Kasich talks Trump, Hillary and the 2016 race
Forget what the polls might say. Ohio Gov. John Kasich believes his Republican presidential campaign has enough momentum now that voters are starting to get a taste of his brand of political soft drink.
“It’s sorta like, ‘Coke, Pepsi, Kasich,’” he told Yahoo News’ Katie Couric from Monroe, Mich., on Monday. “‘I don’t think I like Coke or Pepsi all that much, and this Kasich, kinda interesting, but I don’t know much about him … so maybe I ought to go with the standard brands.’”
According to a Monmouth University poll released Monday, Kasich is gaining ground in Michigan, which holds its primary on Tuesday.
“I never thought I would really win here,” Kasich said. “I think finally people are starting to hear my message. And there isn’t any doubt that the last debate helped me because I was finally able to speak more. You know, we were sitting in the debate hall and the first 12 or 13 minutes they didn’t call on me, and people in the crowd were yelling my name, like, ‘Call on the guy, already.’”
But the Ohio governor dismissed a recent Quinnipiac University poll that showed him trailing Republican frontrunner Donald Trump by five points in his home state.
“He’s not ahead of me. These polls are goofy,” Kasich said. “It’s not legitimate.”
Kasich admitted, however, that Trump has tapped into “legitimate anxiety” among the GOP electorate.
“The key is to explain to these people who have this legitimate anxiety about the path forward, about who can actually diagnose the problem, treat it and fix it,” he said. “And that’s what I’ve been doing.”
And according to the governor, there’s still a long way to go in the race for the Republican nomination.
“We’re probably at halftime,” Kasich said. “If you’re an NBA fan, you kinda watch the fourth quarter, you know? I mean, we know what happens in the fourth quarter.”
“Many people never thought I’d be the last governor standing,” he noted. “And we’re having momentum. So we’ll see how it goes, day after day, one foot in front of the other. Like climbing Mount Everest.”
Kasich also blasted Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton’s call for Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder to resign over the water crisis in Flint.
“I think he has been held accountable. I think this is a guy who has had many sleepless nights,” Kasich said. “When Hillary starts talking ‘He should resign,’ what about the server in her house and the possibility she had classified information on that server?”
“That is demagoguery out of her,” he added. “I know her, and I don’t like that. I’m really agitated with the fact that here she is calling on someone else to resign, with her history and the history of her family? Give me a break.”
