Just when you think MAGA depravity can’t stoop any further, they manage to find a shovel and dig a new low.
On Monday, Ohio’s GOP nominee for governor (and resident vulture capitalist), Vivek Ramaswamy, released an attack ad hitting Amy Acton, his Democratic opponent … featuring her own estranged mother.
In it, Acton’s mother poses as a well-meaning, patriotic American putting the good of Ohio above even her own daughter.
And yet, like everything else that comes out of the MAGA machine, it’s all a crock of shit.
When Amy Acton was just 9 years old, her stepfather began sexually molesting her. This heinous, disgusting abuse continued until Acton was 12, when her stepfather was charged with rape and indicted by a grand jury. Acton and her brother, Philip Stearns, were both permanently removed from their mother’s custody for failure to provide even basic necessities like housing or food, while knowingly refusing to stop the molestation Acton suffered at the hands of her stepfather.
Donna Arthur, Acton’s mother, stood by her husband and against her own children until the day he died. She never tried to protect her children and forfeited any rights as a mother that she might have had as a result.
Let’s be clear: Vivek Ramaswamy knew of Acton’s painful past and her mother’s complicity in it. Not only did he know, but even before barreling ahead with one of the most amoral ads in political history, he attacked Acton as someone who only “complain[s] about what someone else did to her.” He knew, and chose to produce and run the ad anyway, not only disregarding the vile trauma Acton suffered but hoping to mislead and dupe the very voters he claims to care about.
When the ad first aired, unlike nearly every other political ad, it wasn’t attributed to anyone. On Tuesday, Ramaswamy confirmed that it was his campaign that paid for and ran the ad. Not an outside money group, or loosely-aligned super PAC. His own campaign. Him.
Only the sickest, most craven, power-hungry pole-climbers willing to do anything to anyone would seek to exploit such a dark time in their opponent’s life – and those people should never get near elected office of any kind.
In the hours and days since the ad’s release, people on both sides of the aisle have roundly condemned its perversion of the truth. Meghan McCain called it “dastardly.” Ryan Smith, the former Speaker of the Ohio House, said Republicans needed to “stop normalizing bad behavior and embarrassing the party. Ohio deserves better than this.” Sherrod Brown, the Democratic nominee for the Senate in Ohio, called it “disgusting.” Katie Perris, the founder of Red, Wine, & Blue, lambasted Ramaswamy, saying “it takes a very weak man to use a woman’s pain to try and make himself feel strong.”
But the same vile cretins who produced the ad and who have pushed baseless, disgusting allegations across the country, came out in full support. Ramaswamy himself, in proper Trumpian fashion, not only refused to back down — he doubled down, putting $4 million behind it. JD Vance, whose self-proclaimed “Christian” morals are as low as his approval rating, went further than merely trying to explain the ad away but launched a full-frontal assault against Republicans expressing their disgust and outrage in its wake. Vance said the ad “calls it out like it is” and not only wasn’t wrong, but entirely justified.
For some, the GOP’s doubling-down on an ad so clearly outside any rational person’s ethical or moral standards comes as a surprise.
But this is the same Republican Party that has supported, perpetuated, and protected Trump for the last 11 years. This is the same party that installed an ultra-conservative Supreme Court majority that overturned Roe and has sat silently and idly by as women have literally died in hospitals because their doctors, whose only concern should be saving their life, were too scared to operate for fear of violating draconian, anti-American, absolute abortion bans.
Donald Trump was found liable for sexual abuse. He’s on tape saying he feels entitled to grab women by their … well, you know the line. He’s mentioned over thirty-eight THOUSAND times in the Epstein Files.
So it makes perfect – if unfathomably cruel – sense that the same party propping up one sexual abuser would exploit the trauma of another’s victim.
The moral rot within the Republican Party has hollowed out its core and zombified it beyond recognition. Gone are the days of Betty Ford’s crusade for the Equal Rights Amendment. Instead, today’s Republican elites are willing to do anything, say anything, exploit anything, and hurt anyone so long as they come out ahead.
Not you. Them.
But they only win if you let them.
They only win if you give up the single-greatest power you hold – your vote.
We have an election in just 12 days.
If we want to end MAGA’s depravity once and for all, our response can’t just be a blue puddle. It needs to be a blue tsunami that reaches into the deepest, reddest parts of America and washes away anyone who pledges loyalty to Trump and Trump alone.
Early voting has already started in 25 states – including Ohio. Voter registration deadlines are fast approaching. The next 12 days are the most consequential of this entire election, and we have to leave it all out on the field.
We’ll see you out there.