Vivek’s Hideous Ad Has Republicans at Each Other’s Throats

Hello and welcome to Bulwark Takes. Everybody keeps talking about this insane ad that Vivek Ramaswamy, Republican running for governor of Ohio, put out against his Democratic opponent, Amy Acton, featuring besmirchments of her character from her estranged mother, from whom she was emancipated when she was only 12 years old. It is a crazy ad. It's a shameless ad. We've written about it in Morning Shots. My colleague Will Sommer, who's here with me, has been writing about it in his newsletter, and we keep getting more and more stuff on it. The president of the United States, Donald Trump, just weighed in on Truth Social about this ad. You will be shocked to hear he does not take the path of sort of high manners about this whole thing. Vivek Ramaswamy put up a very powerful ad about a mother saying that her daughter, Amy Acton, who is running for governor of Ohio, is a liar and much worse. The press, in a concerted and well-coordinated attack, is trying to get Vivek Ramaswamy to take down the ad. Frankly, anybody whose mother spoke about a daughter that way would normally lead to the daughter being precluded. From serving in office, let alone the office of governor, this ad would win awards for excellence in advertising. But because Vivek, who will be a great governor, put it out, the artificial news has teamed up against him in order to damage, demean, and embarrass a Republican who is leading in the polls. So Trump, like his vice president, J.D. Vance, yesterday, endorses the ad. Will, you have been kind of monitoring the right-wing response to this piece of content. But maybe, sorry, before we get to that, can you kind of just, I know people have been following along a little bit here. Can you just sort of lay it out for us? Can you kind of lay it out for us? What this ad is, does, and why it has made such a splash that we've all been writing about it for days now, even though it's just, you know, an ad in the Ohio governor's race. Yeah. So earlier this week, this video that appeared to be an ad from the Vivek Ramaswamy campaign leaked during a focus group. And it appeared to, or it does, it shows Amy Acton's mother saying, you know, essentially, my daughter's a liar. She's lying about her background. Don't trust her. She'll be a bad governor. And initially, the reason this is explosive beyond just being a mother-daughter thing is because, as you said, Amy Acton's mother, Donna Arthur, appears to have been a very bad mother. Amy Acton's stepfather was charged with raping 12-year-old Amy Acton. And basically, the mother and the stepfather fled the state to avoid the charges. Mother stayed with this guy until he died. You know, as you said, she lost custody of her children when she was 12. This is a story that Amy Acton's brother agrees with. You know, he says his sister's account is accurate. So this is not just sort of some random spat they're bringing up. And so initially, when it came out, a lot of people on the right were like, who's to say who made this ad? It might be a rogue pack or, you know, whatever. And then Vivek Ramaswamy the next day said, oh, yeah, it was us. And we're putting $4 million into this ad buy. And so since then, you've seen kind of this divergence between Republicans who are still kind of horrified by this. They can't believe it. And others, particularly in right-wing media and Donald Trump and J.D. Vance, who say, you know, pedal to the metal, anything it takes to win this race. Yeah, yeah. It has been. Interesting to watch that because you mentioned that like lag time before people knew that this was Vivek's ad. And I think that that has at least partially contributed to why there's been this amount of discomfort on the right, because there was that whole first day of sort of analysis of this thing before before Republicans really knew they were going to have to bite the bullet and and say it was a great thing where a lot of people were saying, man, you know, well, there's no reason to believe Vivek had anything to do with this. And maybe he should come out and and disavow this and say, no, this is essentially our closing message in the campaign. One of those Ohio Republicans, actually, there were several of them. Ohio Senator John Husted, who's up for reelection this year, he said he would not have released that ad himself. A little bit of a mealy mouthed response, but, you know, not this full throated endorsement of the ad. The current Ohio governor, Governor DeWine, who's a Republican, a little bit more of a moderate Republican, he denounced the ad. Let's let's listen to him talking about that today. On its face is deeply, deeply troubling. But when you know the rest of the story, you know the back story, when you know that. The husband of the mom was indicted by a grand jury after hearing testimony and that he took off along with mother. And that children never saw his mother after that. When you know that, it just, to me, makes it more serious. It makes it just more wrong. So it's wrong to run this ad. And even if this late time, my friend saw the ad run this morning on TV, I would just urge, run this ad, run this ad, run this ad. And even if this late time, my friend saw the ad run this morning on TV, I would just urge, run this ad, run this ad. uh, Ramaswamy campaign to take this down. Uh, it's just, it's just, it's just wrong. Yeah. So there you go. I mean, it's hard to argue with, with anything in that it's worth mentioning too. I didn't, I didn't get to it earlier, but in that same truth social post that we showed from Donald Trump, Donald Trump takes particular offense at this statement from governor DeWine. He says our Rhino governor of Ohio, Mike DeWine, who I unfortunately helped get elected years ago, he strongly suggested that Vivek should take down the ad. He was disloyal to the Republican party. I suggested on the other hand that Vivek should keep it up and let everyone listen to the mother of a defective, dishonest and incapable candidate explain how the daughter is a disaster who uncontrollably lies, cheats and steals. Okay. So MAGA as an organism is completely now distancing itself from the sort of DeWine, uh, take on this, even though that, that was sort of percolating in this first day, everybody's kind of falling in place behind Trump and Vance. Are there, are there still sort of stragglers out there who are people who are not, you know, Rhino, Mike DeWine, MAGA types in good standing, who are still kind of having a hard time holding their nose and getting behind this Vivek ad? Or is it, is it pretty unanimous at this point, Will? I mean, you know, there's, there's some division. I mean, Jim Renacci, kind of a longtime Ohio politician, he said, you know, this is going to destroy the ticket in Ohio. Like, you know, we have to disown this ad as quickly as possible. On the other hand, as you said, you've got Donald Trump, you got JD Vance, and you've got all these prominent right-wing media voices from Ben Shapiro to Glenn Beck to Megyn Kelly, um, who are saying kind of either they're saying, eh, it's a little distasteful, but like, you know, that's politics, baby. Like the comparisons I've seen, they said, well, what about when, you know, Paul Gosar, RFK Jr.'s, uh, relatives said they were bad guys. And I was like, well, it's a little different. I mean, they weren't complicit in their alleged, the alleged rape of these people. I mean, you know, it's a pretty serious situation, I guess is my point. It's about the most unreliable, narrator you could imagine in an ad is I guess the, the, the, the basics, even setting aside sort of the taste of it. It's like, there's, there's zero reason to believe this woman's account of what her daughter is like. She's a, she's a very hostile witness for, for really unsympathetic reasons. Well, and, you know, she comes out and, you know, she says, oh, do you think I would let my daughter live in a tent? And I was like, kind of, yeah. I mean, you know, there actually has been a lot of, I think you're pointing to something, which is that a lot of the punditry around this has been, well, you know, this was a while ago. Let's set aside the sexual assault, the rape stuff, which obviously, yes, they would like to set that aside. And let's just focus on this attack on her credibility. But, you know, this, this, this, this mother, she, she had this case where she had these cats. This is crazy. These were four kittens who were less than a week old. And she had them in a hot car that measured 120 degrees Fahrenheit. And basically there was this appeal of her like animal cruelty, animal neglect case. And ultimately it was But the judge said, look, I just cannot believe this woman's testimony at all. She's not a credible witness. And so, you know, this idea that otherwise, you know, Donna Arthur, Amy Acton's mother is this like tribune of honesty. If only we can set aside this sordid relationship and this abuse is just crazy on its own. Yeah. Yeah. Can you walk us through, I mean, your, your newsletter today had some of the greatest hits is a hard way to put it, but just some of the remarkable justifications that conservative media types are sort of the mental gymnastics that they are doing to try to convince themselves and one another that this is essentially a fair political attack. Yeah. So let's start on kind of like a ascending scale of like morality and humanity in terms of, I think how these people are seen on the right. Cause it was striking to me that these aren't just like the, all the people endorsing this ad aren't just like, you know, gutter, Laura, like the people who were like, I'll do anything like Laura Loomer types to win. So on one hand you have Megan Kelly, who's, you know, has, has done a lot of nasty stuff lately. Um, but she was like really one of the first big names to be like, I love this ad, whatever. And at one point she said, she's like, this reminds me of the Willie Horton ad, 1988, George H.W. Bush, the most infamous. And she's like, this was a super racist ad. She said, you know what? It worked. We won. So, I mean, she's like, it's Willie Horton. And that makes me like, you also have people like Glenn Beck and Ben Shapiro who are short of these more like, particularly in Ben Shapiro's case, he's more kind of like anti anti-Trump people. They're not, they're more kind of like Trump skeptical. Uh, and they're supposed to have this kind of like moral core to them. Um, and these guys love the ad too. Um, I mean, Glenn Beck, we can play the clip here in a second, but I mean, he was just like, you know, Donna Arthur, Amy Acton's mother, she just looks like a grandmother. I just love that so much. And it was just this bizarre moral calculus where he goes, okay, on one hand there was this rape case indicted by a grand jury at true. On the other hand, Donna Arthur said she like helped some sexual assault victims once. So it's basically a, let's play that Glenn Beck clip real quick, just because people, I mean, you can describe it, but people really ought to just sort of wallow. in this in this line of reasoning from our from our longtime conservative media uh talk radio buddy glenn beck let's listen to that let me just try to make sense of this let's say amy's telling the truth which i have no doubt no doubt in my i believe the 12 year old amy because the charge was made she and her brother was taken away from the guy and then he fled the state after being charged so it sounds really bad pretty good so i'm gonna point for amy now mom mom said that she was part of you know a a women and children abuse center so it sounds like mom may have been part of this abuse not as a receiving end not as a giving end a receiving end how many times has this happened how many times does this happen in families and she you got out and then started to work for children who are being abused so i got to give a point to amy's mom i don't know what's true that's all i know so i can't verify any more than that so what do i do point each good that means dismiss it so there's on the one hand there's all this really well documented true stuff that we know happened but then on the other hand there's this situation i just invented that there's no evidence for that would cut the other direction and uh and so when you when you go to weigh them out it's pretty much a wash there for glenn and who's to say what's true besides all the reporting including from conservative national review about these court documents the admissions amy acton's mother has made in the past saying oh yeah we fled the state because he was being prosecuted for raping my daughter um all of these things and then he says well who's to say i mean this is a very classic kind of like trump era thing to say i don't know i haven't looked into it and it's like well do you think you could look into it before you do the show i don't know i don't know to your millions of fans um another thing that's like and glenn beck kind of gets that hit there is repeatedly these characters they don't they are kind of i think deliberately obscuring the facts of the case and so they'll say well he wasn't indicted by a grand jury he was megan kelly said well why wasn't there a trial he fled the state we know he fled the state donna arthur has admitted this so they do just so much to fuzz it up and just to sort of just say well like basically we just need to go back to this kind of core story we don't want any of the baggage you we don't want you asking why is this woman's mother attacking her yeah yeah it's always so weird to watch sort of the ecosystem when these stories break because it's not just that these people have like a political incentive to like downplay stories against their own kinds of guys um and and you know play up stories against their opponents but there's also this like weird like ecosystem pressure where like the people who are willing to actually look at the facts and say man this actually looks really bad for vivek and this isn't really good for him to do like if you're willing to take that stance immediately you get this target on your back from all the other influencers and from you know the president of the united states and all these people who are going to start saying you know not only that your analysis is wrong but that you're like some kind of rhino interloper who can't be trusted so it's like there's like 50 different reasons why even if any of these people did have like a little bit of a qualm about you know going out and trying to sell their audience this bill of goods they have a whole bunch of different reasons why they you know might might just squish that qualm way down and go out and and do these insane insane leaps of leaps of logic and rhetoric to to try to get everybody to swallow this pill yeah exactly I mean it's sort of like at the point where we're Ben Shapiro we're Glenn Beck to say like this you know it turns my stomach this is so sick I can't believe we've come to this I mean admittedly it's been about a decade of doing stuff like this for the Republican Party but if they were to come out and say it then it's like well what are you saying about Megyn Kelly what are you saying about Ben Shapiro that they're on board with it you know the other thing I want to say is like is this ad that effective you know I mean is it people are kind of making this analysis people like Ben Shapiro Megyn Kelly that like this is like the nuclear bomb and you know yes it will it will be people people will find it distasteful but it's going to get the job done you know Frank Luntz he said he think it's gonna be effective but it's just one of these things are like I don't know I mean you see these obviously people like like John Husted and uh and and Jim Renacci are like oh my gosh this is a disaster for Republicans yeah I mean I I I genuinely don't know I don't know how to slice which way this is going to cut obviously dirty tricks can work in politics at the same time Amy Acton comes across so sympathetically in this story I mean like the the the response ad of her brother sort of sticking up for her and saying how much she like as a young tween was like protecting him from this horrible abusive situation that they're in I know close observers of Ohio politics have known this stuff about uh about Amy Acton it's been part of her biography she's told this story before but there's a lot of people who are going to be voting in this election who are not close observers of Ohio politics who are just kind of tuning in now who see you know Vivek and Amy Acton's utterly discreditable mother sort of on the one side of this and then you have you know the actual facts of the matter and the actual truth of this story with a very sympathetic a victim of of child molestation a victim of child rape I mean it's just it's just astonishing it's just staggering I don't know if you've seen Vivek's own insane kind of commentary on this I do think that there's part of him himself that's uncomfortable with the whole thing he had this ridiculous line when he was first admitting that it was his ad where he's like you know I I would have loved to just stay focused on the issues in this race but unfortunately Amy Acton won't debate me and so you know this is the kind of race that you get where I have to go dig up her her you know mom who aided and abetted her abuser uh and uh and who hasn't seen her since she was 12 and I had to make that my closing argument instead you know shucks really wish it could have been about about the issues instead you know Andrew if I could just kind of like refine my point let's say this back story did not exist you know let's say let's just say there wasn't this history abuse and just Amy acted our mother hated each other I feel like the Republican Party is kind of pretending like it's Victorian England and it's just like she's been denounced by her own mother like I think this is the 21st century people have strained family relationships I think you know if if you if you saw that someone was denounced by their own mother you go okay and it kind of prompts you to Google it and then I guess they would find this but it reminds me in a way obviously different circumstances of Ken Paxton's uh ad for uh from his estranged soon-to-be ex-wife oh yeah where she says I just love Ken Paxton I'm his wife don't don't ask why you know people might want to hear from me and you know it both of these things kind of prompt you to Google it and then I think the ads uh efficacy really drops can we just spend one minute on how insane Ohio has been this whole cycle I mean there have just been so many of these in ludicrous stories that have come out of this particular election season in what is usually a pretty safe Republican state or at least you know used to be a swing state but under under the Trump years has become a pretty safe Republican State had the whole weird Max Miller Saga the congressman who's been accused himself of of you know domestic violence domestic abuse whose father-in-law whose former father-in-law is you know the the father of his ex-wife is Senator Bernie Marino who very publicly weighed in on that story very publicly Max Miller tried to blackmail essentially by saying you don't want your secrets to come out buddy yes exactly and then and now I guess everything is sort of forgiven and they're back to appearing at the same Trump rallies together but then you get all this stuff with the vacant Amy Acton and Trump is there you know once a week just sort of drooling over John Houston's build and his physique I mean it's just it's such I don't know why all this stuff is coming out of Ohio specifically but it's just been a very very weird state this cycle yeah I don't know it's it's the witching hour uh you know it it I'm curious it it certainly I'm certainly thinking about Ohio a lot more than I get than I usually do I certainly hope this all blows up in Vivek's face it is it is so discreditable it is such a mask off moment for this guy who like tries to carry himself on the campaign trail as like this Avatar of like a better sort of politics I mean he's been doing that since his presidential election but I guess if he goes down a few points to Amy Acton in the polls it's like well we'll put a pin in that for now and uh and and we're gonna we're gonna sort of drag up the most fetid awful nonsense uh anybody's ever really put in an ad all cycle so uh anything else on this well before we before we let the people go well one more thing you know uh Greg Kelly at Newsmax he played the ad from Amy Acton's brother who called Vivek Vivek and Greg Kelly was so shocked by this he couldn't believe it he was like it's Vivek like cake as this guy's explaining his like horrific family abuse I mean the the the things right wing media has to focus on to avoid like looking directly at this I think are really striking that is funny too I mean I remember all through the 2020 cycle I felt like the only guy in America who was pronouncing it Vivek it was like it was Vivek all over everybody's media all the time now the the woksters on the right yeah yeah anyway well that's okay everybody has learned two things about Vivek they've learned how to pronounce his name and they've learned uh that he that he truly is uh basically a a snake and a scumbag so that's interesting that's that's cool 10 days to go something like that eight days nine days it's not a lot of time left thanks Will for coming on to talk about this insane Saga thanks everybody out there for watching for subscribing we hope you do subscribe already if you don't subscribe already go ahead hit that button little uh or guys a biggish red button down underneath our faces there helps the channel out quite a bit helps us to get on other people's screens and yours more often if that's what you're into so uh so thanks to you all for watching and we'll see you next time