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We’re here in the mid of a history-making Republican presidential campaign, bringing voters face to face with the candidates, showcasing their questions and bringing it all to you at home. Joining us now is Ohio’s governor, John Kasich.

COOPER: And welcome back. There is history all around us here at downtown Milwaukee’s Riverside Theater, which opened in 1928. It was nearly destroyed by fire in 1966. It was lovingly restored in the 80s and has been at the heart of this city’s cultural life ever since. It is a magnificent theater.

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GOV. JOHN KASICH (R-OH), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: How are you?

COOPER: Good to see you. Have a seat.

All right, we got a lot of questions from the audience about a lot of policy issues. A couple of questions on news of the day. Donald Trump’s campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, charged today with simple battery. Would you fire him?

KASICH: Well, I haven’t seen the video, but they tell me the video is real. Of course I would. Look, when you have problems like that, you have to act. Now, I’ve been of course an executive running the seventh-largest state. And we see things that happen. At times, you want to give people the benefit of the doubt, but when you see things that are pretty clear – from what I understand the video is clear. Of course would fire him.

COOPER: Let’s talk about your path to the nomination. You are pinning your hopes on a contested convention. Assuming there is one, why would you be selected? You’ve only won one state, your home state, Ohio. Why would you get the nomination?

KASICH: Well, a couple of reasons, Anderson. First of all, in virtually every national poll, I am the only one that beats Hillary Clinton consistently. In fact, in the last poll that came out I was up 11 points.

Secondly, and, you know, delegates would look, for example, at, you know, can you win in the fall? I mean, it’s like a really important part of this thing, it’s not just the nomination, it’s about winning the election.

And frankly, if we do not have a strong candidate that brings people together, we have a prospect of losing the United States Senate as well.

And secondly, Anderson, at some point that people that go to a convention are going to be concerned about who actually could run the country. I mean, it’s like a big deal. You know, who could be president, who could be commander-in-chief?

And I have more experience than really all of them put together except for Mrs. Clinton. I mean, I have — you know, I served 18 years on the defense — Armed Services Committee, I was in the Pentagon after 9/11. I was chairman of the Budget Committee. I was involved in welfare reform.

When I was chairman of the Budget Committee, we balanced the budget, we had job growth. I’ve been the executive in Ohio. We’ve grown jobs.

So at some point people are going to look at two things, who can win in the fall, and secondly who could be the best president?

COOPER: But polls are one thing, though, I mean, to have only won — if it continues on this path, to have only won one state, your home state, won’t some delegates say, look, OK, the polls say he can win in a head-to-head matchup against Hillary Clinton, but the voters have spoken.

KASICH: Well, Anderson, I think it’s pretty clear and most of the people in here I think would agree with this, for most of the debates, I was completely ignored. I mean, it has been like the last three weeks to a month that people have started to pay attention to who I am and my message.

And it has fundamentally happened that way because I’ve not gotten down in the mud. I haven’t name-called. I haven’t had all these nasty sound bites. I’ve just been laying out my record and my vision for what I want to see happen.

But conventions are very interesting. Republicans have had 10 conventions. And the leader going into the convention has only been the nominee three times out of 10. Seven times out of 10 they were not.

So I think — and we’re going to do better as this calendar moves to the east. Look, now I’m starting to get on my home court, you know, — look, I went to Ohio, I won by 11 points. You know, I did very, well there.

We’re going to go to Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut. These are all places where I can do extremely well. And we will continue to accumulate delegates. And we’ll have momentum going into the convention.

And by the way, the convention is nothing more than an extension of the process we have going now. Somehow people think they’re truncated somehow, they’re disjointed. They’re not.

It’s a process of primaries. You accumulate delegates. You go to the convention. And then they pick the nominees.

COOPER: I want to ask you about terrorism. When you were asked about what happened in Brussels last week — or let’s talk about that. In terms of what U.S. response should and what the fight against ISIS should look like, you said yesterday that one of the opponents wants to make the sand glow and the other one complains about other countries not doing enough, obviously you were talking about Senator Cruz and Mr. Trump.

Why would America be safer under your watch?

KASICH: Well, Anderson, first of all, I’ve been saying for a long time and laid out an extensive program on rebuilding the military. Secondly, I’ve been the one arguing all along that we need to go after ISIS in a coalition like we had in the first Gulf War.

I was there when I saw it happen. I saw our Muslim Arab friends join us in the West, and we pushed Saddam out of Kuwait.

You know, secondly, that same coalition needs come together and we need to destroy ISIS both in the air and on the ground, settle it down and then come home. And let the regional powers draw the map.

COOPER: There are a lot of countries, Saudi Arabia, that don’t necessarily see ISIS as their predominant threat.

KASICH: Oh, no, no, no. Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, the Gulf states, they all know it’s an existential threat. They know that they — that the kingdom hangs by a thread because of the radicalism of ISIS.

And so the fact is they will join us. They joined us before against Saddam Hussein. That was not as big of a deal as this is where they’re blowing people up all over the world.

Secondly, of course, I think, Anderson, that we need really good worldwide intelligence. I think that the lemons we’re seeing can be turned into lemonade and I think a president of the United States can rally the civilized world to destroy these folks who are intent on destroying us.

And secondly, we talked about NATO. That was another thing I talked about. We need to change NATO from not just a military organization, but an intelligence-gathering and also a policing organization that works across boundaries.

All of us together, fighting together, working together, destroy ISIS, have the good human intelligence…

COOPER: Donald Trump says NATO is obsolete. Is it?

KASICH: Well, of course it’s not. That’s absurd, obsolete, OK?

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KASICH: Now, look, it’s really important that we get these countries to pitch in and do more. They’ll never do as much as we want. I mean, I lived through a whole time when we would push them, pressure them.

Part of the problem is it’s their governments over there. You know, there is too much socialism, there is too much political correctness. That’s why they didn’t even catch this thing in Brussels. And you know that the screw-ups that we saw with the intelligence.

But here’s the thing: no, NATO has an additional role now. And that is policing and intelligence gathering. You see, we need to have the Muslims working with us and the West —

COOPER: That’s critical?

KASICH: Absolutely critical. Let me tell you, Anderson, if we wanted to get information out of some radical that’s in a mosque — you’re a really great guy, but if you were three blocks from the mosque, do you think you’d get anything?

COOPER: I don’t blend very well.

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KASICH: No, you are don’t. Well, the fact is is that we want the Muslims who are — they feel as strongly as we do about these murderers out there. These Muslims, they’re the ones that have to police their own neighborhoods. And, frankly, we need the imams to come out and issue statements about how their religion has been hijacked.

But it takes all of us together. It takes us to have great human intelligence. And here in the United States we’ve got counterterrorism task forces made up of the FBI, it’s made up of Homeland Security, state and local law enforcement, and their job is to disrupt. That’s why the issue of Apple was so important because they need the resources to be able to carry out their job for all of us, but they need one other thing: they need the tools. And if they can’t hear, then it becomes a problem.

But there’s also a role for us. Because when we see something happening in our neighborhood, Anderson, we have an obligation to alert authorities as well.

COOPER: You talked about Donald Trump belittle — in an interview today, you said about Donald Trump’s foreign, “I think that’s the most ridiculous of foreign policy I ever heard. This is just somebody that just doesn’t understand foreign policy. Just doesn’t” —

KASICH: Well which part was I talking about? I don’t remember.

COOPER: I’m not sure either.

KASICH: OK. Well, I mean, I think the idea that – I’ll tell you one.

COOPER: Do you think he –

KASICH: We’re going to have a religious test on who comes in the country. So, when you come in the country, I say, well, are you a Muslim? Raise your hand if you’re a Muslim. I mean, come on, Anderson. That’s not going to work.

We’re not going to police Muslim neighborhoods. We can’t afford polarization of people who are in the civilized world. You know, there are people all over the world that know that this threat has to be stopped. It has to be destroyed, and we have to work together as a world. Because when people in Pakistan die, we all die a little bit when they blow up innocent men, women and children at an Easter service. I mean, the world understands this.

And this is an opportunity for us to be brought together. The president, by the way, went to a baseball game in Cuba instead of coming home, meeting. I’ll tell you what I would do if I were president. I would come home, I would call world leaders. I would gather my military and intelligence experts. I would find out our vulnerabilities, and I would send them to Europe. And I would say, let us look at what our problems are, and let’s fix them immediately.

COOPER: The response of the White House is often to that criticism –

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COOPER: The response of the White House to that criticism, and I want you to be able to respond to it, is often, well, look. By changing the president’s schedule, it gives power to the terrorist group that they’re able to change the leader of the free world’ s schedule and that he can do the work he needs to do on wherever location he’s at.

KASICH: So you kind of go to a baseball game, and you don’t come home?

COOPER: Well, that’s another issue.

KASICH: And – no, here’s the situation. That attack was in the heart of Europe. I mean, that was an attack on the very heart of our friends who live in Europe. Yes, I think it’s important enough to come home. Secondly —

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KASICH: — I’ll give you another one that I can’t believe. The president of the United States — the first thing he did is he wouldn’t meet with our friend Netanyahu. OK, that was the first meeting he snubbed. Now, he’s snubbed another one. He’s snubbed a meeting with the president of Turkey. Do you know how important it is for to us have good relations with Turkey? They’re the gateway to the East.

Now, Erdogan is doing some things that none of us like. But you know what? We have to deal with him. He is the one that alerted the Europeans about the radical that was moving over to Brussels. You have to be able to manage this. And I tell you, it’s complicated, it takes sophistication. And you need to have good advisers. But I’ll tell you what else you need. You need experience, and you need a good gut. And I’ve been involved in these things for almost all of my adult lifetime. So, I have advisers, but I don’t have many teachers. I understand most of these things.

COOPER: We’ve talked about Trump’s campaign manager. Your campaign manager tweeted this just a couple of hours ago. Quote, “Cruz with zero friends, zero record, zero vision, zero chance decides to lie about @JohnKasich. Desperate? Trump right on one thing, “lying Ted.”

Does this signal any kind of a new phase –

KASICH: No, I didn’t know he – you know, because sometimes he gets a little tweet happy, and I don’t like that, OK?

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KASICH: And I will have a word with him about it. But let me say – that look. The Cruz campaign, their super PAC is spending a half a billion (sic) to $800,000 against me in Wisconsin. I mean, they say, well, Kasich doesn’t have any strength out here. Usually, if you don’t have any strength, they don’t spend $500,000 to $800,000 attacking you. And you know, the attacks are – look.

Arnold Schwarzenegger told me in 2010 when I was running for governor, I was saying, Arnold, they’re really beating me up. He looked at me and said, “John, love the beatings.” Okay, that’s part of politics, and I’ve learned to love the beatings. But I mean, the fact is, is that they are hammering me, and they’re not hammering Trump. It’s very interesting. But that’s okay; I can take it.

COOPER: In terms of tone and tenor of the campaign, your two fellow candidates have obviously been duking it out over the last week or so…

KASICH: The last week or so?

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KASICH: How about the last five months? Where you been, Anderson?

COOPER: In this new phase on the whole…

KASICH: That’s why I’m not in the news. I didn’t call anybody a name. And you know what, I’m in the going to take the low road to the highest office in the land. I’m not going to do it.

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COOPER: That’s my question. That was my question, which was, what does it look like from the sidelines when you watch this?

KASICH: I’ll tell you, sometimes it’s amazing to me. Sometimes when I look at it I think, what the heck are we doing here? You know, I was on a radio talk show with some guy here, Jay somebody or other, I don’t remember this morning — yes, whatever his name is.

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KASICH: Nice guy. Nice guy.

And he was — and even yesterday I was on a different one, and a guy says to me, well, you know, maybe this is the new politics. If name calling, bringing in spouses and ripping each other below the belt and wrestling in the mud is the new politics, we all need to stand against it. Our children are watching. This is America.

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KASICH: We need to talk about what we’re for. And I have been consistent. Now, when they say something on policy-wise that’s bad, of course I’m going to say something about it, but I don’t want to go down into — I’m not going to go down there. I hope not. I could screw up but I hope not.

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COOPER: Let’s go to our audience for some issues (ph). Jim Vogel (ph) is here. He works in advertising. He says he’s leaning right now towards Senator Cruz.

Jim, welcome.

QUESTION: Hi, governor.

In Ohio you accepted Medicaid expansion and you took on the — I’m sorry, the health care exchanges and it was to help the poor. Here in Wisconsin we used — Governor Walker used BadgerCare to essentially provide the same services at the same levels, and yet we did it without creating a whole new entitlement program and expanding federal debt. Why did you choose Obamacare? Why did you choose the Washington-based solution? And why can’t you guys ever look at some other source other than Washington for these solutions?

KASICH: Okay, let me say a couple of things. First of all, it’s not so simple what Governor Walker did here. If you look at it, it’s more complicated. And by the way, today the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel endorsed me for president of the United States saying I’m the guy that is a pragmatic conservative that can get things done. I was really appreciative of that endorsement.

But look, I took a Medicaid program that was growing at 10 1/2 percent, and in my second year as governor it grew at 2 1/2 percent, without taking one person off the rolls or cutting one benefit. How did I do it? I brought innovation to the system. Now I then had a choice. Now that my program was under control, I then had a choice. Could I bring money back, which is frankly our money, Ohio money, back to Ohio to solve some of our problems.

Let me tell what you we’ve done. I don’t believe the mentally ill ought to be sleeping under a bridge or living in prison. It costs $22,500 a year to put them in prison. If I can get their medication and get them on their feet and if get they can get a job, they become taxpayers. We save money.

Secondly, I believe that the drug addicted in our prisons should be treated, because we don’t want a revolving door of in and out of the prisons, because that costs $22,500 a year, and we also are throwing a life down the drain. So guess what, because of our program now in the prisons and with the community, we have an 80 percent success rate in not having people go back in, and our recidivism rate is 27 percent.

And, by the way, we’re running a $2 billion surplus. We don’t put our budget together with scotch tap and bail and wire — we’re running a $2 million surplus. We’re managing it all. So where are we? Where we are in Ohio, is we are not treating the mentally ill, the drug addicted, the working poor, they’re in a better position, they’re not in our prisons, and at the same time, they’re getting on their feet, they’re becoming taxpayers and our Medicaid program is completely under control.

And by the way, I reject Obamacare, and I did not go along with the exchange that they were trying to force on me, because I never knew what the heck was going to come of it.

I actually have a solid health care plan to replace Obamacare, which involves transparency, competition, market-oriented forces. We’re actually doing it in my state, and I’d like to spread it all across the country.

So the idea of doing that was not only compassionate, but it also made good economic sense for our state and it’s working out quite well.

COOPER: Thank you for your question.

Governor, I want you too meet, this is Julie Grace. She’s a student at Marquette University…

KASICH: You know what, just one other thing I wanted to say. You understand that I spent 10 years of my life fighting to balance the budget. And we got it balanced. Senator Domenici and I worked with the Clinton administration. We got the budget balanced four years in a row.

It hadn’t been balanced since man walked on the moon, hasn’t been balanced since. And when I left Washington, there was a $5 trillion surplus, and guess who spent it? The Republicans.

Now, sir, you have to stand in the breach when you’re a leader. And what I did in Washington in getting that budget under control, and seeing it liftoff in jobs, and what I’ve done in Ohio, we’re now up 417,000 jobs in Ohio from a downturn of when I came in of 350,000.

And we’ve cut taxes by more than any governor in the country, including your governor.

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COOPER: All right. I want you to meet Julie Grace, she’s a student at Marquette University.

KASICH: But thank you.

COOPER: And she said she’s supporting you.

KASICH: Oh, you are?

QUESTION: I am.

KASICH: Good. OK. Say something really, really good.

(LAUGHTER)

QUESTION: I’ll try. So in Europe many far right conservative parties, anti-immigrant parties have been gaining momentum recently, specifically Germany, Sweden, France, and Britain. Do you think a similar movement is occurring here in the U.S.? And if so, how can the Republican Party address this?

KASICH: We’ve gone through periods of time in our history when we have turned against immigration. It has happened. And these movement have sprung up.

Look, we have to — young lady, we have to protect the border. That is a given, OK? For a couple of reasons, and one of them is security. So we have to get the border done.

And secondly, we should have a guest worker program where people can come in and work, and then they can go back home, because that’s what they want to do.

And thirdly, if they came here illegally but they’ve not committed a crime since they’ve been here, they’ll pay a fine, back taxes, and they can have a path to legalization, not a path to citizenship.

Now the idea that we’re going to drive around in Waukesha and we’re going to drive around here in Milwaukee, and we’re going to yank people out of their homes, leaving their kids on the front porch crying and screaming?

Come on, that’s ridiculous, OK? Call it what it is, it’s ridiculous. But we can get the border fixed. We can have a guest worker program. We can get a path to legalization, not let anybody else come. You have got to go back, no excuses.

And you want to know what I think? I think that can pass. I think that can pass the United States Congress. And I think it can pass with the American people and get this issue behind us and get this thing healed.

We need a healing in America. And stop kicking cans down the road and solve problems in this country. And I think that’s a reasonable solution to this problem of immigration.

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COOPER: Thank you for your question.

This is Asa White, he’s a student also, says he’s leaning towards supporting Donald Trump right now. Asa, welcome.

QUESTION: Thank you. My question — the most recent terrorist attack in Brussels has highlighted a big issue we have with our attack on foreign terrorism. That is, we now have neighborhoods that are being deemed as terrorist hotbeds.

Do you support Senator Cruz’s — when he says we should go into Muslim neighborhoods and patrol them?

KASICH: No, I don’t support that at all. I think it’s ridiculous. And you know what? The guy who was the best police guy in the whole country, he understands policing, is a guy named Bill Bratton.

He’s now currently the police chief in New York. He was the police chief under Rudy Giuliani. He was the head of the metro system in Boston. And he ran the Los Angeles Police Department. He is absolutely the best. He said that plan is ridiculous.

And let me just tell you, sir, we all want to catch these bad guys. And I know how it works because I’ve got Joint Terrorism Task Force members who are in my state, they’re in your state.

We need to hear what’s happening in the community. So let me just — let me ask you this question. If all of a sudden we start trying to pinpoint you — we have a religious test, we’re going to now patrol your neighborhood and your home because we suspect, even though you’re as law-abiding as anybody else in the country. Now I want you to help me find out who the bad guys are.

I mean, come on, that doesn’t make any sense that if we polarize the entire Muslim community, how are we going to get the information we want? We want Muslims who go to mosques who see radicalization to tell the authorities about it.

Because I have got to tell you, the vast, vast, vast majority of Muslims, they think their religion has been hijacked, that we have murderers out there who have distorted their religion. And they want to stop had as much as we want to stop it.

So the fact is let’s isolate those people who are the killers and let’s work together as a community of civilized people to take the battle to them. Destroy ISIS, that’s a given, and then after that great intelligence to make sure we can thwart these attacks and get the Europeans to start, you know, paying attention and doing their job. I mean, that’s what I think we need to do, sir.

So thank you.

COOPER: Thank you for your question.

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KASICH: This is Jim Walker. He’s a Republican from Franklin, Wisconsin. He said he’s leaning towards Ted Cruz for his experience, but likes you because you run a blue-collar state.

Jim, welcome.

QUESTION: Thank you very much, Anderson. And welcome to the great state of Wisconsin, governor.

I represent a manufacturer, farm equipment manufacturer, here in Wisconsin that directly employs many thousands of people. Indirectly, as you can imagine, with farm equipment that we sell, we indirectly support many more thousand farmers who buy our equipment. On top of that we export about a third of our product that we manufacture here in essence. So in essence, we’re a global manufacturing company.

To spark a war right now would not only be detrimental to business, but all of those people directly and indirectly that I said we support.

My question to you is, as president, how would you engage in diplomacy that won’t hurt global manufacturing businesses?

KASICH: Yes, number one, I want you to know, sir, that in my state now, we have over 63,000 new manufacturing jobs. It’s really cool that — and we’re paying attention to all the sectors, which we need to do as a nation.

Let’s talk about trade for a second. It’s a tough issue. One out of five Americans work for something related to trade, and secondly, that’s 38 million Americans.

Now we need to have open and free trade. You know, I was saying — I do these townhalls all the time. I love them, by the way.

Look, remember when we got all of those Japanese cars coming into our country? You know what happened to U.S. cars? They got better. Innovation and competition really works, okay.

But at the same time when we do trade agreements and other countries cheat, and they do cheat — some of them manipulate their currency, and we need to call them on it when they do it. When we find it, we need to call them on it.

But let me tell you another issue for you. So we had U.S. steel invest a lot of money in state. They invest money all over the country. The Koreans were dumping tubes inside the U.S. That means selling product below the cost of what it took them to make them. By the time you research them and prove your case, which you would have to do, it could be a year or two and all your people are out of work. We need an early-warning system.

And let me tell you, when they cheat, I will act as the president of the United States. Think of it this way. If Ohio State came up to play your beloved Badgers and I asked for five downs to get a first down and you only got four, how would you feel? You wouldn’t put up with it, okay? We should not put up with countries when they cheat.

But that does not keep us from embracing the notion of open and free trade.

One other thing, we now have this trade agreement on the table, you the TPP agreement. You know, what we basically do when we trade is we’re the most open country, and everybody else has barriers. So what we try to do is to get their barriers down so we get our products into their country. But there’s another element of this. You worry about the Chinese and their growing strength, particularly in Asia? Make a trade agreement, integrate ourselves with our friends in Asia who can become a bulwark against the strength of the Chinese.

COOPER: But governor…

(CROSSTALK)

KASICH: (inaudible) open trade good when they cheat. You’ve got to have an early-warning system. You’ve got to shut it off.

And by the way, agriculture depends on exports more than about any other industry in this country.

COOPER: But, governor, that message isn’t resonate — I mean, Donald Trump is saying trade deals are essentially bad. They’re exporting jobs overseas. That’s the message which seems to be resonating with voters.

KASICH: Anderson, I can say all kinds of things to get people stirred up, but leaders don’t do that. Leaders tell people the way that they see it, even if it means for a while you’re unpopular. Look, when I — after my first — you can’t believe how many people I made angry in Washington by fighting to balance the budget. Now in Ohio, in my first year in office, I was one of the most unpopular governors, but I knew what the formula was, and now I’m one of the most popular governors.

You cannot make decisions as a leader by putting your finger in the air and — or doing focus groups or telling people what they want to hear so you get them involved, but you know what they’re saying — what you’re saying is not true. I will not do that. I have never done it in my lifetime, and I’m not about to start. Period and end of story.

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COOPER: This is William Dunford. He’s a student at Marquette University. He says he supports Ted Cruz — William.

QUESTION: Thank you, governor.

My question is, 70 years after World War II and a quarter century after the Cold War ended, a lot of European security remained a responsibility for Americans? And given that Europeans are wealthy enough to defend themselves, why shouldn’t they?

KASICH: Well, young man, look, I don’t know if you’re a leader in your family or not. But leaders, you know, there are people in here who do more for their family than their brothers and sisters, their siblings. OK? And sometime, your spouse says why do we have do this all the time? Because that’s what leaders do.

I mean, frankly, of course, the Europeans can do more to support themselves. Their economies, by and large, have been a shambles. So, they need to straighten out their economies. And it’s a really tough struggle. I mean, I can tell you that it’s hard for them to get right with things.

So, they are weak economically. That doesn’t excuse them from not carrying their share of the load. But at the same time, we don’t want to have those relationships deteriorate or be eliminated. You know why? Because it hurts us, too. We need to have a strong Western Europe.

And by the way, I heard – I just heard briefly somebody was saying that we should just ignore Ukraine. Are you kidding me? The United States of America should be arming the Ukrainians who want to fight for freedom against Putin.

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KASICH: We should be arming them with non-lethal – with lethal defensive aid.

Now, young man, we should always tell them you’ve got to do more. And we should use whatever leverage we have to get them to do more. But I’m going to tell you as Americans, as long as I’ve been alive, we always carry more of the share of the burden than we would like. We always do.

And you know there’s an old Scripture that says “To whom much is given, much is expected.” And as president, I would fight to get them to give us more, and I would use whatever leverage I could to get them to give us more. But to be honest with you, we’re always going to complain about this.

But to walk away from that alliance, are you kidding me? If we walk away and it gets weaker, how long do you think it will take the Islamists to come over here? We need to work with them to destroy ISIS in the Middle East, and then we’ve got to work together as a society. That’s the way it works.

So, there’s no easy way out of this. And you know, when you are a leader who has seen these things, then you get a sobering approach. That’s why the “Journal Centennial” here in Milwaukee said Kasich is a pragmatic conservative. Because you just can’t knock all the pieces off the chess board when you get frustrated. It’s a good question, there.

COOPER: Governor, thank you. We’re going to take a quick break. We’re going to have more questions for Governor Kasich as this 360 CNN town hall continues.

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