Opinion
For years, one of Donald Trump’s greatest political assets has been his blatant disregard for red lines. Time and again, the US president has shown there is no blow too low, no smear too egregious, no moral code that cannot be broken when it comes to attacking a perceived enemy.
But where voters once rewarded Trump’s brutality, MAGA Republicans attempting to emulate their leader and fashion themselves as viable heirs apparent are failing spectacularly.
Last week, Vivek Ramaswamy, a Republican tech billionaire running to become the next governor of Ohio, confirmed his campaign had commissioned an ad featuring the mother of his Democratic opponent, Dr Amy Acton.
In it, a white-haired and raspy-voiced Donna Arthur warns voters against electing her daughter.
“It’s not easy for a mother to say this, but Amy has a serious problem. She is a liar. She lies about her past … She’s lied her entire life. My daughter needs help, and she can’t help you if she can’t help herself,” Arthur says as emotive music plays in the background.
What she fails to disclose in the 60-second takedown – which Ramaswamy’s team say she wasn’t paid for – is that she has not seen or spoken to her daughter in 48 years.
Acton and her brother were removed from their mother’s care in 1978 after police charged and indicted Arthur’s second husband, Cledith Arthur, of sexually abusing Acton, his stepdaughter, when she was between nine and 12 years old. That same year, Cledith and Donna Arthur fled the state to avoid going to trial and effectively remained on the run until his death in 2004.
Ramaswamy probably believed the video would pack a one-two punch – delivering a devastating blow to the credibility of his opponent, while also impressing Trump with his willingness to play in the mud. While the latter has happened (the president called the ad “so good” and asked why anyone wouldn’t use it), the former has backfired wildly. In less than a week, the ad has become a lightning rod for disillusioned MAGA voters and emblematic of why so many once-devout followers are heading into next week’s midterm elections as non-believers.
The idea that anyone can know a person after 48 years of estrangement is fanciful. That anyone believes they can know the fullness of an adult’s character when all they have to go off is the memory of a child from almost five decades prior borders on delusional.
When Trump took office in 2016, many who backed him also believed in Pizzagate – a conspiracy theory that claimed Democrats were running a paedophile ring out of a pizza shop in Washington DC. Though debunked, MAGA supporters’ fear that politicians were harming innocent children on the premises became a part of the 2016 election narrative.
During the 2024 election, those same voters, and many more, supported Trump because of his promise to declassify and release the so-called Epstein Files – a collection of millions of pages of evidence relating to convicted sex offender and alleged child sex abuser Jeffrey Epstein.
After Trump won office, he spent months trying to downplay the files’ contents and walk back his earlier commitments. He reportedly told Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene that if he were to release the documents, “my friends will get hurt”.
Ramaswamy’s camp has doubled down on the ad, with a spokeswoman telling The New York Times: “We know that Amy Acton is a serious fabulist who has some serious problems with the truth.”
Vice President JD Vance, who famously also endured a difficult childhood, said he was “disgusted” by Republicans who took issue with the ad, saying they needed to stop whining.
But in using the mother to call an alleged child sex abuse victim a liar, Ramaswamy has finally, albeit inadvertently, said the quiet part out loud. MAGA Republicans like himself and Trump don’t care about the safety of children, they care about winning.
But Ramaswamy’s timing could prove devastating. Eighteen of 24 polls tracking the Ohio governor’s race show Acton leading. Nationally, Trump’s approval rating has hit a record low. In fact, it is the lowest for any president heading into the midterms in 80 years.
If winning is the end game, you need the votes to get you there. And by burning one of the fan base’s most sacred bridges, Ramaswamy risks doing such harm to his reputation and the party’s that he may never get there.
In the second part of her video, Donna Arthur says, “Don’t vote for people who lie … If you think she’ll make your life better, you’re fooling yourself. It will only get worse.”
The problem for Republicans is that in cannibalising one of their former core tenets, many of their former supporters probably feel the same way about Trump and Ramaswamy.
Katy Hall is a senior editor and regular columnist.
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