“It is important that we recognize their frustrations,” Kasich said. “It is important to recognize that there are challenges that we face — challenges of job insecurity and a lack of rising wages, and a frustration that their children may not inherit the kind of life that they inherited from their parents. That is to be recognized. But it isn’t to be used to drive people down — it isn’t used to divide people.”
“If our rhetoric is negative, if our rhetoric is divisive, we will not solve these problems that the American people expect us to fix,” he said.
Trump apparently still has the governor’s support if he becomes the party’s nominee, although, “It makes it extremely difficult,” Kasich said.
Kasich, at times angry and defiant, expressed disappointment with media coverage of the presidential campaign, and predicted that against uphill odds he will be the GOP nominee for president.
“What I would say to you is we’ll see where this whole thing goes,” Kasich said, when asked a second time if he would support Trump. “I’m going to be the Republican nominee. I’m going to win Ohio, and do not be surprised if I go to the convention with the largest number of delegates. We have a thousand delegates yet to pick — so don’t be thinkin’ that it isn’t possible for me not to go there with great strength. Because it can happen.”
Other candidates finally are seeing the wisdom of taking the positive approach, Kasich said.
“I’m pleased to see that the other candidates in the last debate began to realize that name-calling, that lowering the bar on American politics is not acceptable,” Kasich said. “And I believe they have learned, at least in the last debate, that ideas matter, that vision matters, that policies matter, and giving people hope matters.”
“Frankly, the coverage of this campaign has been disappointing,” Kasich said. “Because it seems as though the attention goes to those who call names. I refused to do it this entire campaign. Even if it meant that I would be ignored, even if it meant that I would lose.”
A day earlier, the other two GOP opponents of Trump had spoken out against violence at his rallies, while Kasich was silent when asked about it.
“Just to see Americans slugging themselves at a political rally deeply disturbed me. We’re better than that. We’re a nation that overcomes obstacles and challenges,” Kasich said Saturday. “I’m just reminded of when we worked together, in light of some terrible, terrible situations in Ohio, where we brought police and community together.”
He gave two reasons for his silence on Friday: First, he doesn’t watch much TV news, he said.
Also: “You don’t get down in the mud and wrestle. You have a broader vision,” Kasich said. “Now, yesterday, when they asked me about the violence, I didn’t know what you were talking about, because I didn’t see it. But I saw it last night, and put a statement up last night, and I’m sort of to the point where I’ve had enough of this.”
The biggest day in Kasich’s campaign will be Tuesday, when Ohioans turn out for the GOP primary. He announced in late February that if he doesn’t win his home state he will drop out of the race.
Just up Interstate 75 from where Kasich gave his remarks at the Sharonville Convention Center on Saturday, Trump is expected to speak at 2 p.m. today at The Savannah Center, at 5533 Chappell Crossing Blvd., in West Chester.
In a brash anti-Kasich ad Trump’s campaign unveiled on Friday, the billionaire businessman and reality television star blasts Kasich as a senior executive at Lehman Brothers, whose 2008 collapse helped spark the financial crisis that led to the Great Recession.
On Friday, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio’s communications director, Alex Conant, said on CNN’s This Hour program that Rubio supporters should vote for Kasich in Ohio, to prevent Trump from taking all Ohio’s 66 delegates. That statement came with the insinuation that Kasich voters should support Rubio in Florida, in an attempt to gain a brokered political convention in Cleveland.
Kasich has rejected the idea of asking his voters to support Rubio in Florida in an attempt to gain a brokered convention, where delegates would be free to vote for other candidates after the first ballot, if Trump would fail to gain the required 1,237 delegates on the first vote.
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