Sam Stein and Will Sommer React to the Most Disgusting Ad of 2026

Hey, everyone, it's me, Scimpside, managing out of the book. I'm joined by Will Summers, author of "Fall Saga." We are doing an emergency take, I call it an emergency take, because there is the slimiest campaign head of the cycle that dropped this morning. We've been holding off on talking about a little bit to sort out who was responsible for it. But it's Vivek Ramaswamy. He is responsible for it, and it appears, pretty much appears. Anyways, Will, I know you saw the Ed too, we're going to play it off the jump. Basically, long story is that this morning, we all woke up to this ad from the various origins. Is that fair to say? Well, it wasn't clear initially who did the ad. Yeah, the ad appears, so it's attacking Amy Act and the Democratic nominee for Governor of Ohio. It's a little unclear how the ad got out. There's an idea that it was sent out in like an online focus group and leaked deliberately, maybe not deliberately. Some people are claiming they got text messages, "Hey, join this focus group," so it seems like maybe it was a pretty broad call out, so something like that, and then Republican influencers started posting it on, okay. But the ad is involving Amy Act and Democratic Governor nominee's mother, who looks direct to camera and more or less calls for daughter a liar, which obviously is explosive. Let's play the ad, and then we'll explain why backfire is so spectacularly. Amy's daughter, Arthur, and I made me act in smother. I worked at Children and Family Service Association, building one of the first two sexual abuse programs in America. I loved my daughter, but when I saw her lying about her opponent, it's not easy for a mother to say this, but Amy has a serious problem. She is a liar. She lies about her past. She says she grew up living in a tent, not as bad as true. She's lied her entire life. My daughter needs help, and she can't help you if she needs help herself. People can change, but first they have to tell the truth, and my daughter still isn't doing that. 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 won't only get worse. >> Okay, that's shocking, and obviously, now, if you notice here, there's only one thing that she accuses Amy action of lying about specifically, and that is living in a tent. Otherwise, she just says, my daughter's a liar, she lies, she lies, that are lies, don't trust her, she lies. But she doesn't actually say what she lies about, except for the tent. So, like many people, I just sort of like, that's weird. This backstory here, I had not been paying that much attention to Amy Acton's biography. I hate to admit it, but it's true. And then I was quickly shocked to discover the backstory. This is vis-a-vis Amy Acton's brother, Philip Sterns. They released a statement following the release of this ad, and it reads this. It's not surprising that Vivegromswamy has stooped to such a despicable love as to attempt to turn the sexual abuse Amy endured at 12 years old from our birth mother's husband into a political talking point. After he was arrested, and Amy and I were removed from their custody, our birth mother stayed married to Amy's rapist until he died. This desperate disgusting attack reveals exactly who Vivegromswamy is at his core, a pathetic excuse for a man who is willing to hurt anyone as long as he gets him what he wants. It's just to reiterate, Amy Acton's mother was married to a man who raped Amy Acton when she was a girl, believed those 12 years old, Amy Acton desperately wanted to get away from this man. It was her rapist, and the mother chose to stay with the rapist. And ultimately, Amy Acton and her brother were removed from her mother's custody, and Vivegromswamy chose to feature the birth mother, saying Amy Acton was a liar. I think I have that right. >> Yeah, that's right. That backstory obviously has not really been a part of this campaign, as you said, so we're kind of getting up to speed on it as a lot of other people. And so that's why in part, it's so strange to dig up this estranged mother, and then have her say, my daughter's a liar, she's lying about all this backstory. And obviously, the ad does not make clear that this woman's husband was charged with raping Amy Acton as a child. All of this really twisted stuff that, again, this ad came out in a way where there's some amount of, it's not like it's airing on TV and saying brought to you by Vivegromswamy. But there's this connection, it's a little unclear who cut it, who brought the mother in. This rumor has been swirling in Ohio politics for at least a week that the Ramaswamy campaign had cut this ad. There was some prior reporting at the liberal substack, The Rooster. They had said, we understand that the Acton campaign is preparing to respond to this. They've got this statement ready from the brother. But this, again, it's very weird how this is all come about in addition to the despicable content of the ad itself. >> Right, so the city gets put out, again, the campaign didn't release it, so you're left in wonder what was the actual strategic goal here, is it just get something into the zeitgeist without your fingerprints on it, right? Like, have people talk about it, maybe it's one of those things where it's like, well, as long as people are talking about this, this works well for us. And I don't know this, but you would know. The right wing influencer network, usually you can see when there's something coordinated that happens, because they all start chirping about something at the same time. Is that what happened here? >> Donald Jr., Donald Trump Jr. did push this out, but did others in that universe start jumping on it early this morning? >> Yeah, I mean, people have been really Michael Knowles at the daily wire got into this. And to be clear, not in a way of saying, what an awful ad or how strange. I mean, these people are saying, wow, it's over for Amy Acton, her mother has disowned her. Dinesh Justusa, even as more of these details are coming out, for those who are not familiar with this case, Dinesh Justusa is saying, hey, Grock, was Amy Acton's stepfather in Daiton? And of course, this is a case from decades and decades ago, so there's a lot of this information is not, these court records are not easily accessible. But the, I mean, a lot of these people are doubling down and suggesting that Amy Acton's mother for no reason, there's no backstory that we might want to be aware of here, that she just hates her and her, it has to be because our mother just has really pure motives here. Yeah, it's remarkable. And it follows the, it evolves to the same pattern as the James Tallerico mental hospital story. Accusation gets thrown out there, seems wild, incendiary, kind of shocks you the core. And then someone says, wait a second, that's not true or you don't have proof. And then the honest becomes, well, you have to prove that my accusation isn't true. Right? Like James Tallerico needs to produce video evidence that he was at home in the food. In this case, it's like, well, you know, if this happened to Amy Acton, like she says it did, then she should be able to disprove for mother's claims by putting out these documents right away. Why are there no documents? Where are the documents? Right? That was instantaneous. It was like, well, you have to disprove my accusation against you. You know, follow my favorite time of year, although I did recently complain that we're getting less and less false, kind of annoying, but between Halloween Thanksgiving and just getting it together with family and friends for the holidays, there's just so much to look forward to. 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That's z-o-c-d-o-c.com/Boretakes. >> Yeah, and, you know, I mean, to be clear, this guy was charged. The documents have, you know, now, 12 hours, basically, since this ad leaked, that the National Review, not exactly a liberal outlet, among others, has dug up these documents. So Amy Acton's mother addressed these charges back in 2020 in an interview with the anti-obortion group Operation Rescue, I guess, another attack on her daughter, and she said, "Well, you know, I think Amy, when she was a child, she cooked this up because my husband was previously accused by another young girl of molestation." And that's where Amy got the idea, and now, oh, okay, so on one hand, we have this idea of two girls separately making this accusation, or this guy is a pedophile and a sex criminal. >> Yeah. The National Review wrote this, "Legal documents obtained by the National Review provide evidence that Acton faced sexual abuse as a child while in her mother's custody. While Donna Arthur, that is Amy's mom, was married to Cledith Arthur in 1978 when Acton was 12 years old, Cledith Arthur was charged with having sexual contact with her document show. Evidence against him included a sworn statement from Acton's biological father, and Acton herself was called to testify as a witness following us and then by a grander and a Cledith Arthur skipped town. Well, Donna Arthur also has her own criminal history, including bleeding guilty to theft by deception while living in Pennsylvania in 1990s. So yeah. Animal neglect as well, a pretty sick tale just a few years ago of leaving, I believe, cats in a hot car. I don't need that well, gratuitous, gratuitous, I guess it's worthwhile to throw everything in here. Let people decide. So yeah, he went on the run, he molested her, he went on the run, there's documents, everything's been disproven, the idiots on the vague campaign put out something, but there were still not quite clear if they were responsible for this, because they didn't have the disclaimer on there which is problematic in its own right. Someone's sort of like, well, you know, maybe it wasn't them. That was like the last part of this, like maybe it wasn't them. So we put this out and now we have court documents that shows that she in fact was molested by her stepfather and that she had to get rid, get him out of her life and they had to get filed to get custody taken away from the mom, the mom, okay, all this would be fine, but maybe the vague didn't do this, like maybe it was just someone else. Well, sure enough, the Ramaswamy campaign put out a statement this afternoon, quote, we don't know what happened between Amy and her mother who first spoke out about Amy in 2020, but we know that Amy Acton is a serial fabulous who has some serious problems with the truth. This is Connie Luck, a spokeswoman for the Ramaswamy campaign just to reiterate, we don't know what happened between Amy and her mother. That's the first part of the statement. That's remarkable. We don't know what happened, but we're just going to put the mom out there to level some insane accusations that her daughter's a liar, throw it into the conversation, see what happens, and also they're not disavowed in the ad, obviously. >> Yeah, I mean, I think that reaction makes clear that they had something to do with it in some way. I mean, I think especially given that this statement came out after all of this negative reaction, I think that if they were like, this was some pack on rogue, we had no idea what was going on here. You would say that. And instead they're saying, well, I don't know, I got to say that ad makes some pretty good points. >> I mean, I would like, I hope and I believe firmly, maybe I'm on, that this is an incredible own goal, but this is just an absolutely dumb move by the fake people. It's, even if you thought that like Amy may have been, you know, embellishing this part of her life, like injecting like a mother, daughter dispute around something this serious. If you have a little bit of doubt about whether it's true or not, don't do it. It crosses a line, it's disgusting, but to do this knowing the criminal record is out there and knowing that the mom has her history, takes like a soullessness, a nasty side that I think, and I hope voters looking to just say, wow, that is gutter bullshit. And I do believe that that's how people are going to react to this. >> Yeah, I mean, even taking away the charges themselves, I mean, Amy Acton's mother clearly especially a very unsavory person. I mean, she's had these other cases. I mean, this idea of that if you were a campaign and the final stretch, you're going to say, yeah, let's get in bed with this person, let's kind of associate the Vivek Ramaswamy brand with her. I think it's just crazy. >> Well, the brand sucks. Okay, here's a couple clips of people. Here's a couple clips of people talking about the brand from 2024 when he was running in the Republican primary for president. Here's an opponent that I think highly of him. Here's Chris Christie talking about Vivek. >> You just have every debate. You go out on the stuff and you say something. All of us see it on video. We can front you out on the debate stage. You say you didn't say it and then you're back away. And I want to say- >> I'm not done yet. >> I'm not done yet. >> Well, this is- >> Now look, this is- >> This is the fourth debate- the fourth debate that you would be voted in the first 20 minutes as the most obnoxious blowhard in America. >> I'm going to respond to that. >> I'm going to say something else. We're now 25 minutes into this debate. And he has insulted Nikki Haley's basic intelligence. Not her positions, her basic intelligence. She doesn't know regions. She wouldn't be able to find something on a map that his three-year-old could find. Look, if you want to disagree on issues, that's fine. And Nikki and I disagree on some issues. But I'll tell you this, I've known her for 12 years, which is longer than he's even started to vote in a Republican primary. >> And here's Nikki Haley. >> Well, I want to laugh at why Nikki Haley didn't answer your question, which is about looking at families in the eye. In the last debate, she made fun of me for actually joining TikTok, while her own daughter was actually using the app for a long time, so you might want to take care of your family first. >> Leave my daughter out of your voice. >> All right, so there you have the brand, the brand sucks. I don't see him as being a popular figure in Republican politics. You know this too. All the grippers don't like him, but that's because he's Indian, but he just doesn't seem like someone who is well regarded by the movement. >> Yeah, I mean, this is a guy who, I mean, we'll see if he wins. But is a guy who I think is seen as an opportunist and someone who's willing to hit below the belt. I mean, you mentioned the Nikki Haley out there. I don't know. I just say, I feel like this certainly won't help his reputation. This is like one of the, I feel like one of the dirtiest things I've seen in politics in several years. >> It's pretty bad. It's pretty bad. Like just to throw this out there like that, and let's hope it doesn't work honestly. Even if the manner went side-run, let's hope this shit just doesn't work. We don't need this in our politics, it's nasty. All right, well, thank you for doing this. Appreciate you jumping on. Guys, thank you for watching this, sort this out. This was a complicated one, somewhat, some, actually, wasn't that complicated. It's pretty simple, down the line. This one sucks, but they should have not done this. But anyways, thanks for watching. Appreciate that. We'll take care of everyone else. Subscribe to the feed.