Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich says a new ad released by a pro-Jeb Bush's super PAC that claims rival presidential candidate John Kasich of endangering national security should be taken down.
"Any suggestion that John Kasich is anti-defense is simply false," Gingrich said in a statement to
Politico. "I served with him for 16 years and he consistently fought for a better, more effective military."
The
"Dangerously Wrong" ad, released by the Right to Rise super PAC, shows footage of Kasich dating back to his days as House Budget Committee chairman talking about efforts to cut wasteful defense spending along with images of ISIS, North Korea and Iran. It is airing in South Carolina, where several military and other military interests are located.
But Gingrich, who served in the House with Kasich in the 1980s and 90s, pushed back hard, saying that any ad that attacks the Ohio governor on defense "should be pulled as false and misleading."
Right to Rise spokesman Paul Lindsay, though, said that Kasich's history of cutting critical national defense projects is "well documented, from both his record and his own mouth," and did not give any indication that the ad, which started running in the Charleston and Myrtle Beach markets, would be pulled.
Bush's campaign highlighted in an internal memo after Kasich's second-place finish in New Hampshire that it planned to go after Kasich on defense spending reports Politico, and complained that he has "consistently supported gutting the military and has no viable path in the Palmetto State."
Kasich on Friday denied that he was hostile to the military while he was serving in the House.
"I was what you call a chief hawk," he told Fox News' "
Fox and Friends" program. "Many of us thought we should make sure the resources get to the men and women on the front lines of the military. When I found a $400 hammer or $5,000 wrench I thought it was important to clean that up."
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