John Kasich has been critical of Donald Trump's campaign. Kasich slams Trump as divisive and insulting

Ohio Gov. John Kasich renewed his attack on Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump on Sunday, slamming the billionaire real estate mogul as divisive and insulting.

Kasich’s presidential campaign began airing a new TV ad last week that paraphrased language from Martin Niemöller’s famous poem “First they Came…” and alluded to a comparison between Trump and Adolf Hitler. The governor backed away from that comparison Sunday on ABC’s “This Week” but didn’t hesitate to attack Trump’s bombastic language.


Asked by host Martha Raddatz if he’d support Trump should he win the GOP presidential nomination, Kasich refused to even entertain the idea.

“Well, he's not going to be the nominee, Martha, because, at the end, look, he may have 20 percent of the vote. But he's got 80 percent of Republicans who don't support him,” Kasich said.

“Somebody who divides this country here in the 21st century, who's calling names of women and Muslims and Hispanics and mocking reporters, then says I didn't do it but he did do it, it's just not going to happen,” Kascih added. “And everybody needs to get over it and take a deep breath.”

The governor was also critical of President Barack Obama’s military strategy to combat the Islamic State, comparing it to the one employed by President Jimmy Carter in the 1970s, one that Kasich said showed American weakness.

Instead, Kasich said he’d push American ground forces into Syria and Iraq as part of a coalition similar to the one President George H.W. Bush built during the first Gulf War.

“It would involve our friends in the Middle East who want to contribute, also to our NATO allies,” Kasich said. “We're not going to solve this problem with ISIS by just sitting back and delaying or dithering, which is what we've done.”