Kasich: GOP doesn’t have to ask Trump to do anything

Ohio Gov. John Kasich (R) in a Sunday show interview dismissed the notion that Republican leaders must ask permission from President Trump on legislative matters. 

“I have been frankly shocked at the fact that our leaders think they have to ask permission from the president to do anything. This is very foreign to me. It’s alien to me,” Kasich told CBS’s “Face the Nation.”

{mosads}“When you are elected to the United States Senate or the United States House of Representatives, you have a duty to represent your district, but most important, represent your country, not to just be thinking about your political party.”

Members of GOP leadership disagree with the Trump administration’s decision to impose tariffs on steel and aluminum imported from the European Union, Canada and Mexico.

Kasich, who failed in a 2016 presidential bid and is rumored to be considering another run in 2020, urged Republican congressional leaders to fight Trump on trade and other decisions that they oppose.

“I think they ought to make it very clear that they’re not going to just sit back and tolerate this, that they’re going to do whatever they can do legislatively to send a clear signal — the same way they ought to be doing these things on the issue of DACA, those are the ‘Dreamers’ that are here,” Kasich told CBS, referring to the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which shields certain immigrants who came to the country illegally as children from deportation.