Personally I'd be leery of removing the C++ runtime as you have no way of knowing what other apps are relying on it. If you remove the runtime and then try to run an app that relies on it that app will fail. Unlike, say .NET, having later major versions doesn't cause older software to automatically use them.
Starting with VS 2015 MS hasn't changed the major version # of the C++ runtime. Instead each new version of VS uses a minor update to the base v14 runtime. At least between 2015 and 2019 all the runtime versions are compatible. This can of course change in the future but will then result in a newer v15 runtime. So if you build your app in VS 2015/2017/2019 then you only need at least the version of the runtime that your code compiled against. Newer versions are fine.
As for your error I believe it might be explained here. At the bottom of this article it mentions an explicit installation block is in place such that you cannot install an older C++ runtime (v14x) on a machine that already has a newer version installed. There is no reason to as apps will be using the newer version anyway. So I'm going to guess you already have the VS 2019 (v142 I think) runtime installed and therefore cannot install any older versions including VS 2015/2017 (v140, v141).