GOP strategy and POTUS Trump’s behavior are spiraling in parallel as the 2026 midterms come to a close.
Note: I’ll be doing an election-night open thread next Tuesday, November 3rd to discuss the results of the American mid-terms as the results come in.
The most obvious example came with a disastrous backfiring attack ad in Ohio, but can also be seen in Trump’s bizarre commentary about the gluteus maximi of both men and women while on stage at multiple campaign events.
Trump Backs Ramaswamy Self-Defenestration
With former Presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy consistently behind his Democratic opponent Amy Acton in most Ohio gubernatorial polls, the campaign opted for a bizarre Hail Mary gambit on the 19th.
Ohio blogger D.J. Byrnes posted a video on X featuring Acton’s estranged mother, Donna Arthur, calling her daughter a liar about her childhood, including Acton’s account of having lived in a tent. Byrnes post racked up nearly 2M views.
The video didn’t mention what court records show: Arthur’s husband, Cledith Arthur, was charged with rape in July 1978 after Acton’s father reported that he had sexually abused her, was indicted that September, and the couple left town before trial. Warrants followed in 1978 and 1981, and he died in 2004. A 1982 police report and 1978 arrest paperwork back Acton’s account of living at a campground.
Of more interest was the unusual provenance of the ad, which initially included no disclaimer indicating who paid for it, via CNN:
When it first circulated, the video did not have the standard disclaimer that political ads carry saying who paid for or authorized them, nor did it show up Tuesday morning as a paid ad in the race on AdImpact, the political ad-tracking service.
And the first Ramaswamy campaign statement from Luck did not address whether it was responsible for the video. It suggested voters should consider the message from Acton’s mother and repeated her attack, asserting that “we know that Amy Acton is a serial fabulist who has some serious problems with the truth that the public needs to be aware of before deciding who to entrust as governor.”
…An official with V-PAC, the main super PAC backing Ramaswamy, said it did not make the video. CNN has attempted to contact Arthur for more information about how the video came together.
…
Speaking with reporters after the event, Ramaswamy took responsibility for the ad and reiterated that voters should take into account what people who know Acton “well” are saying about her. He said he has never met the mother and that she was “not compensated” for the ad.
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Ramaswamy’s campaign leaned into the controversy over the ad Tuesday night, announcing it would spend $4 million to run the spot.
…
The video was first published widely on Monday night by an Ohio political blogger, D.J. Byrnes, who is known as “The Rooster.” Byrnes told CNN he obtained the video from a voter who saw it as part of a poll and recorded it. On Tuesday morning, Acton’s campaign released a statement from her brother, Philip Stearns, denouncing the video and linking it to Ramaswamy.
The NY Times reported that the campaign had not even decided to release the ad when Byrnes dropped it online:
The Ramaswamy campaign was still testing the ad to gauge its effectiveness when the spot burst into public view late Monday.
D.J. Byrnes, a left-leaning local journalist known as the Rooster, published the ad online, calling it “loathsome.”
…
The ad served as an attempt to shift the focus of the campaign in its final days from frustrations about Mr. Trump’s economy to a referendum on Dr. Acton’s honesty. But in so doing, it placed Mr. Ramaswamy’s own morals and ethics in the spotlight, and reminded voters that Dr. Acton survived a seriously troubled childhood.
Most Ohio GOP politicians (and some national ones) distanced themselves from Ramaswamy and the ad, but not POTUS Trump or Vice President J.D. Vance — a close friend of Ramaswamy who both endorsed the campaign’s decision to run the ad.
Donald Trump, Jr even re-tweeted the ad.
Ironically, Trump and Vance coming out strong in support of the ad destroyed Ramaswamy’s ability to distance himself from the spot.
Ohio is not the only state where Trump’s GOP is indulging in ham-fisted attacks on Democratic candidates.
Trump’s GOP Goes Islamophobic in Michigan
Trump has attacked Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed over his religion. Posting on October 7th that El-Sayed “goes back to the days of the Jihad” and is a “Terrorist Sympathizer” and saying “I call him Mohammed” on the 10th.
Saying “He’s a Muslim Brotherhood guy, 100%,” and posting that El-Sayed “wants our Country to go to Sharia Law. If it ever does, he should be the first that’s tried!”
Republican nominee Mike Rogers and the NRSC put their money behind Trump’s Islamophobic rhetoric with a seven-figure buy for an ad saying El-Sayed is “connected to the Muslim Brotherhood and Al-Qaeda,” and the Senate Leadership Fund ran an ad built on a quote El-Sayed gave at 24 about a “Sharia-compliant” mortgage, set over an image of a woman in a niqab.
In Texas, they’ve gone in a different direction, but kept the hate consistent.
If It’s Texas, That Must Be Talafreako
Apparently having little else to work with, Republicans have made transgender issues the core of their attacks on Texas Dem. Senate nominee James Talarico. Of the $359 million (!) Republicans have spent on Texas ads since June, $119 million went to ads on transgender minors, transgender sports and LGBTQ+ rights, more than any other issue, with the biggest share going to the Senate race.
Texas PAC, which got $158 million from Elon Musk routed through the Senate Leadership Fund, opened its negative ads by attacking Talarico as being for “they/them, not you,” and a later Texas PAC ad claims he “supports parents being charged with child abuse if they do not support transitioning their children.”
In September, GOP Senate nominee Ken Paxton’s campaign ran an ad using an AI-generated Talarico delivering a fake sermon that opens “In the beginning, God was nonbinary.” Trump calls him “James TalaFREAKO,” and JD Vance branded him a “freak” and made a joke implying he is gay.
Somehow none of this is working as polls show Paxton consistently trailing Talarico.
Let’s go up to Maine and see what the GOP is up to there.
They’re Seriously Playing the Incest Card in Maine
In Maine, Republican groups have spent about $47 million attacking Troy Jackson, compared to the estimated $31 million Democratic groups have spent attacking Susan Collins.
The Senate Leadership Fund’s country-song radio ad calls Jackson “weird,” a “freak” and a “creep” because “he has two kids with his cousin,” with the chorus “If he’ll screw his own family, he’ll screw yours too.”
I have to give them points for giving me a cheap giggle, but I can’t fathom whom they think they’re persuading to vote for Susan Collins with that ad.
Collins’s campaign said it “should be taken down immediately,” though Collins herself raised the relationship with Politico on 2 September: “I’m not going to bring up the fact that the mother of his two children is his second cousin.”
Other SLF spots say Jackson “keeps it in the family” and call him a “Crook and a Creep“; another says an Allagash cell tower he touted was built on his family’s land.
Somehow this isn’t working and Collins trails Jackson in most polls.
But wait, it’s about to get even weirder.
Trump Talks Tush
I guess he’s channeling his inner ZZ Top fan, because POTUS Trump has taken to free associating about the anatomy of multiple people, both men and women on the campaign trail.
Especially Ohio incumbent Senator Jon Husted, who’s facing a tough challenge from former Senator Sherrod Brown.
In Youngstown, Ohio, Trump said “I looked at his ass,” then moved on to Husted’s hands: “He’s got these, like, claws.”
In Kentucky, Trump said “I examined his ass” and “I never did that with a man before,” and in Greenville, N.C., Trump called Husted’s glutes “a pile of muscle”; Aaron Rupar’s clip of that riff has 5.6 million views.
In Fort Myers, Fla., Trump praised Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s “body of a 30-year-old” and told Rep. Greg Steube to “Stand up. Look at the build on this guy.”
In Port Huron, Michigan, Trump went back to Husted (“Off the record, women, yes, men, no”), told Senate candidate Mike Rogers, “I’d say that about your ass too, Mike,” and said of Nicki Minaj, who joined him onstage, “I looked at one hell of a beautiful ass before, Nicki Minaj. That, that’s hard to miss.” Trump says the riff has gained Husted “like 12 points,” but the latest Marist poll has Husted trailing Sherrod Brown 48% to 44% among likely voters.
Reaching for the Panic Button in Alaska
Fortunately, Trump has thus far shown less inclination to directly interfere in election outcomes than we feared he would a few months ago, but there’s one major exception in Alaska.
Per Politico:
President Donald Trump is escalating his crusade to exert control of America’s elections as his party barrels towards a potentially bruising midterm.
The Justice Department has already filed lawsuits in nearly every state to try and gain access to voter files. Trump revisited his longstanding bid to restrict mail voting, sparking a legal battle that reached the Supreme Court. He sought to make anti-terrorism funds for state and local governments contingent on how they administer elections. He has threatened to withhold federal election funding from states that refuse to change voter registration forms and sparred with Republican lawmakers over a bill to overhaul elections.
But with most of those efforts stalling, on Thursday, just 12 days before Election Day, the DOJ took things even further: In an extraordinary move, it asked a court to preemptively block Alaska’s Senate results if Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan loses, stunning current and former election officials in both parties.
“Boy, they are scraping the bottom of the barrel. It feels like a real desperation play to me, because it has got zero basis in the law,” said Ben Ginsberg, a veteran Republican election law expert who was counsel to George W. Bush’s 2000 and 2004 presidential campaigns.
We’ll see if things get weirder before election day.
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