Donald Trump Isn't the Only Sleazeball Republican Politiican

[silverscreenselect]

And I'm not talking about Ken Paxton this time. That would be too easy.

No, it's Vivek Ramaswamy, who is running for governor of Ohio and trails his Democratic opponent Amy Acton in the polls. He has admitted to sponsoring an ad featuring Acton's mother. In the ad, Acton's mother accuses her daughter of being a liar who lies about her past. She added that her daughter needs help and that Acton can't help you (meaning the people of Ohio) if she needs help herself. She added that people can change but first they have to tell the truth and her daughter still isn't doing that. She also mentioned that Acton claimed they lived in a tent growing up and that was a lie as well.

A powerful ad if you didn't know any better. But, of course, there's the rest of the story. When Acton was between 9 and 12, she was repeatedly abused by her stepfather, who was indicted for rape. He jumped bail and fled the state, along with Acton's mother. Acton's mother remained married to the man until he reportedly died 20 years later. Acton and her younger brother (who has corroborated her story) were removed from their mother's custody by a court order, and she has not seen her mother since that day. Court documents also corroborate Acton's claim about living in a tent with the stepfather.

Ramaswamy's campaign says they intend to spend up to $4 million to keep airing the ad until the election, which even many Republicans have condemned. There's sleaze and then there's the sleaze of Republican political candidates.

https://www.cnn.com/2026/10/20/politics ... ther-video

[Weyoun]

Donna Arthur may be the most MAGA person ever:

- hateful Boomer destroying her child’s future
- protected a sexual predator
- is from Youngstown, the asshole of the world

[flockofseagulls104]

It is hard to fathom the incredible heights of your utter hypocrisy. But it's not unexpected.
You are shocked and outraged that Vivek Ramaswamy would resort to quoting his opponents mother!!!!! It's even been proven that she, herself, is not anywhere above reproach! How dare he!!!

You fucking assholes have been doing that and even worse to Donald Trump, his staff and his supporters for over a decade now. Where the hell is YOUR shame? Any kind of baseless, slimy, outrageous or out of context false allegation your propaganda mills can dream up out of thin air you have thrown at Trump without ANY compunction. You do it here on this bored every day! How many of them have to be proven false before you get it? The answer: It don't matter. You will never stop.

I absolutely abhor negative campaigning. I do NOT support what Ramaswamy is doing. But you people have absolutely no grounds to complain or whine about it. If Trump's mom were still alive and she had ANYTHING negative to say, or if she said something that could be noodled into sounding like it was negative, you KNOW it would be on every fake news outlet morning to night.

You people make this world lousy.

[jarnon]

Pennsylvania election ads are gentler. Child abuse, no. Cute children, yes.

[Weyoun]

It is hard to fathom the incredible heights of your utter hypocrisy. But it's not unexpected.
You are shocked and outraged that Vivek Ramaswamy would resort to quoting his opponents mother!!!!! It's even been proven that she, herself, is not anywhere above reproach! How dare he!!!

You fucking assholes have been doing that and even worse to Donald Trump, his staff and his supporters for over a decade now. Where the hell is YOUR shame? Any kind of baseless, slimy, outrageous or out of context false allegation your propaganda mills can dream up out of thin air you have thrown at Trump without ANY compunction. You do it here on this bored every day! How many of them have to be proven false before you get it? The answer: It don't matter. You will never stop.

I absolutely abhor negative campaigning. I do NOT support what Ramaswamy is doing. But you people have absolutely no grounds to complain or whine about it. If Trump's mom were still alive and she had ANYTHING negative to say, or if she said something that could be noodled into sounding like it was negative, you KNOW it would be on every fake news outlet morning to night.

You people make this world lousy.

It’s interesting that you seem only somewhat mad at Ramaswamy, more mad at the people who don’t like Donald Trump.

There’s been nothing thrown against Donald Trump this beyond the pale, in part because it doesn’t involve family, but also because it’s manifestly untrue when people talk about Donald Trump being a sexual predator, they offer reasonable information about his involvement with Epstein.

Why is that you’re always coming down on the side of sexual predators?

[flockofseagulls104]

Thanks once again for perfectly demonstrating and confirming the point I made.

[BackInTex]

I'm having visions of Harry Reid.

[Weyoun]

Thanks once again for perfectly demonstrating and confirming the point I made.

You’re literally having to make up fantasy scenarios, such as people recruiting Donald Trump’s dead mother, to argue about this.

We’re talking about an actual thing actually happening.

So much of your diseased mind feeds into these made up scenarios where you’re being oppressed, or where these crazy things happen when they don’t actually happen.

Just say Vivek sucks and move on.

[tlynn78]

Thanks once again for perfectly demonstrating and confirming the point I made.

Always, and every single time.

[flockofseagulls104]

Just say Vivek sucks and move on.

He's a 'very fine person', if you catch my drift. Which you most probably don't.

[Weyoun]

Actually, I don’t. Anyway, Trump had one of his 1000 word word salads on Truth Social defending Vivek and this ad. It occurred to me the only other people enthusiastic about the ad are him and JD Vance, and both of them are pieces of shit.

[elwoodblues]

Actually, I don’t. Anyway, Trump had one of his 1000 word word salads on Truth Social defending Vivek and this ad. It occurred to me the only other people enthusiastic about the ad are him and JD Vance, and both of them are pieces of shit.

It seems as though Vance is trying to be a terrible person because it worked for Trump. But he does not have Trump's personality. Or any personality.

[Weyoun]

Actually, I don’t. Anyway, Trump had one of his 1000 word word salads on Truth Social defending Vivek and this ad. It occurred to me the only other people enthusiastic about the ad are him and JD Vance, and both of them are pieces of shit.

It seems as though Vance is trying to be a terrible person because it worked for Trump. But he does not have Trump's personality. Or any personality.

It is a problem for Trumpers when he doubles down on something terrible. Certainly for the politicians, they can’t really go against them especially this close to the election.

Here, we see that whitefailure really can’t quite make the full throated disavowal that you would expect any decent person would do, and blackhole can’t even be bothered to act bothered. It doesn’t take much to understand that they are effectively pro child rape.

[kroxquo]

This seems to have slipped under the radar except here in NC. Marines and their families have been fighting the federal govt for many years for compensation for sicknesses and deaths caused by contaminated water at Camp Lejeune that was not fixed for decades. They are finally close to a settlement, but at a rally in NC this week, Trump said there would be no Lejeune money if Republicans don't win. However you want to interpret that statement, it is despicable.

[Weyoun]

This seems to have slipped under the radar except here in NC. Marines and their families have been fighting the federal govt for many years for compensation for sicknesses and deaths caused by contaminated water at Camp Lejeune that was not fixed for decades. They are finally close to a settlement, but at a rally in NC this week, Trump said there would be no Lejeune money if Republicans don't win. However you want to interpret that statement, it is despicable.

I mentioned this in the other thread, but it understandably is very easy to lose in the shuffle, with everything else stupid that Trump does.

A lot of folks out there, like ex-Marines, have to ask themselves, is it worth me losing out a medical treatment, or having my farm go under, just so I can laugh as Trump talks about men’s asses and owns the libs?

[flockofseagulls104]

Actually, I don’t. Anyway, Trump had one of his 1000 word word salads on Truth Social defending Vivek and this ad. It occurred to me the only other people enthusiastic about the ad are him and JD Vance, and both of them are pieces of shit.

It seems as though Vance is trying to be a terrible person because it worked for Trump. But he does not have Trump's personality. Or any personality.

It is a problem for Trumpers when he doubles down on something terrible. Certainly for the politicians, they can’t really go against them especially this close to the election.

Here, we see that whitefailure really can’t quite make the full throated disavowal that you would expect any decent person would do, and blackhole can’t even be bothered to act bothered. It doesn’t take much to understand that they are effectively pro child rape.

You are one very sick puppy.

[jarnon]

Amazingly, Vivek’s ad is not the sleaziest in this election.

Tom Kean Jr.’s smear campaign — and why he might get away with it

By Tom Moran

No, Rebecca Bennett did not enable a child sex abuser to commit his crimes.

Tom Kean Jr. is using the final few weeks of his campaign to saturate the airwaves with a TV advertisement that wins the prize for the most vicious and dishonest political attack I’ve seen this year.

It begins with a grainy TV news report about a Pennsylvania pediatrician who was convicted of sexually abusing dozens of children. It then suggests that Bennett was complicit because she worked for a company that had a partnership with a healthcare firm that owned one of the hospitals where the pediatrician worked.

“Liberal Rebecca Bennett brags about partnering with the same company putting profits over patients,” an ominous voice-over tells viewers. “Bennett became a millionaire while patients were maimed, sexually abused, and even killed because Rebecca Bennett is no middle-class moderate. She’s a greedy liberal millionaire who doesn’t care about you.”

The core charge is easy to disprove. The abuser, Jack Barto, pleaded guilty in 2019, the year Bennett ended 15 years of active service in the U.S. Navy. Are we supposed to believe she had a side gig helping child abusers in Pennsylvania while she was flying helicopters in the Persian Gulf?

And the sinister partnership the ad refers to? It was formed in 2023, four years after the abusive doctor was sentenced to life in prison. So the partnership could not possibly have enabled the abuse.

But this is not a column about another dishonest ad from Kean. This is how the man rolls. He was shamelessly dishonest in his attacks against his last Democratic opponent, Tom Malinowski, in 2022.

I’m asking a bigger question: How can Kean think he’ll get away with it? Why is he pushing a smear campaign that is so easy to disprove? Brace yourself, because the answers to that question are beyond depressing.

One problem is the abundance of low-information voters in America — people who pay little attention to politics and can be easily fooled. A 2023 survey by the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania found that one-third of Americans couldn’t name all three branches of government. A separate Pew Research Center survey that year found that one-third couldn’t identify which party controlled the House of Representatives.

I know, Americans are busy. But we manage to watch TV for nearly three hours a day, on average, so that’s not the whole story. We have a citizenship problem.

As Thomas Jefferson put it: “If a nation expects to be ignorant & free, in a state of civilisation, it expects what never was & never will be.”

Another problem: Where are the watchdogs?

The remnants of the traditional news media in New Jersey have let this advertisement get by them, as have the promising digital outlets that have filled at least part of the gap.

As far as I could determine, even with AI help, no New Jersey news outlet has reported on the chronology that makes the ad’s core charge so absurd. The New Jersey Globe published a short piece on the ad, and the New Jersey Monitor mentioned the ad in a campaign story. But neither noted that Bennett was on active duty when the pediatrician committed many of his crimes, or that the partnership Kean is targeting was formed four years after the doctor reported to prison.

Let me be clear: The surviving media outlets in New Jersey have plenty of talented people doing the best they can. But newsrooms are a shell of what they were. They lack the staff to keep close track of the state’s slippery characters. And out of desperation, they often lean toward stories that will bring them the most clicks and the fastest turnaround. By those standards, exposing Kean’s lies doesn’t compete with Donald Trump’s latest tantrum on social media.

So, what’s the remedy? How can we build a political environment where dishonest ads like this find no traction?

If you can suggest a way to get low-information voters to stop voting for hucksters, let me know. If you have a formula to revive the media, you’re a lot smarter than me.

I’m afraid that we must hope for now that politicians like Kean listen to what Abe Lincoln called “the better angels of our nature.” And that’s not as naive as it may sound. Most politicians don’t stoop this low. Bennett hasn’t, at least not so far.

And while the race is close, Bennett is leading in the polls, and is favored by the nonpartisan Cook Political Report. Perhaps that’s reason for hope. Perhaps voters are better at recognizing a smear than politicians like Kean think.

[silverscreenselect]

Perhaps voters are better at recognizing a smear than politicians like Kean think.

According to Decision Desk HQ, Kean's seat is listed as Likely D, with Bennett having an 84% chance of winning as of today. Fifty Plus One (Nate Silver's group) also has the race listed as likely D, with Bennett having a 92% chance of winning. Silver's site is the most bullish on Democrats' overall chances, giving them a 99% chance of winning the House and 73% chane of winning the Senate. (Decision Desk lists the odds at 80% and 56%.)

Ad's like Kean's and Ramaswamy's are all that Republicans have this cycle. Attack Democrats for being gay or vegan or Muslim or jihadist or socialist or communist or favoring forced trans surgery on minors or any other type of false slur that avoids talking about the real issues.

And it's not working. Not in New Jersey. Not in Ohio. Not in Michigan. Not in Texas. Not anywhere.

[Weyoun]

The rumor is that Donna Arthur is living out of her car.

Which means they had to find her, note that she was living out of her car, and offer her this opportunity for a commercial.

That’s awful. You’re a piece of shit if you support MAGA.