John Kasich thinks the best way to solve America's problems with North Korea is to 'eradicate the leadership'

(Image credit: Alex Wong/Getty Images)

published 28 April 2017

Ohio Gov. John Kasich's (R) suggestion for handling mounting tensions with North Korea sounds suspiciously similar to the plot of The Interview, the 2014 satirical film that enraged North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. "How do you deal with this? I think there might be a way, and that has to do with taking out the North Korean leadership," Kasich said Friday while talking to reporters in Washington about North Korea's nuclear weapons activity. "I believe the best way to solve this problem is to eradicate the leadership. I'm talking about those who are closest to making the decisions that North Korea's following now."

The Interview followed two pseudo-journalists (played by James Franco and Seth Rogen) who were assigned by the CIA to assassinate North Korea's dictator. But there is one notable difference between Kasich's plan and The Interview's: Kasich doesn't actually recommend assassinating Kim — and he isn't trying to send Franco and Rogen to do it. The Washington Post reported that Kasich "stopped short of explicitly recommending that U.S. forces assassinate North Korea's leaders, but what he described would be a military and intelligence exercise."

Kasich, who ran in the Republican presidential primary, said that if he were president he'd be asking military commanders if they were "staging raids" and if they knew "how to land" their helicopters there. "The North Korean top leadership has to go and there are ways in which that can be achieved," Kasich said. "But you have to have very good intelligence. You have to have an ability to do things very quickly. And, you know, I think that is not beyond our capability to achieve that."