Watch John Kasich, the Reasonable One, Get Very Testy With a Reporter for Doing His Job
When he’s flanked by a man who kisses his pocket constitution after bedtime soup every night and a racist talking steak, John Kasich enjoys the appearance of being the normal guy of this year’s Republican primary race. As Kasich tells reporters in the video above, he is the candidate “who can actually win in the fall.”
But don’t let his outlandish competitors fool you. John Kasich is not a reasonable guy. He gutted education in Ohio; he seems to hate women; he once declared an official gubernatorial resolution for the sole purpose of ragging on LeBron James. He has a nasty temper, as evidenced by the time he threatened to blacklist the Grateful Dead for not letting him backstage, the time he publicly castigated a journalist who was profiling him, or the time he used a public forum to call a cop who (rightfully) pulled him over three years earlier an idiot.
Kasich’s temper reared its head again when a reporter asked the Ohio governor about his unlikely path to victory at an event yesterday. “Can I finish?” Kasich asked when the reporter asked a follow-up. “I’m answering the question the way I want to answer it.” He briefly took the reporter’s voice recorder from him and began speaking directly into it. And then, perhaps remembering that people were watching and he had a reputation to uphold, he gave it back.