An ad from Vivek Ramaswamy’s campaign has caused widespread outrage, including from fellow Ohio Republicans—but not from the president or vice president. The ad features Democratic gubernatorial nominee Amy Acton’s estranged mother calling her daughter a liar. But Acton was removed from her mother’s custody at age 12 after a grand jury indicted her stepfather, Cledith Arthur, on a charge of raping her. The case never went to trial because Donna Arthur and her husband left the state without telling authorities, and according to Acton’s brother, she stayed married to him until he died.
None of that has stopped Donald Trump and JD Vance from cheering the ad on, as The New York Times reports:
Gov. Mike DeWine of Ohio on Thursday joined a growing chorus of Ohio Republicans condemning an advertisement being aired by Vivek Ramaswamy, his party’s nominee to succeed him, that uses the estranged mother of the Democratic candidate, Dr. Amy Acton. But President Trump followed Mr. DeWine’s denunciation hours later with a social media post that insulted both Dr. Acton and Mr. DeWine and called the ad “hitting pay dirt.” ... Mr. Trump unreservedly championed the ad, describing it as “very powerful” and saying that everyone should “listen to the mother of a defective, dishonest, and incapable Candidate.” Insisting that he had never heard of Dr. Acton before, Mr. Trump added: “Who wouldn’t use such an Ad? I would.”
In so doing, he found himself and Vice President JD Vance arrayed against Ohio’s governor; secretary of state; one of its sitting senators, Jon Husted; a former governor, John Kasich; and a former senator, Rob Portman, all of whom have distanced themselves from the ad or called for it to come down. It wasn’t just the establishment: Mr. Ramaswamy’s far-right opponent in the Republican primary for Ohio governor, Casey Putsch, has also slammed the ad.
Vance, meanwhile, said he was “a little bit disgusted”—not by the ad, but by Republican opposition to it, which he described as “whining.” He also praised Ramaswamy for having “the audacity to run a TV commercial which calls it out like it is.” Trump kept at it, branding DeWine “disloyal” for objecting and saying he told Ramaswamy to keep the ad running because “she’s fair game.” Ramaswamy pulled it a week later anyway, after spending roughly $1 million of the $4 million he’d announced. So the president of the United States turned out to be more committed to this sick ad than the man who paid for it, which makes sense given that if Trump hadn’t licensed such gross behavior in the party, Ramaswamy wouldn’t be pushing out such excrement.
The Executive Watch is a project of the Institute for the Study of Modern Authoritarianism, and its flagship publication The UnPopulist, to track in an ongoing way the abuses of the power of the American presidency. It sorts these abuses into five categories: Personal Grift, Political Corruption, Presidential Retribution, Power Consolidation, and Policy Illegality. Click the category of interest to get an overview of all the abuses under it.
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