All of last week, Vivek Ramaswamy doubled down on the grotesque ad he ran about Amy Acton, his Democratic opponent in Ohio’s gubernatorial race, trying to pretend as though giving a platform to the mother who hasn’t seen her since the age of 12, a woman who chose her pedophile boyfriend/husband over her children, was not an especially vile or even morally questionable action to take. Unsurprisingly, both Donald Trump and JD Vance were very happy to support the ad, with Trump stating that he wished he’d been able to run such an ad against his own opponents.
“I told him, leave it up and look upstairs and say, 'Thank you, God, very much. I appreciate it,'” Trump said at an Iowa rally last week. “But that’s a hot story today. They want him to take down an ad. I only wish I could have had an ad like that against somebody.”
It’s not exactly an ill-advised strategy; Republicans have been very much able, in recent years, to overcome hideously bad press simply by saying “This is fine, actually!” over and over again.
And yet, it just does not seem to be going all that well. The Cook Political Report has moved from labeling the race a “toss-up” to “Leans Democrat.” The Cleveland Plain Dealer, which had previously decided to stop endorsing candidates for political office, decided to change that policy in order to endorse Acton in light of the ad.
“A candidate who uses childhood sexual abuse as a weapon against the person who endured it has crossed a line that Ohioans should defend, whatever their party,” the editorial board wrote.
Other Republicans across the state and even the country have distanced themselves from Ramaswamy after the ad. While current governor Mike DeWine has said he wouldn’t retract his endorsement — or, more specifically, his endorsement of the Ohio Republican ticket as a whole — he’s also not campaigning for him.
Republican Iowa Senate candidate Ashley Hinson has also condemned the ad, not so much wanting to associate herself with a candidate who accuses 12-year-olds of lying about sexual assault.
“It’s terrible,” she told ABC News’s This Week host Jonathan Karl on Sunday. “I think about it as a mom, and you think about your kids surviving childhood sexual abuse and having to relive that trauma on TV again. I think it’s absolutely terrible, and I think they should take the ad down.”
Even Ramaswamy is now claiming the ad had nothing to do with child sexual abuse.
“Our ad had nothing, nothing to do with childhood abuse, sexual abuse,” Ramaswamy told reporters from the Ohio Capital Journal on Friday. “We condemn that as forcefully as anyone.”
His running mate, Ohio state Sen. Rob McColley, also stated that he did not think Acton was lying about her childhood abuse.
“Oh no, that is horrible,” McColley said on Friday, according to the New York Times. “We are accusing her of lying in her adult career.”
Except the thing is, Donna Arthur has not known Amy Acton as an adult. She didn’t even know Amy Acton as a teenager. What the hell would Donna Arthur, who hasn’t seen Acton since she was 12 years old, know about her “lying in her adult career”? It seems fairly clear that Arthur’s claims that her daughter is a liar stem from when Acton reported her stepfather to the police for rape, so the idea that she would be any kind of authority on anything else Acton has said or done over the last four decades is rather absurd.
Additionally, the ad itself has recently, mysteriously been edited down in a way that omits the part where Acton’s mother claims that Acton lied about living in a tent, following reports that showed that they did, in fact, live in a tent on a campground.
Now the ad just has Arthur calling her daughter, who she hasn’t seen since the age of 12, a liar, for unspecified reasons.
“I love my daughter, and Amy is a liar. I saw her lying about her opponent. That’s why I’m speaking up to you now,” she says in the re-edited ad. “Don’t vote for people who lie. Don’t let her become your governor. If you think she’ll make your life better, you’re fooling yourself. It will only get worse.”
Again, she hasn’t actually seen her daughter since she was 12, so it’s not remotely clear how she’d be qualified to make that kind of assessment.
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Ironically, it’s possible that editing the ad is probably the worst thing the Ramaswamy campaign can do. As I mentioned, people actually seem to like it when Republicans refuse to back down from their more repulsive actions and behavior and even their lies. JD Vance was entirely open about the fact that he straight up lied about Haitians eating people’s pets and insisted that doing so was the right thing to do.
“If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do,” he said, to literally no consequence.
The fact is, there are a lot of Republicans out there who would be more than happy to support Ramaswamy were he to claim he was 100 percent certain that Acton was lying, as a 12-year-old, about being sexually assaulted by her stepfather. Indeed, there are a lot of people already claiming this online.
You know, because she surely knew, at the age of 12, that she would be running for office at the age of 60 and thought accusing a now-dead man of sexual assault would help her … somehow. The police were in on it, too, which is why they removed Acton and her brother from Arthur’s custody. It only makes sense.
Others have claimed the attacks are justified because Democrats ran ads with RFK Jr.’s family members and Paul Gosar’s family members calling them both nuts. But there’s a pretty big difference between that and the reason why Arthur is accusing her daughter of being a liar. The issue isn’t that it crosses a line because it’s her mother, it’s what her mother actually said in the actual ad. This is not hard, Ben Shapiro!
There are lots of conservatives who will see the new altered ads and his other justifications for the campaign as “weak,” particularly when so many others are willing to go along with the story. Will that affect whether or not they vote for him? Well, I guess we’ll find out soon enough.
PREVIOUSLY ON WONKETTE!
OK...I *never* talk about this, but I just can't with this fucking story. Anyone who would have a go at a survivor of childhood sexual abuse is a FUCKING WORTHLESS MONSTER who not only deserves to lose an election but also deserves to be shunned for life.
Ask me how I know.
Actually, don't.
BBL, dear Wonkers. Stay strong and keep up the good fight!
> While current governor Mike DeWine has said he wouldn’t retract his endorsement — or, more specifically, his endorsement of the Ohio Republican ticket as a whole — he’s also not campaigning for him.
Showing the same degree of courage as Angela Paxton... 🙄