Former Ohio Gov. John Kasich (R) weighed in Tuesday on the mounting criminal cases against Donald Trump, saying “there’s no way” the former president will return to the Oval Office at this point.
Republicans “could put up” with the Manhattan case where Trump was arraigned on Tuesday, Kasich said on MSNBC, but a probe into efforts to overturn the 2020 election in Georgia and a Justice Department investigation into his handling of classified documents could “be too much water for him to take.”
“But he’s like the master of escape, and we just have to wait and see. But here’s what I do know: There’s no way the guy’s gonna be president,” he said, adding that “there’s no way in a million years” that independent voters and “traditional” Republicans will vote for another Trump White House term.
“I think there’s a lot of exhaustion, and even people who are supporting him at this moment, thinking that this is some political deal, they’re exhausted. Now his core base, he can do just about anything and they hang with him, but I think there is a level of exhaustion,” added Kasich, who has long been one of Trump’s most prominent GOP critics.
Trump surrendered to prosecutors in Manhattan on Tuesday to face charges in connection with hush money paid to adult film star Stormy Daniels amid his 2016 campaign to silence her allegations of an affair, which Trump denies.
Meanwhile in Georgia, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis (D) is investigating whether Trump and his allies broke the law with their attempts to interfere with the 2020 presidential election results in the state.
And the Department of Justice has appointed a special counsel to oversee two federal investigations: one into Trump’s handling of classified materials after his time in the White House and another into his efforts to retain power after losing to now-President Biden.
“When you move down to Georgia, if something else happens there, or the documents case happens, I think exhaustion is sort of like water in a boat, it begins to overflow the boat and begins to sink him,” Kasich said.