Ohio Gov. John Kasich (R) on Thursday called on President Trump to condemn Roseanne Barr’s racist tweet from earlier this week, which led to the cancellation of her ABC sitcom.
“Of course he should condemn it,” Kasich said in an interview on CNN. “It’s ridiculous.”
Kasich told host Kate Bolduan that he “couldn’t believe” Barr’s tweet about former White House adviser Valerie Jarrett, in which Barr compared her to a cross between the Islamist organization the Muslim Brotherhood and the movie “Planet of the Apes.”
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“This is just one other example of the fact that this is completely and totally inappropriate and abhorrent behavior and we’ve seen it time and time again,” Kasich continued.
“Let me be clear. What she did and what she said is totally wrong,” Kasich added later. “The president should have condemned it.”
Kasich, who has remained a vocal critic of Trump after challenging him for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016, pointed to past criticism of Trump surrounding race.
The Republican governor noted that Trump condemned the “egregious” clashes at a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va., last summer, but avoided placing blame on the white nationalists and Nazi groups that were marching.
“We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides — on many sides,” Trump said at the time.
After the remark, Kasich told Trump he needed to “listen to the people.”
His latest comments follow uproar this week over Barr’s tweet about Jarrett. Barr has since deleted the tweet and apologized, but ABC Entertainment cancelled her show “Roseanne.”
In his first response to the show’s cancellation, Trump unleashed his own attack on ABC and Bob Iger, the CEO of its corporate parent The Walt Disney Company.
“Bob Iger of ABC called Valerie Jarrett to let her know that ‘ABC does not tolerate comments like those’ made by Roseanne Barr. Gee, he never called President Donald J. Trump to apologize for the HORRIBLE statements made and said about me on ABC. Maybe I just didn’t get the call?” Trump tweeted on Wednesday.