Ohio Gov. John Kasich pleaded with a crowd in Mississippi to praise him in an awkward moment on Wednesday.
“I’ll take some polite applause and then I’ll answer some questions,” he said after finishing his stump speech.
When the crowd did not immediately respond, Kasich followed up with, “I don’t have any polite applause. Bring me some.”
Kasich’s request is similar to former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush’s request this month that an audience “please clap” after listening to him talk. Bush has since dropped out of the presidential race.
The Ohio governor, however, ruled out any chance of him exiting the 2016 race to prevent Donald Trump from becoming the GOP nominee.
“And some of those very Republicans are people now who say Kasich needs to stop, I’ve got news for them: forget about it,” Kasich said. “Forget about it.”
Kasich spoke confidently about the upcoming Ohio primary, so long as his opponents drop out first.
“You may be some Trump people in here, but you know Donald Trump skunks everybody everywhere, in Ohio the latest poll has me running even with him with the whole field and if some of these people would get out of the race, my head-to-head against Donald Trump, I’d beat him by 18 points in the state of Ohio, OK?” Kasich said.
The governor then sought to contrast himself with Trump by talking about his congressional service as a longtime outsider. Kasich did not stay in Nevada for Tuesday’s caucus, where he finished last among all of the GOP candidates still running for president.
