According to the news reports floating around on Monday, former Ohio Gov. John Kasich had just signed with a major talent agent and was looking to make a deal to appear on television as a political commentator. Telling friends and associates that he had ruled out going to his former home at Fox News, analysts expected that he would sign on with either CNN or MSNBC. Thus it came as little surprise on Tuesday when CNN announced that they had nabbed yet another NeverTrump Republican to join their stable of panelists.
From CNN:
He will appear as a guest across an array of CNN programs. Kasich’s first appearance will be on “Cuomo Prime Time” on Tuesday night. His hiring was first reported by Axios on Tuesday morning.
Kasich’s move to CNN is notable because he is one of the most prominent critics of President Trump within the Republican Party. He has declined to rule out a 2020 primary bid against Trump.
Kasich first took on Trump in July 2015 when the then Ohio governor announced his bid for the Republican presidential nomination. He dropped out of the race in May the following year after Trump emerged as the presumptive GOP nominee.
CNN’s deal with Kasich may be a reflection of changes in the political media landscape. Until 2007, he hosted a weekend show called “Heartland” on Fox News.
But Fox has changed and so has he. Kasich had “ruled out joining Fox News Channel,” CNBC reported on Monday.
Kasich may have ruled out joining Fox News, but he has apparently not ruled out running for president in 2020, as CNN pointed out. Whether that means mounting a doomed-to-fail primary challenge against Trump or a doomed-to-fail third party bid for the White House, we can’t say.
Either way, we’ll be surprised if Kasich can even manage to repeat his one-state victory record from 2016, seeing as how he irritated Ohio’s conservatives on his way out of office. Apparently he didn’t want the baggage of pro-life, pro-Second Amendment bills getting in the way of his impending deals with the liberal media, so he vetoed them in his final week as governor. True political courage, that.
Anyway, now we can look forward to thousands of misleading headlines that sound something like: “Conservative pundit slams Trump for….,” or “Former Republican Governor lambasts Trump for…”
Then again, maybe Kasich just wanted to find a situation where he could rehearse his 2020 campaign rhetoric without anyone watching. If so, clever move.
