Washington: US President Donald Trump has defended Indian-American Republican Vivek Ramaswamy’s attack ad featuring the estranged mother of his Democratic rival Amy Acton in the Ohio governor’s race, even as Ohio Governor Mike DeWine, a fellow Republican, urged that it be pulled while saying he was keeping his endorsement.
“It’s wrong to run this ad,” DeWine told reporters on Thursday, according to CBS News. “I would urge Ramaswamy’s campaign to take this down.”
DeWine, who is term-limited, called the ad “on its face, deeply, deeply troubling”, CBS News reported, but said he was not rescinding his endorsement of Ramaswamy.
Speaking to reporters at the White House on Thursday afternoon, Trump stood by the Indian-American candidate. “All I can say is Vivek is great,” he said, according to the White House pool report.
“If it’s even a little bit true, you don’t want her as governor,” Trump said.
Asked why he was defending the ad when Ohio Republicans had called for it to come down, Trump said: “That’s her opinion. I’m defending it because I know that if that ad were about my mother, you would love it.”
“What’s happened is the press has ganged up on a woman making a horrible statement about her daughter, and I don’t know why she should be shielded or the daughter should be shielded,” he said. “If what the mother said about the daughter is half right, she has no right even running for the governor of Ohio.”
Trump also called DeWine “disloyal to the Republican Party” in a Truth Social post, ABC News reported.
House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries joined the attack on Ramaswamy. “Vivek Ramaswamy is a disgusting and slimy political hack,” Jeffries wrote on X on Thursday afternoon. “Every single Republican should denounce this malignant clown and rescind their support.”
Vice President J.D. Vance, campaigning in Ohio on Wednesday, defended Ramaswamy for having “the audacity to run a TV commercial which calls it out like it is”, according to the vice-presidential pool report.
“Politics is a tough business,” Vance told reporters, according to CBS News. “And my message to my fellow elected Republicans is, if you actually believe in the things you say you believe in, stop whining about an advertisement and go win the race in 13 days.”
Ramaswamy campaign spokesperson Connie Luck responded to DeWine by saying “the first and only candidate to attack the mother of her opponent in this race was Amy Acton”, CBS News reported.
In the ad, Acton’s mother, Donna Arthur, says: “It’s not easy for a mother to say this, but Amy was a serious problem. She is a liar; she lies about her past,” according to CBS News. Acton, a former Ohio public health director, has spoken of being abused by her late stepfather, who was charged in 1978 with raping her, CBS News reported. The case never went to trial.
Acton said on Thursday she had hoped Ramaswamy “wouldn’t sink this low, but of course he did”, CBS News reported.
Two new polls show a tight race. A Fox News poll conducted October 15-19 had Acton at 50 per cent and Ramaswamy at 48 per cent among likely voters.
A VoteHub/Verasight poll of 623 registered voters, conducted October 1-20, had Acton at 46 per cent and Ramaswamy at 45 per cent among likely voters, within the poll’s 4.2-point margin of error. VoteHub said most of its interviews were collected before the ad first aired.
Ramaswamy, a biotech entrepreneur born in Cincinnati to immigrant parents from Kerala, ran for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024. The election is on November 3.
(IANS)
