‘Vivek should keep it up’: Trump defends controversial Ramaswamy campaign ad condemned by Republicans
Donald Trump has defended Vivek Ramaswamy’s controversial gubernatorial campaign ad, that has been widely derided by Republicans, and features the estranged mother of his Democratic opponent, Amy Acton.
Donna Arthur hasn’t seen her daughter since she was removed from her custody when she was 12 – after her husband was arrested, charged and indicted for raping Acton, his stepdaughter. Arthur fled the state of Ohio with her husband and remained married to him until his death in 2004.
Trump said the backlash, including from the state’s GOP governor Mike DeWine, is “a concerted and well coordinated attack” to convince Ramaswamy to take down the advertisement.
“Frankly, anybody whose mother spoke about a daughter in that way would normally lead to the daughter being precluded from serving in Office, let alone the Office of Governor,” Trump wrote in a lengthy post on Truth Social. “The ‘Artificial’ News has teamed up against him in order to damage, demean, and embarrass a Republican who is leading in the Polls.”
Trump also denigrated DeWine, the outgoing governor who has endorsed Ramaswamy but clashed with Trump and Vance during the 2024 campaign, and accused him of being “disloyal to the Republican Party”. The president insisted that DeWine “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 added: “Vivek should keep it up, and let everyone listen to the mother of a defective, dishonest, and incapable Candidate, explain how the daughter is a DISASTER who, uncontrollably, lies, cheats, and steals!”
The president said that taking part in the ad “took a lot of courage” for Arthur to do. “What she was really doing was saving Ohio from making a truly horrible choice!” Trump wrote. “The Press is trying to convince everyone that this Ad is bad, because it’s so good! Who wouldn’t use such an Ad? I would, it’s called, ‘hitting pay dirt’.”
Key events
Here’s a recap of the day so far
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Donald Trump has defended Vivek Ramaswamy’s controversial gubernatorial campaign ad, that has been widely derided by Republicans, and features the estranged mother of his Democratic opponent, Amy Acton. “Frankly, anybody whose mother spoke about a daughter in that way would normally lead to the daughter being precluded from serving in Office, let alone the Office of Governor,” Trump wrote in a lengthy post on Truth Social.
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A reminder, Donna Arthur hasn’t seen her daughter since she was removed from her custody when she was 12 – after her husband was arrested, charged and indicted for raping Acton, his stepdaughter. Arthur then fled the state of Ohio with her husband and remained married to him until his death in 2004.
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Earlier, Mike DeWine, the outgoing Republican governor of Ohio, called on Ramaswamy’s campaign to take down the recent ad. DeWine called the spot “deeply, deeply troubling” and said it was “wrong” to have run it. “I would urge Ramaswamy’s campaign to take this down,” he added. Meanwhile, a key election forecaster has subsequently shifted the Ohio gubernatorial race from “toss up” to “leans Democratic” as a result of the ad controversy.
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Attorney general Todd Blanche did not rule it out a scenario in which the justice department would weigh in on states’ certifying process or try to block states from certifying the election. “Of course there’s scenarios we could all come up with,” Blanche said when asked by a reporter earlier today. “It is not DoJ’s intention to improperly interfere with elections or the state certification process, but to say that there’s no circumstances that we would ever do that – of course I’m not going to say that.”
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Calley Means, a senior adviser to US health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr who has also worked in the White House to further his “Make America Healthy Again” policies, quit his role today. He said he was doing so with “tremendous respect” for Trump and Kennedy. “They laid out a vision of combatting the entrenched, dark forces in DC that profit from Americans getting sick,” he wrote on social media. “More policy and cultural change has happened around these goals in the past 2 years than any time in history – and I know this movement is just getting started.”
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A federal judge in California has ordered the Trump administration to halt investigations in nine states – California, Connecticut, Georgia, Missouri, Nevada, New York, Pennsylvania, Washington and Wisconsin – into whether noncitizens are registered to vote. US district court judge Araceli Martínez-Olguin in Oakland found the government’s effort is relying on data that is full of errors and that it is leading to intimidation of groups performing voter assistance efforts. She said it should be halted until polls close on election day (3 November).
‘Vivek should keep it up’: Trump defends controversial Ramaswamy campaign ad condemned by Republicans
Donald Trump has defended Vivek Ramaswamy’s controversial gubernatorial campaign ad, that has been widely derided by Republicans, and features the estranged mother of his Democratic opponent, Amy Acton.
Donna Arthur hasn’t seen her daughter since she was removed from her custody when she was 12 – after her husband was arrested, charged and indicted for raping Acton, his stepdaughter. Arthur fled the state of Ohio with her husband and remained married to him until his death in 2004.
Trump said the backlash, including from the state’s GOP governor Mike DeWine, is “a concerted and well coordinated attack” to convince Ramaswamy to take down the advertisement.
“Frankly, anybody whose mother spoke about a daughter in that way would normally lead to the daughter being precluded from serving in Office, let alone the Office of Governor,” Trump wrote in a lengthy post on Truth Social. “The ‘Artificial’ News has teamed up against him in order to damage, demean, and embarrass a Republican who is leading in the Polls.”
Trump also denigrated DeWine, the outgoing governor who has endorsed Ramaswamy but clashed with Trump and Vance during the 2024 campaign, and accused him of being “disloyal to the Republican Party”. The president insisted that DeWine “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 added: “Vivek should keep it up, and let everyone listen to the mother of a defective, dishonest, and incapable Candidate, explain how the daughter is a DISASTER who, uncontrollably, lies, cheats, and steals!”
The president said that taking part in the ad “took a lot of courage” for Arthur to do. “What she was really doing was saving Ohio from making a truly horrible choice!” Trump wrote. “The Press is trying to convince everyone that this Ad is bad, because it’s so good! Who wouldn’t use such an Ad? I would, it’s called, ‘hitting pay dirt’.”
Susan Collins’ deciding vote to confirm conservative supreme court justice Brett Kavanaugh has become a flashpoint in the Senate race in Maine.
This midterm election is the first time Collins is on the ballot since the 2022 Dobbs decision, which overturned the constitutional right to an abortion.
“I want to say, for every woman in Maine, if we want to be able to deliver our children safely … the most important thing that we can do for women in Maine is to vote for Troy Jackson for the United States Senate,” said representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the Democratic congresswoman stumping with Jackson in Portland today.
The Guardian was the first to report that the one of the country’s oldest abortion rights groups, Reproductive Freedom for All, would endorse Jackson in this year’s Senate race.
Speaking to the crowd in Portland, Troy Jackson said that – if elected – his “day one agenda” in the Senate would involve repealing the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, Donald Trump’s domestic policy legislation that was signed into law last year.
“I know will be a big uphill deal. So we can get some semblance of our healthcare back,” Jackson said. “I mean, our healthcare wasn’t good before, but you know, trying to get that back so that we can work on Medicare for all. I believe strongly in that, and that’s my top priority.”
Discussing the immigration crackdown in Maine that saw a 26-year-old man in Biddeford killed at the hands of a federal immigration agent, Ocasio-Cortez noted how the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) presence in Maine has been disproportionate.
“They are sending ICE out in droves to intimidate not just the Somali community, not just the immigrant community, but to intimidate all of us,” the Democratic congresswoman said.
She added that tech companies which have substantial contracts with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) are “going out to lunch” on the $70bn funding bill for federal immigration enforcement that Susan Collins, the five-term Republican incumbent, “helped rubber stamp”.
“Whenever this administration is targeting an individual community, it is their way of trying to wedge open the door to compromise all of our rights,” Ocasio-Cortez said.
‘We’ve got a Senate race to win’: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez campaigns with Troy Jackson in Maine
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is now campaigning in Portland, Maine, alongside Troy Jackson, the Democratic hopeful for US Senate.
“We’ve got a logger that we are hoping to send to the United States Senate, that’s for working people and higher wages, on healthcare and so much more,” she said, describing Jackson on stage.
And following up from our last post, Calley Means has officially announced his resignation on social media.
He said he was doing so with “tremendous respect” for Donald Trump and Robert F Kennedy Jr, the health secretary.
“They laid out a vision of combatting the entrenched, dark forces in DC that profit from Americans getting sick,” he wrote. “More policy and cultural change has happened around these goals in the past 2 years than any time in history – and I know this movement is just getting started.”
Calley Means, a senior adviser to US health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr who has also worked in the White House to further his “Make America Healthy Again” policies, has quit his role today, the Wall Street Journal (paywall) reports.
According to reports, Means departed his role over frustrations that the White House had stalled progress on Kennedy’s Maha agenda, but said he would continue working to further the movement.
In a statement to Politico, Means said: “I leave with tremendous respect for President Trump and RFK – two historic figures who are committed to confronting a corrupt DC bureaucracy that is doing everything possible to protect the status quo.
“The past two years have seen historic policy and cultural change to confront the chronic disease crisis and healthcare incentives that profit from us being sick. This movement is in the first inning and just getting started.”
The Department of Health and Human Services did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.
Two administration officials have told Politico that Means’s breaking point came this week after a meeting between Kennedy and White House officials to discuss defining ultra-processed foods (a key Maha priority) was postponed.
“That was the straw that broke the camel’s back,” said one of the officials. “Calley’s been pushing very, very hard for this, but it’s been a very opaque process and has been just continuously stonewalled.”
AG doesn’t rule out DoJ weighing in on states’ certifying election results in certain scenarios
Asked by a reporter earlier whether there was any scenario in which the Department of Justice would weigh in on states’ certifying process or try to block states from certifying the election, attorney general Todd Blanche did not rule it out.
Blanche replied: “Is there any scenario? Yes, of course there’s scenarios we could all come up with.”
He added: “It is not DoJ’s intention to improperly interfere with elections or the state certification process, but to say that there’s no circumstances that we would ever do that – of course I’m not going to say that.”
Here’s the clip.
Maine GOP senator Susan Collins calls for removal of radio ad attacking Democrat Troy Jackson as a ‘creep’
Maine Republican senator Susan Collins has distanced herself from a new radio ad attacking her Democratic opponent Troy Jackson as a “freak” and a “creep” because “he has two kids with his cousin”, saying yesterday that the ad should be taken down.
The spot, airing on Maine radio in the form of a country song, is from the Senate Leadership Fund, a super PAC aligned with Senate Republicans. Among the lyrics in the jingle: “If he’ll screw his own family, he’ll screw yours too.”
Collins told reporters during a campaign appearance in Lewiston that she “had nothing to do with that ad”. She added that federal law bans her from coordinating with the super PAC, but she has publicly called for it to be removed.
Previously, in a Politico story last month, Collins referenced Jackson’s relationship with a second cousin. “I’m not going to bring up the fact that the mother of his two children is his second cousin,” Collins said. “I don’t know whether people know that or not.”
In an op-ed published yesterday, Lana Pelletier, Jackson’s partner, criticized the radio ad and other attacks on her family by Collins and her supporters, saying she never thought they “would stoop this low”.
“Senator Collins has been quick to demand respect and decency for herself. My family deserved the same,” Pelletier said. “I am not a helpless woman who needs politicians to tell the world what happened in my own life. And I am not a punchline or a caricature of where I come from.”
Jackson, a former state lawmaker and lumberjack, and Pelletier are longtime partners who have two sons together.
Jackson’s deputy campaign manager, Dan Gottlieb, said yesterday that Collins owes Jackson’s family an apology.
“Susan Collins herself spread these disgusting personal attacks on Troy’s family,” he told the Associated Press. “Now she wants Mainers to believe she’s above the very attacks she helped spread.”
Democrats are hoping for a win by Jackson over the incumbent Collins as the party tries to retake the Senate.
“This race is unique in Maine history in the number of personal attacks,” Collins said yesterday.
Federal judge orders Trump administration to halt noncitizen voting investigation in nine states
A federal judge in California has ordered the Trump administration to halt investigations in nine states – California, Connecticut, Georgia, Missouri, Nevada, New York, Pennsylvania, Washington and Wisconsin – into whether noncitizens are registered to vote.
US district court judge Araceli Martínez-Olguin in Oakland found the government’s effort is relying on data that is full of errors and that it is leading to intimidation of groups performing voter assistance efforts. She said it should be halted until polls close on election day (3 November).
She put her ruling, which was made on Wednesday, on hold until tomorrow to give the administration a chance to appeal.
It comes as the administration has been hunting for noncitizen voters throughout the country in the months leading into the midterm elections. The administration has signaled that it’s a major problem, when in fact it’s extremely rare, as even its own investigations have shown.
In response to the ruling, the Department of Homeland Security issued an email statement to the Associated Press, saying it’s focused on “removing aliens who vote and dilute the votes of US citizens”, while adding: “We have no plans to question or investigate people we believe to be US citizens.”
Ariana Baio
Pete Hegseth reportedly signed a memo last month permitting the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to test a non-lethal “heat ray” for potential use at the US southern border.
The “heat ray”, known as the Active Denial System, is a military-grade weapon that shoots an energy beam causing “a sensation of intense heat on the surface of the skin”, according to a 2009 National Defense University case study on the weapon.
The sensation “creates an intolerable sensation and reflexive movement” such as ducking or running.
In a memo, first obtained by CNN, the US defense secretary authorized a “temporary loan” of the Active Denial System to the DHS for seven months beginning in September. The DHS can request further use of the Pentagon system if needed.
A spokesperson for Customs and Border Protection (CBP) said in a statement it was “continually evaluating new technology, especially technology that can save lives while simultaneously enhancing national security effectiveness”.
It is unclear what the DHS plans to use the Active Denial System for exactly, but the memo permits the department to use it for potential operations at the US-Mexico border.
When used, the Active Denial System can produce an invisible beam of 95 gigahertz that penetrates about 1/64th of an inch into the skin, causing a burning sensation. (The system is technically not a “heat ray” because it uses millimeter waves, not infrared, Forbes reported in 2020.)
Pentagon officials have compared the feeling to a blast of heat when opening a hot oven, according to CNN. The feeling is temporary, lasting between 10 and 15 minutes.
Here’s the full story:
Jeremy Barr
Reporting from Miami
Donald Trump has been ordered by a US judge to cooperate with the discovery process mandated for his lawsuit against the BBC and to sit for a deposition by 11 December – or else he could be subject to sanctions, including the possible dismissal of the $10bn lawsuit.
The lawsuit stems from a Panorama documentary aired by the BBC that spliced together comments made by Trump during a rally on 6 January 2021, before the US Capitol riot. While the broadcast was not readily available to view in Florida, Trump’s team has argued that he was personally damaged by the broadcast under Florida’s Unfair and Deceptive Trade Practices Act.
During a lengthy hearing dealing with a variety of discovery issues, federal magistrate judge Enjoliqué Lett on Thursday also rejected a request by Trump’s legal team to prevent the seven-hour deposition from being videotaped, though it will only be accessible to attorneys in the case.
Lett agreed with contentions from the BBC’s lawyers that Trump’s team had not been sufficiently forthcoming in handing over internal documents relevant to the case ahead of an 18 December deadline for discovery.
“We still have a completely lopsided [situation] here on discovery. They have produced absolutely nothing of any substance,” attorney Charles Tobin, on behalf of the BBC, argued in a Miami courtroom. The documents that Trump’s team have turned over have primarily been either pulled from the internet or provided by the BBC itself.
“It strains credulity that a thorough search has been done in order to determine that all of these requests have been responded to,” Lett told Alejandro Brito, Trump’s Florida-based attorney. “The court is not satisfied that anyone is doing a thorough job.”
Before traveling to Nebraska, JD Vance fielded questions from reporters and expressed confidence in possible negotiations between Russia and Ukraine, following Steve Witkoff’s meetings with leadership of both countries in recent days.
“The reason why we haven’t struck a peace deal is because they’ve just been too apart on some of the details of that negotiation,” Vance said. “So, I think Steve re-engaged the process … He feels optimistic. I mean, the nature of these things is you take a swing at it, you see how much progress you can make, and then you go back at it, and sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t.”
While Witkoff said that trilateral talks between Washington, Moscow and Kyiv “at the technical level” would follow his discussions this week, Russia still carried out a massive “demonstrative” attack on Ukraine overnight, bombarding Kyiv with ballistic missiles just hours after Putin’s meeting with Witkoff wrapped up.
The latest strikes killed at least two people and wounded 22, including four children.
Democrats have 37-point lead over Republicans among likely young voters, new poll finds
Democrats lead Republicans 63% to 26% among likely voters aged 18-29, according to a new poll by Harvard’s Institute of Politics.
However, 33% of young Americans say they will definitely vote in the upcoming midterms, down from 40% who said the same ahead of both the 2018 and 2022 cycles.
In 2024, 56% of men between the ages of 18 and 29 voted for Trump while just 40% of their female peers did so. Harvard’s new poll shows that while women still favor Democrats, 66% to 21%, that number is also robust among young men: 58% to 32%.
Another key takeaway from the survey, the last before the November midterms: only 9% of 18- to 29-year-olds say the nation is generally headed in the right direction, while 62% say it is off on the wrong track and 26% say they are unsure.
Key election forecaster shifts Ohio gubernatorial race in Dems favor after GOP campaign ad controversy
Following the recent controversy around Vivek Ramaswamy’s campaign ad that features Amy Acton’s estranged mother, Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the Center for Politics – a key election forecaster – has shifted the Ohio gubernatorial race from “toss up” to “leans Democratic”.
As I noted earlier, a number of Republicans, including the outgoing governor Mike DeWine, have criticized the ad, which includes Acton’s mother – who she hasn’t seen since she was removed from her care at age 12 – calling her daughter a “liar”.
‘Deeply troubling’: Republican governor of Ohio calls on Ramaswamy to take down campaign ad featuring Democratic opponent’s estranged mother
Mike DeWine, the outgoing Republican governor of Ohio, has called on Vivek Ramaswamy’s campaign to take down the recent ad that includes the estranged mother of his Democratic opponent, Amy Acton.
DeWine called the campaign spot “deeply, deeply troubling” and said it was “wrong” to have run it. “I would urge Ramaswamy’s campaign to take this down,” he added.
The governor, however, told reporters today that he would not rescind his endorsement of Ramaswamy in the bitter gubernatorial race against Acton – who served as the health director in DeWine’s administration and guided the state through its Covid-19 pandemic response.
On Wednesday, Acton responded to the recent controversy and told a group of voters said Ramaswamy shouldn’t have “exploited” her mother.
A reminder that Acton and her brother were removed from their mother’s care when Acton was 12, after their stepfather was arrested and charged for raping her. However Arthur remained married to her husband, and they fled the state.
Meanwhile, at an event stumping for Ramaswamy in Cincinnati on Wednesday, JD Vance chided Republicans for their outrage over the ad. The vice-president said he wasn’t going to weigh in on whether the spot was “appropriate or not”. Instead his “message” for fellow elected Republicans was to “stop whining about an advertisement and go win the race in 13 days”.
