the tapes were released he had been lying to the American People about everything, they all lost. No questions asked. One was from iowa i believe. That will happen next year if they do not disavow his racism. My answer to your question is yes, he is a racist. The first thing i said when i heard about will heard is i hope you can hang on to scout. You talked about how people are keeping quiet. Who . Mr. Weld i will wait until the moment is right. Frankly, it