Ohio Republicans call Ramaswamy's ad 'deeply troubling,' their own president tells him to keep it up.

…(cont) I figured I had the dates wrong, so I went and checked CBS. CBS had it too, that Thursday: the President "defended" Ramaswamy "amid backlash" over the ad. And France 24 had the Vice President, same week, telling fellow Republicans to "stop whining" about it and go win the race.

So now I've got three Republicans and three different reactions — troubling, keep it up, stop whining — to one four-million-dollar ad. I'm no mechanic, but I know what it looks like when a shop tells you the brakes are bad and then waves you back onto the road anyway. Happened to me once, down at the garage on Fifth, with the car that won't start half the mornings as it is — the guy writes "needs work" on the ticket, hands me the keys, tells me I'll be fine. I don't go back to that garage. I was hoping the party could tell me what a voter's supposed to do instead.

Because here's what the ad actually is, according to what I've got written down. CBS also had Acton's brother on the record saying their stepfather sexually abused Acton when she was a child, and calling the ad a "despicable low." The Washington Examiner had Ramaswamy's campaign putting four million dollars behind it, as of October 21st.

Then it was the weekend, and on the 24th and 25th, former President Obama came to Cleveland for his first rally of the cycle and went after it by name — the Washington Examiner quoted him saying there's "no office that is worth stopping that low." The New York Times had him going after Trump in the same visit. ABC had Amy Acton herself, after the rally, saying Trump and Vance should "look at the facts."

So that's the whole thing as I've got it written down: one governor calling it troubling, one president saying keep it up, one vice president saying stop whining, and a former president turning it into his first applause line of the campaign. I was hoping somebody at the party could help me square that. Nobody's called me back yet.

Oh — excuse me, one more thing, before you head back inside. That quote from the governor, "deeply troubling" — I never saw it withdrawn. The ad was still running the day Obama stood up in Cleveland and went after it by name. So which one of those two quotes is the one still operating — the governor who asked him to pull it, or the president who told him to keep it up?