👨‍🦰: You just can’t trust those people 🙎🏻: This is a Christian nation; he doesn’t belong here 🙎🏼‍♂️: He’s got such a weird name 🙎🏻‍♀️: Who does he think he is?

Unpopular Opinion: If we can’t openly and calmly — without character assassination attempts and smears — talk about whether a gubernatorial candidate or her mother is the one lying, then we have a massive problem. Court records exist if there was a conviction for abuse. Cases involving custody often involve abuse and other grotesque claims — somewhere in the ballpark of 50 percent of contested divorces and custody cases. Family law attorneys routinely brief and coach their clients on how to gain an advantage using carefully crafted stories and constructed claims — there’s always a victim and a villain on both sides of the story. If we cannot talk about that without being guilted, shamed or defamed when we’re not the ones in the story (here, Acton, her brother, father, mother and stepfather), we are doing it wrong and have no legitimate claim to “vetting” the history or present M.O. of a candidate. This is not a claim that dropped 15 days before an election. Donna Arthur said all of this on the record in June 2020 — six years ago — when her daughter was Ohio’s health director, not a candidate for governor. She disputed the hardship story then. She said then that her daughter learned early that lying worked. She said then that she worried Amy was positioning herself for higher office. Acton resigned from ODH eight days after that interview published. AND LET’S BE VERY CLEAR HERE: The people saying they’re offended by this — David Pepper, the Acton campaign, the Democrats, progressives and even Republicans — publish accusatory propaganda all the time about the people and movements they identify as their ideological opponents. Candidates and campaigns routinely try to smear private citizens — Acton’s camp in particular, several times this cycle (both directly and indirectly). The difference here is that Acton is not a private citizen. She is a candidate who has been caught in several lies in this campaign alone. So I ask: What’s the standard?

You voted for Obama because of the color of his skin. You voted for Hillary because she’s a woman. You voted for Kamala because she’s a woman. I voted for Donald Trump because he loves America. Tell me more about how I’m the one who’s in a cult 🤔

Trump: The Democrats are the party of Abdul Mohammad El Sayed. He got very upset because I called him Mohammed. I can call him whatever the hell I want. If you call somebody from that part of the world, Mohammed, you're about 65% sure to get it right. So if you have any problem with names, just call the guy Mohammed.

Trump: "They made it like [Roger Marshall] was some kind of a Shylock-type guy."

Trump: "The absolute mutilization of your children, where your son Timmy comes up five days later as Sarah, and you don't even know about it. Nobody can believe that's this country."