CHUCK TODD: And joining me now is the Republican governor of Ohio, John Kasich. Governor, welcome back to Meet the Press, sir.
GOV. JOHN KASICH: Hey, Chuck, before we get into this, listen, I said to my wife this morning, “We need to send a contribution either to the Salvation Army or the Red Cross.” My mother used to say, “If everybody does a little bit it’s amazing how much we’ll build up in the jar.” You know, when that flooding comes in, once that water’s gone, your house is never the same. So if everybody across the country just does a little bit it will be appreciated down in Texas. And that’s what we gotta do. That’s how we—
CHUCK TODD: No, sadly—
GOV. JOHN KASICH: —pull together as Americans.
CHUCK TODD:—not only are those houses never going to be the same, some of them will end up having to be condemned.
GOV. JOHN KASICH: Absolutely correct.
CHUCK TODD: And it won’t even look at it. All right. Let me jump into what happened on Friday that didn’t involve a hurricane. The Vice President, former Vice President Joe Biden wrote this today in The Atlantic reacting both to Arpaio and Charlottesville. And I’m curious of your reaction, governor. This is what Joe Biden writes, “We have an American president who is emboldened white supremacists with messages of comfort and support. A week after Charlottesville and Boston we saw the truth of America, those with the courage to oppose hate far outnumber those who promote it. And then a week after Boston we saw the truth of this president. He won’t stop his contempt for the U.S. Constitution and willingness to divide this nation knows no bounds. Now he’s pardoned a law enforcement official who terrorized the Latino community.” Do you see Charlottesville and Arpaio linked the way the former vice president does?
GOV. JOHN KASICH: Well, first of all, Chuck, I severely condemned what the president had to say about Charlottesville ‘cause there is no similarity between hate groups and everybody else. That’s number one. And I did it on—actually at your network and people across the country applauded it. Number two, I actually have the power of pardoning in my state. We do clemencies over time. But we make sure that people did proper restitution. I wouldn’t have done it this way. And it, it’s not—it is absolutely should be out of bounds for somebody to use that as some sort of a political wedge. It appears as though that’s what it, what it was. It’s not the way I operate here with the power to be able to give people a second chance. But the president has that power. I don’t agree with what he did. It’s not the way I operate. I can’t be anymore, you know, anymore loud in what I have to say than to tell you what I do because my actions reflect the way I feel.