一位前共和党州长是2020年共和党竞选的长期候选人，他说唐纳德·特朗普总统对媒体的攻击使用了独裁者的言论。
1991年至1997年担任马萨诸塞州共和党州长的比尔·韦尔德（Bill Weld）早在本周就表示，特朗普因向乌克兰总统沃拉迪米尔·泽伦斯基（Volodymyr Zelensky）施加压力，要求其调查民主党领先者乔·拜登（Joe Biden）和他的儿子亨特（Hunter），被指控犯有叛国罪。
他告诉MSNBC，特朗普犯有“叛逆，纯洁和简单的罪行。根据美国法典，对叛国罪的处罚是死刑”。
在《商业内幕》（Business Insider）主持的一次共和党初选辩论中，韦德与国会议员乔·沃尔什（Joe Walsh）正面交锋，要求总统对媒体的袭击负责。
韦尔德说： “当总统说新闻自由是'人民的敌人'时，这直接来自贝尼托·墨索里尼和阿道夫·希特勒的剧本，以及历史上许多其他独裁者的剧本。
他说：“这简直让我感到不寒而栗，”他补充说，他相信特朗普已经表明“他想一一摧毁包括自由和公正选举在内的我们的民主体制，并击倒所有这些树木，直到出现没有什么可以抵抗他的。
“他家中有一本书，叫做《阿道夫·希特勒的伟大演说》，根据他的第一次离婚审判的证词，这是他最喜欢的书之一。
他补充说：“这家伙就在那儿，我们在最近几个月开始看到他脱胶，现在是时候将他撤职了，这将挽救我们所有人。”
周二，众议院议长南希·佩洛西宣布对特朗普进行正式弹劾调查。
韦德曾在美国众议院司法委员会任职，该委员会分析了1974年弹Richard理查德·尼克松的法律依据。
在2018年6月对伦敦的访问中，前特别顾问罗伯特·穆勒（Robert Mueller）发表报告称俄罗斯干预2016年大选之前，韦尔德表示，弹Trump特朗普的案子比尼克松的案子强。
韦德在2016年美国大选中与加里·约翰逊（Gary Johnson）担任自由党副总统候选人时曾与特朗普进行过抗争。他们没有赢得选举大学的选票，但在全国范围内的确获得了四百五十万张选票，这是特朗普最高的一次。自1996年以来为第三方。
9月初，威尔德，沃尔什和其他共和党挑战者，前南卡罗来纳州州长马克·桑福德在《华盛顿邮报》上发表了一篇专栏文章，批评共和党领导人和特朗普取消了四个州的总统初选。
“主要的提名过程是共和党人唯一的机会来决定谁将代表我们这一角色。行动读，请听取这些声音。
候选人是局外人。根据本月的CNN / SSRS投票，特朗普在共和党人中的支持率仍为88％。
Aformer Republican governor who is a long-shot candidate for the GOP race in the 2020 election has said that President Donald Trump's attacks on the media use the kind of rhetoric that dictators do.
Already this week, Bill Weld, who was Massachusetts Republican Governor between 1991 and 1997, said Trump is guilty of treason over allegations that he pressured the president of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate Democrat frontrunner Joe Biden and his son Hunter.
He told MSNBC that Trump was guilty of "treason, pure and simple. And the penalty for treason, under the U.S. Code, is death".
In a Republican primary debate hosted by Business Insider, Weld went head-to-head with Congressman Joe Walsh, taking the president to task over his attacks on the media.
Weld said: "When the president said a free press is the 'enemy of the people', that is straight from the playbook of Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler and many, many other dictators through history.
"It just sent a chill down my spine," he said, adding that he believes Trump has given indications that "he wants to dismantle our democratic institutions including free and fair elections, one by one, and knock down all those trees until there is nothing resisting him.
"He has a book in his house, called The greatest speeches of Adolf Hitler, which according to the testimony of his first divorce trial, is one of his favorite books.
"This guy is just way out there, we have begun to see in the last few months him coming unglued and it is time for him to be removed and that's going to save us all," he added.
On Tuesday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced the formal impeachment inquiry of Trump.
Weld worked on the U.S. House Judiciary Committee that analyzed the legal grounds to impeach Richard Nixon back in 1974.
On a visit to London in June 2018, before the report came out by former special counsel Robert Mueller into claims of Russian interference in the 2016 election, Weld said that the case to impeach Trump was stronger than Nixon's.
Weld fought against Trump when he was the vice-presidential candidate with Gary Johnson for the Libertarian Party in the U.S. election in 2016. They won no electoral college votes, but did get more than four and a half million votes nationally, the highest for a third party since 1996.
Earlier in September, Weld, Walsh and the other GOP challenger, former South Carolina governor, Mark Sanford wrote an op-ed in The Washington Post criticizing Republican leaders and Trump over the cancellation of Presidential primaries in four states.
"The primary nomination process is the only opportunity for Republicans to have a voice in deciding who will represent our part. Let those voices be heard, the op-ed read.
The candidates are rank outsiders. According to a CNN/SSRS Poll this month, Trump still has an 88 percent approval rating among Republicans.
