GENDER: She was 12, and her brother was 9!

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 21, 2026

Ramaswamy moves in: Last evening, we were negatively impressed by the way Anderson Cooper reported the basic facts of the case—by the initial way he presented the latest appalling events from the gubernatorial race in Ohio. 

When Lauren Fox reported live and direct from that state, her performance wasn't much better.   

Later in the segment, it fell to former Republicans Gretchen Carlson and Alyssa Farah Griffin to build appropriate context around the appalling behaviors at issue. Freed up now to express his personal view of the events in question, Cooper also joined in. 

There was no dispute about the squalor of the campaign ad at issue:   

COOPER (10/20/26): I do want to just talk to the panel about this. I mean, this has got to be the most disgusting ad I've seen.   

GRIFFIN: Honestly, the grossest ad I can think of. I was racking my brain for something worse. I don't—anyone behind it should be ashamed. 

[...] 

CARLSON: In the last ten years since MeToo has come to life, and as somebody who works in the sexual assault space, I've never seen anything like this. 

On this morning's Morning Joe, Mika Brzezinski spoke with outrage but also with control about the events in question:

"When you look at the whole story, it’s almost hard to believe how depraved this effort is," she said. Speaking of the campaign which created the ad, she added this:  

“There seems to be no lie too ugly for them. No trauma they won’t weaponize. No line they won’t cross for power.”

But then, increasingly so it goes inside this endangered nation.

David Gilmour provides videotape of Brzezinski's full remarks in this report for Mediaite. (Three cheers for David Gilmour!) The headline on his report reads like this:   

‘As Sick as It Gets!’ Mika Brzezinski ‘Shook’ By Ramaswamy’s ‘Depraved’ Attempt to ‘Dirty Up’ Rival with Her Past Trauma

For the New York Times account of this matter, you can just click here. 

The background to this event looks like this:

Dr. Amy Acton, 60 years old, is the Democratic Party's nominee in the current race for governor of Ohio. She's a former director of the Ohio Department of Health.   

Dr. Acton has earned the right to be held in high regard. It isn't clear that her Republican opponent, Vivek Ramaswamy, still just 41 years of age, rises to that level at this point in his noisy, loud, boisterous life. 

The backstory here involves a basic set of facts. We're sorry to report this fact:

Dr. Acton's stepfather was indicted for raping her when she was 12 years old. (And yes, that's right—indicted.) We'll let this Associated Press report present the other basic facts about Ramaswamy's appalling new ad—and yes, that astonishing headline is accurate:   

Ramaswamy takes responsibility for ad with Amy Acton’s mother and will spend millions to promote it  

[...]   

The advertisement features Acton’s birth mother, Donna Arthur, calling her “a liar” and insinuating she has mental health issues. Acton, Ohio’s former public health director, has made no secret of facing homelessness and abuse as a child. Arthur lost custody of her children after their stepfather was indicted for raping Acton. 

[...]  

Acton spent Tuesday condemning Ramaswamy for the ad even before his campaign confirmed its provenance.    

“I won’t normalize somebody who has said that my childhood is just something I’m complaining about, who today just released an ad using my birth mother, who I was removed from at the age of 12 for severe abuse and neglect, and sexual abuse,” she told Spectrum News, a cable news outlet in Ohio. 

[...]   

Acton’s campaign released a statement from her brother, Philip Stearns, who said the two were removed from their mother Donna Arthur’s custody as children after their stepfather, Arthur’s husband, was indicted for raping Acton as a child. Acton has not seen Arthur, whose last known address was in Pennsylvania, since they were in a courtroom together in 1978.

Later Tuesday, the Acton campaign released a video featuring Stearns, who recalls his older sister taking “the worst” of the abuse they faced as children in order to protect him and disparages Ramaswamy and his allies for exploiting the situation.  

According to police and court documents obtained by The Associated Press, Cledith Arthur was arrested and charged with the rape of his stepdaughter, then 12, in July 1978, after Acton’s biological father reported him to authorities. The abuse allegedly happened from December 1976 to April 1978.

Cledith Arthur pleaded not guilty. He was indicted by a grand jury that September, but failed to show at a court hearing and remained a fugitive until at least 1981. He has since died.   

Out of the gloaming came the man Ramaswamy, running well behind in the polls and hoping to turn things around.   

Pity the state of Ohio! In 2024, it was Ohio which JD Vance used at the set for his astonishing claim—he later acknowledged that he'd known it was false—that Haitian guest workers were eating one city's pet cats and dogs. 

This week, along comes this other being with this ugly, deranged campaign ad.   

That said, our nation exists in a world of such hurt in this, the age of Trump. And that president; whose behavior is plainly stranger by the day, is going to be in office for two more years plus two more months after the events of November 3.  

“I won’t normalize somebody who has said that my childhood is just something I’m complaining about," Acton said. 

Last evening, on a Fox News Channel "cable news" program, a 61-year-old San Mateo boy—a San Mateo child who has long needed help—decided to offer this otherwise puzzling joke: 

GUTFELD (10/20/26): A new study shows that children who grew up with positive experiences have a lower risk of depression when they get older. 

And an earlier study shows that children who grew up with negative experiences should just keep their traps shut.   

We don't know why this misogyny-adjacent nutcase decided to go with this "joke." Is he nutty enough to have been aiming at Acton?   

Yes, he actually is—and no one in all of Blue America is willing to discuss what he and his various stooges do on his nightly primetime program.  

Our country currently lives in a world of deeply threatening hurt. The people who get sold to us Blues as reporters and commentators are an ongoing part of this problem.  

Tomorrow: Back to The Five (we hope)