President Donald Trump has been undermining his own party for months, continually causing new headaches for Republicans, even long after most presidents would have used Election Day to rein themselves in.
So why would this stop on the eve of these elections?
Trump’s latest move involves intimidating Republicans into adopting a highly controversial political ad that seeks to weaponize a situation involving allegations of child sexual abuse. The ad clearly rubbed many Republican officials the wrong way, both morally and politically.
Ohio gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy’s ad features his Democratic opponent’s ex-mother, Amy Acton, calling Acton a liar. Acton previously said she hadn’t seen her mother since she was 12, when her mother lost custody of her children and the man she married was indicted for allegedly sexually abusing Acton.
Trump not only defended the ad Thursday, but he also urged his party to take ownership of it and pressure Republicans to comply. At a rally in Iowa that evening, he even told the crowd that Ramaswamy had called him for advice on whether to remove it, and the president told him he should leave the ad up.
“Look upstairs and say thank you, God, very much. I appreciate it,” Trump recalled telling Ramaswamy.
In a social media post earlier today, Trump praised the mother for having the “courage” to report her daughter. And he attacked one of the Republicans who criticized the ad, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, calling it “disloyal to the Republican Party.”
Trump doubled down on his efforts even as reporters highlighted his fellow Republicans’ concern about a situation involving allegations of child sexual abuse.
He twice said he knew “nothing” about Acton’s history with his mother, but argued that the mother should still be taken “seriously.”
“Even though it’s kind of true, you don’t want her as governor,” Trump said.
Beyond the fact that he is clearly willing to dismiss credible allegations of abuse, there are some real ironies here.
First, if a mother calling her child a liar is inherently disqualifying, that would be bad news for the man Trump nominated to be Secretary of Defense: Pete Hegseth. Hegseth’s mother wrote him an email in 2018 saying he “belittles, lies, cheats, sleeps with, and uses women for his own power and ego,” according to a New York Times report.
(Hegseth’s mother denied these feelings and defended her son during his confirmation process.)
Additionally, Acton’s mother essentially accuses her of being a habitual liar, especially about her political opponent and her upbringing. For Trump, this is like throwing stones at a glass house.
But even putting that aside, this is a very questionable political tactic. The Ohio governorship is important, but is it critical enough to risk tarnishing the party’s image more broadly and provoking a feud within the party less than two weeks before an election?
Other Republicans aren’t just retreating here, and it extends beyond Ohio. The same afternoon that Trump made these comments, we learned that Iowa Republican Senate candidate Ashley Hinson had become the latest Republican to call for the ad to be taken down. She told ABC News it was “absolutely terrible” for Acton to have to “relive that trauma.”
It’s one thing for Sen. Jon Husted and other Ohio Republicans to speak out against the ad and worry about what it might mean for them; it’s another for a key GOP candidate from outside Ohio’s borders to openly criticize him.
And even if the publicity doesn’t come back to the GOP, is there much to be gained here? Is it worth the risk?
The last time we saw such a brutal ad from a midterm candidate’s family members was a 2018 ad featuring Arizona Republican Rep. Paul Gosar’s six siblings all denouncing him. He fell from 71% of the vote in 2016 to 68% in 2018 — a small change likely driven by a worse environment for the GOP than for advertising.
Even that kind of change might not be enough for Ramaswamy, who is about five points behind the average of recent quality polls. And it’s worth repeating: Gosar’s ad did not involve credible allegations of abuse.
Trump is essentially asking his party to own something that is clearly very uncomfortable to own, just to help a candidate who may or may not benefit from it. His comments make no bones about what the Republican Party is these days, and he tells his allies to just grin and bear it.
Trump clearly does not share qualms about the morality of the ad. And maybe that shouldn’t be surprising from a guy who didn’t seem to care about the Epstein files and even repeatedly proposed a pardon for convicted child sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell. Praising the “courage” of Acton’s mother is very much in line with all of this.
It’s still too early to have credible polls on what Ohioans or Americans think about the ad, but Trump has repeatedly shown he has no problem forcing his party to deal with extremely unpopular things. That includes his tariffs, the war in Iran, his taxpayer-funded political ads, and his happy-go-lucky talk about inflation and the economy, which Trump clung to long after it clearly wasn’t working.
He follows his instincts and impulses, even when those things have failed his party politically several times in recent times. He’s now asking his party to swallow something else unsavory that could bring down key candidates, less than two weeks before Election Day.
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