'I'm steaming': John Kasich demands Republicans 'find their courage' and condemn Trump's 'ridiculous' attacks on the election

On CNN Monday, former Gov. John Kasich (R-OH) — one of the most prominent former Republican politicians to endorse Joe Biden — lost his temper over efforts by President Donald Trump and his allies to delegitimize the voting process.

"Almost 100 million Americans have already cast their ballots. They've already voted," said anchor Wolf Blitzer. "What does that say to you about what's going on in this country right now?"

"Well, Wolf, first of all, I'm sitting here and thinking about it, I'm steaming," said Kasich. "In the state of Ohio, as long as you have a mail-in ballot postmarked before election day, that ballot can be counted ten days after the election. For the president of the United States, or anybody running for office, to cast aspersions on legitimate votes by legitimate voters, by the American, electorate is ridiculous. I mean, it's frankly ridiculous. And then to argue what we're going to do is we're going to send in a bunch of lawyers and we're going to try to contest all this and say these votes are not legitimate, just like these people tried to do down in Texas?"

"I'm going to suggest this to you — and a lot of people kind of snicker when I say it — but the Republican leaders, at the end of the day, are going to have to stand up for the legitimacy of this election in this country," said Kasich. "And frankly, if it goes the other way and somehow we see things that we are not expecting, then it's going to be incumbent on the Democratic leaders, but I don't hear them talking about contesting the election or going into court. I only hear this out of the president. Let me just suggest, we cannot have a country, Wolf, where 20 percent of the country says the election is not legitimate. And that is going to require other Republicans to find their courage."

"You cannot call these states, just like you can't call any election, until the officials who count the ballots give you the word, plain and simple," said Kasich. "So I hope we're not going see a bonanza for lawyers trying to figure out how the disenfranchise people. We went through that in the history of this country, when we tried to deliberately disenfranchise people, that is not our country! And people marched and they were beaten and jailed because they just wanted to make sure that everybody could vote and every vote would count!"

"I'm sorry to go on with that," added Kasich. "But I just got to tell you, Wolf, this is America. We love America. We're all united. We can't just be fighting all the time. It won't work that way!"

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