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In a campaign speech in Vandalia, Ohio, on Saturday, President Donald Trump suggested he would withhold federal funds from the state if voters elect Democratic politicians in this year’s midterm races.
Trump appeared to conflate two different political races, discussing U.S. Sen. Jon Husted’s (R-Ohio) Senate reelection campaign and Democratic candidate Amy Acton’s campaign for governor in the same statement. (Husted is running against former U.S. Senator and Democrat Sherrod Brown, while Acton is facing off against Republican candidate for governor and Trump ally Vivek Ramaswamy.)
“Jon Husted…calls me all the time. He always wants money,” Trump said during his speech. “If Amy Acton got in, I don’t know anything about her.”
“I’m not going to help her, probably, she hates me, I guess,” Trump added.
Trump’s speech also featured vulgar attacks against Democrats in general. At one point, he encouraged those in attendance to “just get out and vote” for Republicans.
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“If you do that, we’re going to win, and we’re going to win big, and we’re going to shove it up their ass,” Trump said.
The president made a number of bizarre claims during his Saturday night speech. He claimed that he has one of the highest IQs “anywhere in the world,” telling the audience it was around 1,775. Such an IQ would indeed be the highest, as no IQ test has ever measured above 300. He also said that polls are “fake,” complaining that they didn’t take into account his plans to campaign in the final weeks of the race — a statement that is technically true but misleading, as polls question respondents about their current attitudes. And he reiterated an unlikely (and legally dubious) promise to deliver $5,000 checks to every American adult if Republicans win the midterms.
Trump has already withheld disaster aid from states for seemingly political reasons. In a series of Truth Social posts in late June, Trump announced hundreds of millions of dollars in disaster aid funds going to states that backed him in 2024, while ignoring some requests from states that backed his opponent, Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris.
An analysis from the Urban Institute around that time showed that, since Trump reentered the White House, over 84 percent of requests from states that voted for him won approval, as opposed to only 41 percent of requests from states that didn’t back him. Approvals, when they did occur, happened twice as fast for red states as for blue ones.
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