CLEVELAND — When asked about President Donald Trump’s strong defense of a GOP attack ad featuring her estranged mother calling her a liar, Amy Acton exercised prudence.

“I’ve worked with the president before,” the Democratic gubernatorial nominee told MS NOW, “but I think he needs to learn the facts of this case. They’re irrefutable.”

During an interview following a rally with former President Barack Obama on Saturday, Acton declined to attack Trump. Instead, the childhood sexual assault survivor praised Republican leaders in her state who have condemned the spot, including former Ohio Gov. Bob Taft and Mike DeWine, the current governor, who called it “deeply troubling.”

“All of our living governors have spoken in Ohio and condemned this ad, and that means the world to me,” Acton said in an interview. “What I am focused on is what these governors know: that the people of Ohio are struggling. They’re ready for change.”

Republican gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy’s decision to release and amplify the advertisement in his exceedingly tight race against Acton has divided Republicans ahead of the midterms. But Trump has remained firmly in his corner, advising Ramaswamy to “leave it up” and suggested it could clear the way for a Republican victory in the state.

“I told him, leave it up and look upstairs and say, ‘Thank you God, very much,’” Trump said at a rally in Sioux City, Iowa, on Thursday. “I only wish I could have had an ad like that against somebody.”

When pressed by a reporter on his defense of a GOP attack that touches on the Democratic candidate’s childhood trauma, Trump doubled down, asserting the ad was not tied to the criminal histories of Acton’s mother or her late husband.

“You’re trying to take a horrible situation for a Democrat and make it look better. The mother said really bad things about a person that wants to be the Democrat governor of Ohio,” Trump said on Friday. “This has nothing to do with a stepfather or anything else.”

Acton’s decision to withhold criticism of Trump — while thrashing Ramaswamy — speaks to the fine line she has walked in her pursuit to become the first woman to lead Ohio, a state Trump won three times.

Her emergence as a viable Democratic contender for governor came after she broke from Democrats on a number of policy positions, including issues relating to federal immigration enforcement, transgender athletes and voter ID laws.

The controversial 60-second clip released by Ramaswamy’s campaign features Acton’s estranged mother, 82-year-old mother Donna Arthur, who calls her daughter a “liar.”

“She lies about her past. She says she grew up living in a tent. None of that is true,” Arthur says in the ad. “Don’t vote for people who lie.”

Acton told MS NOW she has not spoken to her mother in nearly 50 years. She has long been vocal about the challenges she and her brother faced as children, one she alleges was rife with physical and sexual abuse, poverty and a period of homelessness.

Court records obtained by news outlets show Acton’s stepfather, Cledith Arthur, was charged with rape of a minor under the age of 13 before he fled the state and later died. Acton has identified herself as the victim. Her brother has said their mother remained married to Arthur until his death.

“The last time I saw my birth mother, I was 12 years old in a courthouse after a grand jury hearing, where my stepfather was indicted, and then he was a fugitive. They skipped on bail and left,” Acton told MS NOW.

Additional records obtained by NBC News show that both Donna and Cledith Arthur faced additional criminal financial charges over the course of several decades.

“I’m learning things that even I don’t remember, obviously, as a 12-year-old child,” Acton told MS NOW. “We’re learning more about the kinds of things he did to other children. We’re learning more about the troubled life of my mother, who was not well then, since I was probably three years old, and is not well now.”

Citing the negative reception to the Ramaswamy ad, Cook Political Report on Friday shifted its rating of the race from “toss up” to “lean Democrat.” Acton told MS NOW that trend lines were already pointing in that direction.

”My opponent has spent $110 million and counting in the most abhorrent, lying, made up ads, and it never moved the needle one inch. We have started tied or ahead in every single polls in this race. We’re up double digits with independents and we have tons of Republicans crossing over,” Acton said.

For Ohio voters at Acton’s rally in Cleveland, alongside Obama and Democratic Senate nominee Sherrod Brown, the move by Ramaswamy to release the ad was a sign of “desperation.”

”I thought it was just so underhanded and I thought it was just such a bad choice for Vivek to do that,” 70-year-old Ken Salzbrenner said. “To bring up the situation that she was in, that she had no control over as a 12-year-old, I think was just outrageous, and it shows his lack of leadership that he would make that choice.”

During his remarks at the event, Obama hammered Ramaswamy as “thirsty” and framed his release of the ad as a desperate attempt to “get attention”

“There is no line he will not cross, there is no low he won’t sink to, to try to get in the limelight,” Obama said. “There’s got to be something inside you where you just say, you know, no office is worth stooping that low because, you know what, character matters.”

The post ‘Learn the facts’: Amy Acton schools Trump on her childhood trauma appeared first on MS NOW.

From MS Now.