Sioux City: US President Donald Trump instructed Republican candidate Vivek Ramaswamy to keep airing a deeply controversial TV advertisement featuring the estranged mother of his Democratic opponent – saying it was “hitting pay dirt” – despite a growing backlash to the commercial within the party.
Trump told a rally in Sioux City, Iowa, that Ramaswamy rang him for advice on whether to take down the ad after calls to do so from several prominent Republicans, including the outgoing governor of Ohio, Mike DeWine, whom Ramaswamy is running to replace.
“The ad, on its face, is deeply, deeply troubling,” DeWine said. “But when you know the rest of the story, when you know the backstory ... It’s wrong to run this ad. I would just urge the Ramaswamy campaign to take this down. It’s just wrong.”
The ad features Donna Arthur, the estranged mother of Democratic gubernatorial candidate Amy Acton, calling her daughter a lifelong liar who should not be trusted with political office.
But Arthur has not had contact with her daughter since 1978, when Acton and her brother were removed from their mother’s care following a report of alleged sexual abuse by their stepfather. He was charged and indicted, but never faced trial as he fled the state. Arthur remained married to him until his death.
The ad has been widely seen as having crossed an ethical line. Acton’s brother, Phil Stearns, called it a “desperate, disgusting attack” that revealed Ramaswamy as “a pathetic excuse for a man”.
Jon Husted, the Republican Senate candidate in Ohio who is struggling against Democratic challenger Sherrod Brown, also said he would not have run the commercial.
But Trump told the rally in Sioux City that when Ramaswamy sought his advice, he encouraged the candidate to keep the ad on the air.
“When I first saw it, I thought, ‘Wow, that means Vivek will easily win the race’,” Trump recounted. “Then I got a call from Vivek. He said, ‘What would you recommend? Because I’m getting killed in the press’.”
Trump said he told Ramaswamy to “ride with it”. It was only natural for a political candidate to make an ad with ammunition such as Arthur had provided, he said.
“The mother is calling the daughter a terrible person and a liar. Everybody should be so lucky. Why would you shield somebody from that? So I told him: leave it up, and look upstairs and say, ‘thank you, God’.”
Earlier, Trump wrote on Truth Social that the ad was “hitting pay dirt”, and criticised DeWine over his call for the commercial to be withdrawn.
“He probably wants a Dumocrat to win, and certainly doesn’t want someone who will do a much better job than he is capable of doing,” Trump wrote, using a pejorative term he has coined for the Democrats.
DeWine has endorsed Ramaswamy to succeed him, and stopped short of pulling his backing for now.
DeWine recalled a previous line of attack by the Acton campaign had mentioned Ramaswamy’s mother and said that also was wrong – “family members have always historically been off limits” – though he noted it was never used in a multimillion-dollar ad campaign.
The Ramaswamy campaign ad has become a lightning rod for debate in a country where division and extreme political discourse have become accepted as normal. For some, it has become a moral red line in a polity often devoid of standards or limits.
Ashley Hinson, an Iowa congresswoman who is running for the US Senate in that state, and spoke at Trump’s rally in Sioux City, condemned the ad in stronger terms than nearly any other Republican.
“It’s terrible,” she told America’s ABC. “I think about it as a mum. You think about our 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.”
Vice President JD Vance, an Ohio native, expressed disgust with Republicans “whining” about the ad rather than Democrats’ policies. Later, Vance said he did not want to “get in the middle” of the drama surrounding the commercial.
Another influential Ohio Republican, former congressman Jim Renacci, posted a lengthy essay on X suggesting that “the floor may have just fallen out” of Ramaswamy’s campaign.
“Any Republican who fails to distance themselves from this ad risks taking on water as well,” he said. “Vivek Ramaswamy needs to pivot, and quickly.”
Ohio’s Senate race is one of the tightest and most expensive in the country. If Democrats win Husted’s seat, it will bring them within striking distance of seizing control of the chamber.
Amid the turmoil, Ohio Republican Party chairman Alex Triantafilou posted what sounded like a warning or a threat.
“The final days of a tough campaign are always the best time to find out who is really with you and who just posts and pretends,” he wrote. “Yes – we are keeping score.” The quote was followed by a winking-eye emoji.