Kathrine Frich
Reporters pressed President Donald Trump about the controversy.
Campaign commercials are designed to hit hard and grab voters’ attention before election day.
Candidates regularly push the boundaries of good taste to gain an edge in a tight race.
This week, though, one television spot crossed a line that sparked immediate outrage on national broadcasts.
A bitter Ohio race
Republican candidate Vivek Ramaswamy faces intense backlash over a new campaign commercial in the Ohio governor’s race, according to CNN and Huffpost. Not only did his team produce the controversial spot, but he has also kept paying to keep it on the air.
The video features the estranged birth mother of Democratic rival Amy Acton, and in the clip, the woman brands her own daughter “a liar.” Years ago, however, the mother lost custody of her children after authorities indicted her husband, Acton’s stepfather, for allegedly raping Acton.
On Tuesday, the Democratic candidate spoke out against the commercial.
“I won’t normalize somebody who has said that my childhood is just something I’m complaining about, who today just released an ad using my birth mother, who I was removed from at the age of 12 for severe abuse and neglect, and sexual abuse,” Acton told local Ohio outlet Spectrum News.
Called out on air
Reporters pressed President Donald Trump about the controversy outside the White House on Wednesday, while Vice President JD Vance also declined to criticise the video when questioned. Trump insisted the commercial did not “have anything to do with Vivek,” even as he discussed its contents.
“The fact is, I know nothing about it, but I hear the mother went very rogue on the daughter, doesn’t have a lot of respect for the daughter, and I think the mother is a witness to things also, so who knows? And you have to figure that out. It’s a very unusual situation to have a mother hate a daughter that much,” Trump said, as aired on CNN.
After playing the clip for viewers on Wednesday, CNN anchor Jake Tapper stared into the camera and corrected the record immediately. “It’s Vivek’s ad,” Tapper told his audience.
Then the host went a step further. “And he seems to know quite a bit about the ad. So the president and the vice president are standing by this woman who stood by an alleged accused child rapist and calling the child who was raped, now a woman, Amy Acton, calling her a liar to win an election,” Tapper said on CNN.
