Kasich: Arpaio pardon a ‘wedge’
Add the pardoning of controversial former Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio to the list of White House calls with which Ohio Gov. John Kasich disagrees with President Donald Trump.
The second-term governor criticized his fellow Republican for granting a pardon to Arpaio in a wide-ranging interview Sunday morning with Chuck Todd on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
“It absolutely should be out of bounds for somebody to use that as some sort of a political wedge. It appears as though that is what it was,” Kasich said. “It’s not the way I operate. I don’t agree with what he did.”
Trump granted a pardon to Arpaio, the former Phoenix-area sheriff, on Friday following his conviction for contempt by a federal judge for violating a court order to refrain from racially profiling Latinos and turning them over to immigration authorities.
Kasich has bestowed fewer pardons of criminals than any other governor in 30 years, granting only 86 of 2,291 requests through the end of last year. “We make sure people did proper restitution,” he told Todd. “I wouldn’t have done it that way.”
With a laugh and a resounding “no,” Kasich shot down reports that he could join Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper, a Democrat, in forming a bipartisan presidential ticket to challenge Trump in 2020. The governors are expected to unveil their proposed fix for Obamacare this week after soliciting input from other state CEOs.
“Kasich-Hickenlooper. First of all you couldn’t pronounce it and, secondly, you couldn’t fit it on a bumper sticker. … Because Hickenlooper and I work together, cynics out there say, ‘Well, they want something’ … this growing cynicism eats at the fabric of the spirit of our country; it’s really aggravating,” Kasich said.
U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, also appeared on “Meet the Press,” complimenting Kasich for his stand on health care and their mutual opposition to deporting undocumented immigrants who have not committed crimes and who “work hard and pay taxes.”
Brown, an opponent of the North American Free Trade Agreement that Trump is attempting to renegotiate, said, “This president, this White House for the past seven months has done nothing for workers. … This president is on the side of Wall Street, big oil and the drug companies.”
Brown said he remains willing to work with the Trump administration to protect steel and other jobs through striking fair trade agreements and policies. “I don’t know if he’s right on trade because he hasn’t done anything about it but give speeches.”