At 2:38 this afternoon, the President of the United States shared a post on his state media outlet, Truth Social, calling a childhood rape survivor “defective,” while praising a campaign ad featuring that survivor’s estranged mother, who told voters not to vote for her own daughter, Ohio Democratic gubernatorial candidate Dr. Amy Acton, because, in her own words, “She is a liar. She lies about her past. She says she grew up living in a tent. None of that is true. She’s lied her entire life.” Her mother, and I’m using that term loosely, lost custody of Acton when she was just 12 years old due to severe abuse and neglect, and then stayed married to the man who was charged with raping her daughter until he died many years later.
The President of the United States looked at everything that Dr. Acton had survived and overcome and still chose to endorse the ad, calling it “very powerful.” He went on to call Amy Acton “a DISASTER who, uncontrollably, lies, cheats, and steals.” He called her mother brave, while saying the ad should win awards.
With that single post, he fundamentally changed how politics are practiced in this country, turning the sexual abuse of a child into a weapon for a governor’s race. He destroyed the bar of decency once expected of our elected leaders, and with it, he struck at the very sanctity of our elections, reducing what should be a serious democratic process to a system in which the pursuit of political power takes precedence over even the most basic obligations of human decency.
I woke up this morning feeling sick to my stomach thinking about that ad, and that was before Donald Trump decided to publicly endorse it. I felt a heaviness I just couldn’t shake for the rest of the day, and it only got worse as the day went on. Dr. Amy Acton is one of the best of us. A former state health director who earned a master’s degree in public health, a physician who completed residencies in both pediatrics and preventive medicine, and a survivor of one of the most heinous acts imaginable at the hands of her stepfather, who was arrested, pleaded not guilty, and fled while out on bond, causing the case against him to stall. Acton and her brother were removed from their mother’s custody, and their mother chose to stay married to the man who abused her daughter.
This was not a secret that Acton shied away from talking about. It is part of her story, and she has spoken openly about it for years. In an interview this week with Spectrum News, she said: “I won’t normalize somebody who says my childhood is something I’m just complaining about.”
The ad at the center of this whole ordeal was released by her opponent, MAGA Republican Vivek Ramaswamy, the biotech billionaire who ran unsuccessfully for president back in 2024 and is now running for governor of Ohio. The disturbing ad was first seen on social media back on Monday without a disclaimer identifying who paid for it. For an entire day, Ramaswamy’s campaign refused to confirm whether they had made it, and it wasn’t until a town hall event on Tuesday evening that Ramaswamy finally told reporters it was his ad. He said Acton’s mother was not compensated, and he defended the decision to run it by saying he wished the race could be about “substantive issues.” He also admitted that he had never met Amy Acton or her mother. His campaign has since announced that it plans to spend four million dollars promoting the ad across Ohio.
Acton’s brother, Philip Stearns, released a heartbreaking statement of his own, saying: “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 twelve years old from our birth mother’s husband into a political talking point.” He continued, “After he was arrested and Amy and I were removed from their custody, our birth mother stayed married to Amy’s rapist until he died. 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.”
The one man who holds, or should hold, responsibility for not only the conduct of his own party, but also the moral standards of the entire nation weighed in too. But instead of demanding this ad be immediately withdrawn and an apology be issued, the President of the United States shared a post on social media that went even further and called Dr. Amy Acton “defective, dishonest, and incapable.” It said 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!” He praised the mother who stayed married to her daughter’s rapist, saying what she did “took a lot of courage to do but, essentially, what she was really doing was saving Ohio from making a truly horrible choice!”
He even made a comparison to his own mother, adding that “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! It would win Awards for Excellence in Advertising.”
He also went after Ohio’s Republican governor, Mike DeWine, for suggesting the ad should be taken down. He called DeWine a RINO and said he was “disloyal to the Republican Party” and that he “probably wants a Dumocrat to win.” He called Amy Acton “Lyin’ Amy Acton, who I’ve never even heard of before.” And he shared how empty he is as a human being when he wrote, “Who wouldn’t use such an Ad? I would, it’s called, ‘hitting pay dirt.’”
Almost two hours after he made that post on Truth Social, he had an odd interaction with reporters on the White House South Lawn, when they told Trump the full backstory to Dr. Acton and the ad. They reminded him that Acton had not spoken to her mother in nearly fifty years, and that her mother had stayed married to the man charged with raping her. CBS News senior White House reporter Weijia Jiang asked why anyone should listen to what the estranged mother has to say.
Trump snapped back at her and said: “Well, I know nothing about it. All I know is the mother said very bad things about Acton, who I guess is running for governor against Vivek. And all I can say is Vivek is great. And I know one thing: if my mother said bad things about me, it would be a major news story, that’s for sure. So I don’t know what it is, but I guess the mother said very bad things about the one who’s running for governor, and I think you have to take that seriously.”
When asked whether anything in a campaign ad should be off limits, he said: “I know one thing: if my mother said that about me, it would be, you would have hit goals. You would have been very happy about it. So I know nothing about it other than the mother said horrible things about a person that’s running for governor of a great state, right? A great state, and if it’s even a little bit true, you don’t want her as governor.”
When pressed further on why he was defending it while Ohio Republicans were calling for it to come down, he said: “I’m defending it because I know that if that ad were about my mother, you would love it. You would love every inch of it. And what’s happened is the press has teamed up because he’s a Republican, and they’ve tried to make it like it’s a horrible thing. This is a mother saying very bad things about her daughter, and I don’t know why that should be shielded.”
Trump posted his Truth Social statement at 2:38 PM, speaking as if he was very familiar with the entirety of the ad and the outcry around it. Then, hours later, when reporters asked him more about it, Trump said: “Well, I know nothing about it.”
That leaves two deeply troubling possibilities. Either he wrote that entire post without spending thirty seconds to learn who she is and what happened to her, which raises serious questions about his judgment and responsibility as president. Or he knew, and he claimed ignorance on camera to avoid accountability, which would be a serious failure of presidential responsibility.
His former White House Press Secretary, Karoline Leavitt, has said in the past that everything Trump posts on Truth Social is “straight from the horse’s mouth” and “should be taken as the policy of the Trump administration,” and “When you see it on Truth Social, you know it’s directly from President Trump.”
Vice President JD Vance also defended the ad and told Republicans who criticized it to “stop whining.” Ohio’s Republican governor, Mike DeWine, chose a different path, instead publicly breaking with his party’s candidate over the ad. He said: “It is wrong to run this ad. I would urge Ramaswamy’s campaign to take this down.” Although he did not rescind his endorsement of Ramaswamy. Republican Senator Jon Husted said he “would not have run that ad.” Former Ambassador Nikki Haley called Ramaswamy a “bad guy.” Republican Representative Nancy Mace called it the “most shameful, disgusting, offensive ad this election season.”
We are now just 12 days from the midterms, and every vote that we cast is one that is either for this kind of heinous new normal or one that demands an end to this cruelty. We are voting against Donald Trump’s authoritarian takeover and for people like Dr. Acton, who, even with how painful this week has been, still showed up on the campaign trail and, when asked about the ad, said, “It is hard. It is the big elephant in the room, isn’t it? My brother and I had a mom who struggled, and we experienced a lot of neglect and abuse.”
If she can do that after what they did to her this week, we can do this. We owe it to her and to every survivor who watched the President of the United States call one of them such unthinkable names. We owe it to our country and to the world that is waiting for us to fight our way back to the right side of history. That is the message our votes are going to send when we go to the polls on November 3. And between now and Election Day, we are going to make sure our friends, our families, and our neighbors understand what is at stake, and that none of us sits this one out. That is why I still have hope for America. And you should, too.
I’ll see you tomorrow,
Heather
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This commentary represents my personal opinions and analysis of matters of public concern, informed by publicly available information. Any references to individuals constitute opinion and commentary protected under the First Amendment.
Picture of the day: I, like so many of us, am feeling the weight of the moment. I’m struggling to do something I have always loved doing, write. It’s not because I don’t want to do it. I think it has more to do with feeling overwhelmed by the sheer amount of cruelty being thrown at us and even more to do with listening to Trump speak for hours each and every day for nearly 20 months. No matter how hard it gets to keep writing, I will never stop because it has to be documented, not just the things he is doing and saying, but also the human and emotional side of what he has done to us and our country.
When I woke up this morning, I immediately felt a sense of doom. Not to be confused with not having hope, more just a feeling that this is the calm before the storm. So I decided to go for a drive to get a coffee and see if some fresh air and a change of scenery would help. Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, it didn’t. Instead, I saw MAGA-aligned candidates putting up signs all over, so I did what I could and contacted a candidate I support to ask for some signs so that, as I told Pete, “We can light up our house like a freaking democracy defender Christmas tree.” Pete assured me that didn’t really make sense, but that knowing me, he knew exactly what I was trying to say!
I’m happy to report that I ended up with more signs than I ever imagined having, and some of the candidates themselves and their campaign managers hand-delivered them just hours later. Now my house is lit up like the freaking democracy defender Christmas tree I told Pete it would be! I’m still feeling unsettled, but taking some concrete action helped, even if it was just putting signs in our yard.
Links to sources used in writing this article:
President Trump Gaggles with Press Upon Departure from the White House, Oct. 22, 2026: YouTube video
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ramaswamy-ad-amy-acton-mother-trump/
https://www.cnn.com/2026/10/22/politics/amy-acton-response-mother-ad-vivek-ramaswamy
https://www.cnn.com/2026/10/20/politics/amy-acton-mother-video
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2026-election/amy-acton-attack-ad-ohio-governors-race-rcna604601
Trump's comments here solidify my opinion the he is a Top Tier Pedophile of the 1st Water. After all, he was Jeffrey Epstein's best friend, according to Epstein, for about 12 years. Do you not think that The Donald didn't sample some of the "fun" that was going on over at Epstein's New York townhouse during those 12 years?
The ad in question is disgusting on its face. If the people of Ohio actually vote for any politician that would air an ad like that, deserve all of the pain and ridicule that would surely follow. Evidently this politician is one more "Trump Ass-Kisser Legionaire".
Thinking about what Dr. Acton suffered as a child, how could a person vote for someone who would use that story in a campaign ad?
Heather, we appreciate the daily hard work you do of keeping track of the atrocities committed by this administration. They have no shame. I can imagine it is a heavy burden for you to carry. Always remember that you are on the right side of history, carrying a bright torch to shine light on the ugliness of this time. Hopefully your writing will help spark a humanitarian response in the American people, who will finally say, “we are better than this.”