HUDSON – In his return to New Hampshire, one of the few Republicans putting his hat in the ring against incumbent president Donald Trump, former Mass. Gov. Bill Weld stopped at the Old Home Days event in Hudson to meet and greet residents from around the area.

Weld walked through the festival, shaking hands, talking politics and enjoying the festive atmosphere on his second Old Homes Day festival, after stopping in Belmont early, prior to heading off to Ohio.

A known fiscal conservative, as he was ranked at the top of the category during his time as governor, Weld hopes to cut the national budget while also acknowledging climate change.

Weld said he believes Trump is unqualified in both the domestic or international realm, believing that he poses a better option to lead the nation.

In an interview with The Telegraph on Saturday, Weld said he isn’t buying into any of the president’s policies and actions, whether it be alienating the country’s allies, making friends with dictators across the globe, ending trade agreements or causing a divide on the home-front as he seeks to move the country in a more autocratic direction.

As a member of the Council on Foreign Relations who led 16 trade mission as Massachusetts governor, Weld questioned Trump’s foreign policy qualifications, stating that he is ill prepared to lead the nation in international affairs while highlighting the president’s vocal opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership as an example.

“He said we should not join the Trans-Pacific Partnership, because it would be dominated by China; China was not even a member,” Weld said. “He didn’t even know that. He’s had no preparation in the international area for being the president of the United States.”

Weld also pointed to other actions the president has taken in foreign affairs that concerns him, including continuing to make friends with leaders who act as dictators and ripping up treaties with allies with very little regard.

“He has made a practice of insulting allies, cozying up to dictators, ripping up treaties with our allies, very little thought,” Weld said. “I mean, he doesn’t understand a lot about foreign policy.”

While he is a fiscal conservative, Weld told many of the people he talked with at the event that he is trying to engage Democrats to come out and vote in the Republican primary and with a similar stance on certain issues which they have been touting throughout their campaigns. He believes he is a strong alternative.

With many of the Democrats backing policies that Weld believes aren’t viable, including the Green New Deal, he said he is more concerned with bringing his Zero Base Budget policy to a national scale as a way to help cut the national deficit, which has reached more than $22.5 trillion.

“You start out assuming that every appropriation in the budget is going to be zero unless it really did some good stuff the previous year, that’s why it’s called zero-base,” Weld said about the policy. “That’s the only way you can really cut spending.”

“If you do what they do in Washington and you start out with last year’s appropriation plus 5%, you’re never going to cut the overall budget,” he added.

While he acknowledges the importance of environmental issues, and the need to address climate change – something that he is more aligned with Democrats on – Weld said that the candidates across the aisle take many of those issues too far, touting policies he thinks are an unreasonable ask, pointing out the Green New Deal as something that would never pass.

I pay a lot of attention to environmental issues and climate change, so I would be more over to the Democrats corner on that one, although they take it a little too far,” Weld said. “Some of them do anyways.”

“The Green New deal says we’re going to guarantee everyone a basic income whether or not they are willing to work,” he continued. “You can’t do that in the United States, people will never vote for that.”

Mathew Plamondon can be reached at 594-1244 or mplamondon@nashuatelegraph.com, @telegraph_MatP.