I’ve been in politics for twenty years, and I’ve never seen a campaign do something this low.
In the Ohio governor’s race, Republican Vivek Ramaswamy has launched, maybe, the most disgusting ad I’ve ever seen against the Democrat, Amy Acton. To understand just how sick it is, you need to know Amy’s story.
When Amy was 12, she was taken away from her parents because the man married to her mother raped her. Her mother stayed married to that man until the day he died, and Amy has been estranged from her ever since. Amy has spoken openly about this for years. She has bravely shared her story to help others who may see themselves in her.
And Vivek Ramaswamy chose to weaponize her story. His campaign put Amy’s mother, a mother who stayed with the man who raped her daughter, in a campaign ad attacking her. She looked straight into the camera and called her own daughter a liar, over and over again. And now Ramaswamy is spending $4 million to make sure every voter in Ohio sees it.
There’s no other way to say it. This is undeniably disgusting.
Let’s be clear about why Ramaswamy is doing this. He’s desperate. Amy Acton is favored to be the next governor of Ohio. The state is slipping away from Republicans, mostly because of the economy, but also because they continue to elevate second-rate candidates that are totally undeserving of political power in America.
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But desperation is no excuse. Putting the estranged mother of a gubernatorial candidate on TV to call a rape survivor a liar does nothing to help you win an election. It does nothing to help the people of Ohio. It only exposes you as the monster that you are. Forget being a failed leader. You do something like that, you’re a failed human being.
It’s truly remarkable to me how far the Republican Party has fallen. It needs to be burned to the ground and the earth salted, never to come back again. And this isn’t just Donald Trump. There are thousands of people who work inside the Republican Party who are comfortable with stuff like this, and who are cheering it on.
It’s fitting that this is happening in Ohio, which has been, in my opinion, the epicenter of moral decay inside the Republican Party. Look at Congressman Max Miller, who is basically Donald Trump’s protégé. He’s been credibly accused of beating his ex-wife and breaking his daughter’s collarbone. They should have ditched his ass a long time ago. But because Donald Trump is a scumbag who supports and surrounds himself with abusers, not only is Miller running for re-election, national Republicans are spending millions and millions of dollars to defend him, hoping partisanship will save this man’s career.
Now look, the Democratic Party is not perfect. But when it became clear who Graham Platner was, we ditched his ass. When Eric Swalwell was on his way to becoming the next governor of California and it became clear he was credibly accused of being a serial abuser, we dumped his ass. Not only that, we made him resign from Congress.
Meanwhile, Max Miller gets to keep his job. So do so many Republicans who act dishonorably and dangerously toward women.
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At what point as a nation are we going to stand up and say this is not okay? I swear to God, we have got to reach a point where the American people stand up and say no to this scumbaggery.
It is incumbent upon all of us, especially men like me, to speak out. To make sure the men in our lives know it is not okay to do these things. It is not okay to uplift or revere these actions. It is not okay to not protect women.
Real men protect and defend the people they love. That includes women. And it includes kids.
It doesn’t matter whether it’s Ramaswamy’s campaign going after Amy Acton, the Trump family cozying up to the Tate brothers, or the ongoing cover-up of the Epstein files. I could name you a thousand more. This shit needs to stop.
I’ve said it before: I badly want the theme of the 2026 midterms to be a rejection of scumbags in American politics. No Graham Platners. No Max Millers. No Ken Paxtons. No Vivek Ramaswamys. Get rid of all of them, Democrat or Republican.
We should be better than this as a country. We should be more involved than we are right now. But hopefully we can use this as an opportunity to boot some of these fuckers out of office, because every single one of them needs to go.
I doubt she’ll read this, but I’m sending a lot of love to Amy Acton and her team right now. I can only imagine that the trauma she’s been forced to relive is devastating for her and for the people around her, including the people who support her who are probably survivors, themselves.
God love you all.
With urgency,
—Mike
P.S. A lot of the stories I rant about here start in Ground News’ Blindspot Feed, where you can see what each side is covering, and what they’re skipping.
Sadly, most of the head-in-the-sand Republican supporters (card-holding cult members) are never exposed to the disgusting tactics of their candidates. Thanks for exposing as much as you can Mike!
These people are the deplorables Hillary told us about.