President Donald Trump had an opportunity to distance himself from a campaign ad that dragged the estranged mother of Democratic Ohio gubernatorial candidate Amy Acton into a bitter political fight.
Instead, Trump described the family rift as “a very unusual situation” and questioned what it had to do with Vivek Ramaswamy, the Republican candidate hoping to defeat her.
His response added another layer to a controversy that has already drawn condemnation from Republicans and Democrats, with some warning the ad could cost Ramaswamy the election.
“I don’t know anything about it. It’s a very unusual situation to have a mother hate a daughter that much. But I don’t think that has anything to do with Vivek,” Trump said of the advertisement, which features Acton’s mother, Donna Arthur, accusing her daughter of lying about her childhood.
The president’s remarks came as Ramaswamy continued defending the ad, even as criticism mounted over his decision to use a family estrangement rooted in allegations of childhood sexual abuse as a campaign weapon, according to CBS.
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The advertisement, which began circulating on social media Monday night, features Arthur introducing herself as Acton’s mother before urging Ohio voters to reject her daughter. Arthur says she worked for the Children and Family Service Association, helping build one of the first two sexual abuse programs in America, before accusing Acton of dishonesty.
“I love my daughter, but when I saw her lying about her opponent — and it’s not easy for a mother to say this — but Amy has a serious problem. She is a liar,” Arthur says in the ad. She also disputes Acton’s account of growing up in a tent and says her daughter has lied throughout her life.
“My daughter needs help, and she can’t help you if she needs help herself,” Arthur says, before warning voters that electing Acton would make their lives worse.
The accusations, however, collide with a painful family history that Acton and her brother, Philip Stearns, have publicly described. According to court records provided by Acton’s campaign, her stepfather, Cledith Arthur, was charged in 1978 with raping Acton when she was between 10 and 12 years old. He entered a not guilty plea.
Acton’s campaign says authorities removed her and her brother from their mother’s custody after the abuse and neglect, and the siblings then lived with their father.
Stearns said their birth mother remained married to their stepfather until his death in 2004. The couple left Ohio without facing charges. Authorities later issued warrants for Cledith Arthur’s arrest, according to court records.
“It’s not surprising that Vivek Ramaswamy has stooped to such a despicable low as to attempt to turn the sexual abuse Amy endured at 12 years old from our birth mother’s husband into a political talking point,” Stearns said.
“Our birth mother stayed married to Amy’s rapist until he died,” he added. “This desperate, disgusting attack reveals exactly who Vivek Ramaswamy is at his core — a pathetic excuse for a man who is willing to hurt anyone as long as it gets him what he wants.”
Acton has said she has not seen her mother since a courthouse encounter following the charges against her stepfather.
“In the courthouse after they were charged, I went to give her a kiss, and she just turned her cheek away,” Acton told The Youngstown Vindicator in 2019. “That was the last time I ever saw her.”
Acton responded to the new advertisement by releasing a video featuring Stearns and accusing Ramaswamy of exploiting her childhood trauma for political gain.
“Vivek Ramaswamy is not fit to lead,” she wrote on X.
During a television appearance Tuesday, Acton said she would not accept the normalization of attacks on her childhood.
“I won’t normalize somebody who has said that my childhood is ‘something I’m just 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, neglect, and sexual abuse… The words our leaders use matter, and I think it’s gonna take courage right now from all of us to stop normalizing this sort of rhetoric.”
Ramaswamy acknowledged that his campaign produced the ad but said he had never met either Acton or her mother.
“It is an ad from our campaign. I would love for this race to be about the substantive issues that impact Ohioans… I have not met Amy Acton… I’ve also never met her mother,” he told reporters.
He defended the decision, arguing that people close to Acton urged voters to reject her.
“Every person who appears to know her the best … have told voters not to vote for her but to vote for me instead,” Ramaswamy said.
But the defense has not silenced Republican critics. Sen. Jon Husted, the Republican running against Democrat Sherrod Brown in a closely watched Senate race, told The Associated Press he would not have run the ad, according to Time. Lydia Mihalik, a Republican member of Gov. Mike DeWine’s Cabinet, also criticized the ad.
“I don’t have to agree with Amy Acton’s politics to believe that exploiting someone’s childhood trauma is wrong,” Mihalik wrote.
Republican strategist Mike Murphy described the ad as a potential disaster, calling it “looking more and more like political suicide.”
Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, who clashed repeatedly with Ramaswamy during the 2024 Republican primary debates, proved equally unsparing in her critique.
“He’s a bad guy,” Haley said. “It’s a shame he continues to get away with it.”
The Columbus Dispatch, in an editorial endorsing Acton, condemned the decision to turn sexual violence against a child into a political issue.
“It should go without saying that sexual violence against children should not be politicized or taken as lightly as Ramaswamy appears to take it.”
Social media users also questioned the ad and Trump’s reaction, with one calling it “one of the most insane political ads I’ve ever seen. Holy cow.”
The political stakes are significant. A Marist University poll released Oct. 20 showed Acton leading Ramaswamy by seven percentage points among likely voters. Ohio has voted for Trump in the past three presidential elections, underscoring the state’s recent Republican lean.
Ramaswamy’s campaign said it would spend $4 million to air the advertisement on television and digital platforms, targeting undecided voters with less than two weeks remaining before Election Day.
Trump stopped being coy and showed his full support for the ad on Thursday with a lengthy Truth Social post. He accused the media of using the ad to attack Ramaswamy and claimed that using his opponent’s mother against her was “hitting pay dirt.”
“If my mother, the legendary Mary MacLeod Trump, said anything bad about me, the Fake News would play it up. The Dumocrats would be totally supportive, and it would go down as the Ad of the Decade — Maybe the Century!” Trump said.
“I only wish the mothers of my opponents would be so brave as to come forward and explain that their son or daughter is a liar, and much worse,” Trump added.
