Trump says he told Vivek Ramaswamy to keep the Acton mother ad up and ‘thank you, God’

On the South Lawn Thursday afternoon, when a reporter laid out the abuse allegation against Acton’s mother, Donald Trump said he knew “nothing about it.” By the evening in Sioux City, he was the ad’s spiritual adviser.

His version: Vivek Ramaswamy called him. “He said, what would you recommend? Because I’m getting killed in the press.” Trump described the ad himself: “the mother saying the daughter is incompetent, a liar, a disgusting, unreliable person.” Then he gave the crowd his reaction: “The mother said horrible things about your opponent. Why can’t I have that happen to me? That’s a good thing. But I said, you got to ride with it.” And he shared the advice he says he finished with: “leave it up and look upstairs and say thank you God very much.” Trump’s account of the call is the only one on the record.

He also had a thought about his own late mother: “My mom would not say that about me, even if she believed it.” It’s the “even if she believed it” that hangs around.

Then he went back over the afternoon gaggle. He said “one woman from ABC Fake News” had told him the ad should come down, and that he recognized her immediately: “not a particularly attractive person inside or out.” Also, “she’s a nasty person.” So the mother calling her daughter a liar is a gift from God, and the reporter asking about it is the nasty one. The court records back Acton’s account of what happened to her as a child, and the ad calls her a liar.