Ohio Gov. John Kasich is being spiteful by boycotting the Republican National Convention this week, New York Republican Rep. Pete King said Monday, telling Fox News' Brian Kilmeade that the governor owes his party at least that much respect.
"I don't know why John is doing that, I think he is wrong," King told the
"Kilmeade & Friends" radio program. "He owes it to the Republican Party, a lot of it looks like personal spite because John Kasich lost."
And as the governor of Ohio, Kasich could have still made a formal speech without endorsing presumptive nominee Donald Trump.
"But come in, welcome the party," said King. "This is the party that elected him to office, Congress many times, elected him as governor. At the very least you owe them the respect to come in and welcome everybody.”
King, who called into the Kilmeade show, appeared live on
Fox News' "Outnumbered" program a short time later, where he voiced concerns about violence occurring at the convention.
"I've been talking to the director of the Secret Service, FBI, Homeland Security, cops on the street," said King. "They are very concerned because even before yesterday's shootings [in Baton Rouge], you had the Moveon.org people, the people disrupting Trump's rallies, then you have people on the right, disrupting military funerals, then you have the New Black Panther Party put out an alert, for their people to come with guns, and now after the shootings yesterday, all this has the risk of disturbance."
And with that, a terrorist could "work his way way in, because with all the confusing going on, a person with a body bomb could be a disaster," said King. "I'm not trying to scare people, but that's what's facing security forces today."
King also had strong words against President Barack Obama and the Black Lives Matter movement.
"My father was in the New York Police Department for 30 years, and I think the president was wrong here," said King about Obama's speech on Sunday after the Baton Rouge police shootings. "This is not an equivalency."
And the Black Lives Matter movement's genesis was "a phony case in Ferguson, Missouri," said King. "Michael Brown was a criminal. He was a thug. First he beat up a convenience store guy, twice he made runs at the police to try to kill them, and yet for four months the national media glorified him as a martyr ... then you have Hillary Clinton going out and visiting Michael Brown's mother as if he's some civil rights martyr."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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