President Donald Trump puts his cap back on during a campaign rally at the Majestic Valley Arena in Kalispell, Montana, October 14, 2026. REUTERS/Evan Vucci
President Donald Trump will not be able to escape the blowback from his MAGA movement's vile new low point, with his one-time biographer predicting that it could cast doubt on the viability and future of his entire political identity.
Michael Wolff is a longtime author and reporter, best known for his extensive coverage of Trump's political career, including several books about his chaotic first term. In the latest episode of his Daily Beast podcast, "Inside Trump's Head," he and co-host Joanna Coles discussed the ongoing fallout from Ohio GOP gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy's widely criticized new attack ad, which featured his opponent Amy Acton's mother, who previously lost custody of her children after her second husband allegedly abused them.
As Wolff noted, the reaction to the ad, in which Acton's mother called her a serial liar, was overwhelmingly negative from members across the political spectrum, with only Ramaswamy himself and the White House standing by it.
"This has backfired in every possible sense of the word,” Wolff said. “I mean, disavowed by Republicans, Democrats. All voters seem to be completely appalled by this. You can basically find no one to think this was a good idea except Vivek Ramaswamy, Donald Trump, and JD Vance. I don't know of anybody else who would be on the side of this ad, but that threesome is hanging tight, and the Ramaswamy campaign is pledging to put an additional $4 million behind this ad in the closing weeks.”
Coles called the ad "utterly exploitative" of Acton's childhood abuse and suggested, as many have, that Ramaswamy should be "ashamed" of himself. Wolff concurred, but argued that it is more interesting to dig into why the likes of Trump and Vance are choosing to double down on the ad, suggesting that "there's an important political point here."
"And the political point here is that they believe, and so much of Donald Trump's career would support this, that the illiberal and the cold-hearted and the 'f—— you' and the owning the libs works," Wolff said. "So this is... this desperation moment for the Republicans, down to the wire, these close races, which should not be close. They are this is their Hail Mary pass. Let us revert to what has worked for us."
Wolff argued later that the fallout from the ad could prove a disastrous signal for the future viability of Trump's signature brand of politics.
“Does this continue to work, or have people suddenly woken up and said—going down the long list of... Trumpian accomplishments, or the reverse of accomplishments... from the war in Iran to the masked men on the streets, whether people have had enough of this," Wolff added.