SANDUSKY — The Trump administration doubled-downed twice on Thursday, re-affirming confidence in Vivek Ramswamy and calling his opponent, the victim of a childhood sexual trauma at the hands of her stepfather, a liar.
At a campaign stop in Iowa President Donald Trump said he personally encouraged Ramaswamy, the Republican nominee for Ohio governor, to keep running an attack ad featuring the mother of his Democratic rival, Dr. Amy Acton, who had lost custody of her daughter at age 12 because her husband was charged with raping Acton.
“They did an ad of the mother saying the daughter is incompetent, a liar and disgusting unreliable person,” Trump said, adding some claims that were not, in fact, in the ad.
“My mom would not say that about me - even if she believed it,” the president said, clearly siding with a woman who sided with the man charged with raping her own 12-year-old daughter.
Winning is all that counts, according to the President.
“When I first saw it, I said, ‘Wow, that means Vivek easily will win the race’. And then I got a call from Vivek,” Trump said. “He said, ‘What would you recommend? Because I’m getting killed in the press.’ Why? He said, ‘Because they think I should immediately take the ad off.’”
“The mother said horrible things about your opponent,” Trump said. “I said, ‘You’ve got to ride with it’”.
Trump’s comments came just hour after Vice President J.D. Vance, similarly, made comments supportive of Ramaswamy’s decision to spend $4 million to air the political attack ad featuring Acton’s mom. with whom she has been estranged since the mom lost custody of Acton and her brother after their stepfather was indicted on rape charges.
The comments from the President and Vice President are in the decided minority of what people are saying. We asked local officials for their reaction, and we did get a smattering of responses. Go to our election guide for more reaction stories
