Vivek Ramaswamy ad controversy explained, plus key election news

Let's talk midterm elections, less than two weeks away now. And as we get closer, there are, you know, some increased concerns about election meddling. Yes, joining us to discuss is Stephen Caliendo, professor of political science at North Central College. And this comes from a report by the Washington Post. The Post is reporting that there is a small group of national security officials that have been advising state governments and some lawmakers on how to prepare for the possibility that the Trump administration might attempt to meddle in the election prior to the midterms. Why do you think, first of all, what do you think of this report? And what do you think of the effort they're putting out there to all these local governments to be prepared for this? It sounds like it's extensive, too. They talked about tabletop conversations where they're going through different scenarios. Potentially, here's what we'll do if this happens. Here's what we'll do if this happens. There's a whole list of possibilities of what kind of meddling could occur. And this is, you know, Anthony, you asked why. Why? It's because the president has argued for a long time that the elections are rigged, particularly the elections he doesn't win. And so I think the setting up this possibility that if the Democrats do take control of the House and or the Senate, in particular races, they may challenge, particularly in states that are controlled by Democrats. I mean, I remember years and years ago, there was concern about election meddling from the likes of China or Russia. And now we're talking about it within our own borders here. And then on top of it, you've got huge swaths of people that also don't, they think that elections are rigged and they're trying to discredit. Is our system broken? Can we ever get the trust back in our elections? The system's not broken and the system hasn't been broken. The problem is that we've had one political actor, it happens to be the president of the United States, who has continually argued that it is broken and with no evidence whatsoever. And so, you're right, Liz- I guess I didn't mean broken. I just mean sowing that distrust into the system. Yeah, the trust is absolutely eroded. I think as the president's approval ratings start to shrink, the number of people who believe that the elections aren't secure are probably smaller. The problem is, this isn't helping. In other words, it's ironic, right? It's almost like a self-fulfilling prophecy that the elections weren't really, there was good reason to have lots of trust in elections. But this year, we might not have so much trust because the folks who are arguing that we we shouldn't have trust, might be rigging the elections. That's really concerning. It's really concerning. So there's a lot of races that are, I mean, really feisty right now, Michigan. We have Texas and then one thing really making headlines right now is the Ohio gubernatorial race. Okay, there's this ad, will you give us kind of the groundwork, there's this ad from the Vivek Ramaswamy camp that is stirring up a ton of controversy. That's right. There was an ad that was released online, and it is Vivek Ramaswamy's opponent, Amy Acton, her mother, okay? And the mother in the ad says, Amy's a liar, you can't trust her, she's lied all her life. And this is sort of like, you know, good political ad, you got somebody close to her undermining. What we come to find out is that the reason she feels that way is because Amy Acton's mother's second husband sexually assaulted Amy Acton when she was 12 years old. And so she's been estranged from her mother for 40 some years. And so really, really below, I mean, wherever the standards are, I think we can agree this is it. But this is important because we didn't know who ran the ad, right, at first, because it was online. Online, you don't have to say I'm Vivek Ramaswamy and I approve this. And also it's a gubernatorial ad, so the same election rules don't apply as for federal. He came out yesterday and admitted that it was his campaign that ran it, and they were gonna double down and put another million dollars in it. We were talking about this earlier, how does this happen? How do you not have someone in the room going, maybe this isn't a great idea? If you were this bad at your job, Liz, you would not be sitting here, right? I mean, this is like somebody needs to be fired. Is this going to be a deal breaker for that campaign? What's your take on it? Is it the October surprise kind of thing? Yeah, well, but it's an unforced error. I mean, is it an October surprise in the fact that somebody dug something up? I think that the Ramaswamy campaign thought, this is it, her own mother can't even trust her, right? I mean, this is gonna be perfect, and it completely backfiring. And also, I think for high school teachers and college professors who teach about election ads, this is gonna be one for the books. I mean, this one is gonna be right there with Willie Horton and the Daisy ad and some of these very famous political ads. And then you've got this other, the Michigan Senate Democratic candidate, Abdul al-Sayed, in this viral exchange, we're learning more about, was this person a plant? Tommy, right? Tommy. Tommy was a plant. Yeah, Tommy was a plant. Tommy worked, his whole family had worked for Josh Hawley from Missouri. We know, we just learned recently, just a few hours ago, that there was actually payment made to a consulting firm that Tommy was associated with. When this first went viral, I gotta be honest, my suspicion was that the El-Sayed campaign set it up. Cuz it was so perfect. Cuz he looked so good in the answer. He handled it well. Right, he was like he was ready for it and he handled it well and it was jujitsu. He turned the argument back around on him. And so I thought, well, this is gonna be a problem if somebody finds out that El-Sayed's campaign put somebody in there to give him a softball. As it turns out, no, it was the other way around. It was a not-for-profit group. And this happens because of the way we have dark money in politics. I mean, it wasn't the other campaign, it wasn't Mike Rogers who sent this guy. This was a not-for-profit group who can use their money after Citizens United, right, unlimited to influence the outcome of elections as long as it's not in coordination with the campaign. What is going through your mind as we close in on the election? There's so many polls saying that it's gonna be this blue wave. There's a possibility even of taking the Senate. How much stock are you putting in? Is this overconfidence by Democrats right now? Yeah, the polls, I mean, yeah. Yeah, I don't trust them. I mean, and I think the pollsters know that. I mean, there's been a lot of talk in the last 10 years, but even in the past couple of years about how can we trust polls, given that they've been so wrong so frequently. But look, when I come here next week, it's going to be the last time we visit before the elections. Oh, my gosh, you're right. And who knows what we'll be talking about then. And then, of course, the week after that, we should have some answers. It's been a crazy election cycle. It really has. Reality TV. Reality TV. What can you trust? Professor Caliendo, thank you so much. We're getting to wrap.