Gov. John Kasich (R-Ohio) said Thursday that GOP presidential front-runner Donald Trump is making “impossible” promises on immigration.
“Radical doesn’t work,” he said on Fox News during an interview broadcast from Boulder, Colo., the site of the third GOP presidential debate the night before.
“It’s inconceivable that we would start to round up 10 or 11 million people and start to ship them out of the country,” Kasich said. “That’s irresponsible. [It is] of course impossible to do.”
{mosads}“The idea that we’re going to deport all these people is ludicrous, and everybody knows it,” he added of the nation’s illegal immigrants.
Kasich also dismissed Trump’s attacks on his past work as a managing director for Lehman Brothers the night before.
“Well, I’ve been called out on Lehman Brothers since I started running for office in 2010 for governor,” he said. “That doesn’t bother me in the least.”
“I had a two-man office in Columbus, Ohio,” he said of his tenure with the firm. “[So] if I could have bankrupted Lehman Brothers I should be named pope, not president.”
Kasich and Trump engaged in a fierce exchange over the business world during Wednesday evening’s contest on CNBC.
Trump linked Kasich during his remarks with the Wall Street investment bank’s bankruptcy in 2008, which helped trigger that year’s financial crisis.
“His poll numbers [have] tanked,” Trump also said of Kasich. “That is why he’s at [the end of the debate stage]. So you know what? You can have him.”
“I wasn’t on the board on Lehman Brothers,” Kasich retorted, disputing Trump’s claims. “I was a banker. I traveled the country and learned how people created jobs.”
Trump has led the race for next year’s GOP presidential nomination since early summer despite lacking any past political experience.
The real estate tycoon has crowded out establishment candidates like Kasich, siphoning attention away from their policy backgrounds with his bombastic rhetoric.
Kasich argued on Thursday that he merely wants the best fit for the Oval Office next year, no matter who takes that role.
“We can’t elect somebody — whether they’re establishment or anti-establishment — who can’t get this country back on track,” he said.