Trump’s appearance in Ohio underscores all the reasons the GOP is unpopular

On Saturday, President Donald Trump hosted a campaign rally for Ohio senatorial and gubernatorial candidates, John Husted and Vivek Ramaswamy. As part of his campaign to revive GOP turnout and avoid what is widely predicted to be a Democratic sweep, he appeared in Ohio following weekend visits to Texas, Oklahoma, and Alabama. With his signature lack of subtlety, he encouraged the state’s voters to head to the polls.

“Just get out and vote,” Trump told a crowd that barely filled a high school gymnasium in the city of Vandalia. “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.” Ohio, a state that Trump has won three times, has become a battleground for the same reasons that the GOP is predicting a bleak forecast in this year’s midterms: skyrocketing gas prices, bipartisan disdain for data centers, high costs for food and utilities, and Trump’s unpopular war with Iran.

All of this was highlighted during last night‘s rally, starting with the venue. Less than a week earlier, a nearby factory had laid off 1,400 workers in the community. Meanwhile, Trump swore that the state’s fledgling economy would be saved by AI data centers.

“There’s so much money to be made for Ohio. You can’t just turn them off. They’ll go to China,” Trump said. As my colleague Anna Merlan has reported, the Trump administration has made support for artificial intelligence a hallmark of its platform, tying the unregulated use of this technology not only to economic prosperity, but also, weirdly enough, masculinity. Merlan writes:

It’s now increasingly obvious that Trump and his administration view AI technology as something akin to a large, dangerous dog that only a masculine owner can control. Trump has repeatedly called warnings that AI could harm human beings “a hoax,” writing on TruthSocial that the “only control or ‘guardrails’ that AI needs is a STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT, and the U.S.A. has that, in spades!” 

But despite Trump’s insistence that all criticism of AI and data centers is fake news, the polls make it clear that people are not buying what the he is selling—and this has been true in Ohio, Florida, and many other states. As my colleague Sophie Hurwitz reported, data center opposition is proving to be a winning strategy for both Republicans and Democrats alike. Meanwhile, Husted, who’s been branded the “face of data centers” by Brown, has faced bipartisan backlash for his support of these tech developers. Recently, Senate Democrats shut down Husted’s bill aiming to prevent data centers from causing potential utility bill spikes, calling the legislation “toothless.”

According to a poll conducted by USA Today, former senator Sherrod Brown is currently leading with 47 percent of voters’ support, compared to Husted’s 44 percent. Democratic candidate Amy Acton is also pulling ahead of her opponent, with a nine-point difference in favorability over Ramaswamy, according to a poll from Suffolk University.

Trump’s 93-minute speech reportedly did little to address people’s concerns with data centers and made no mention of the recent layoffs or rising grocery and gas prices. But he did make sure to get potshots in on Husted’s opponent, praising the Republican’s athletic prowess and dunking on Brown’s alleged lack thereof.

“That guy can’t tie his shoes,” said Trump.

Since the rally, both Ramaswamy and Husted have tweeted very little about the president’s appearance, with Husted instead opting to shoutout his University of Dayton college football teammate, John Gruden, who resigned as a coach to the Las Vegas Raiders after emails of his containing racist and misogynistic language were leaked to the public. Ramaswamy, on the other hand, did post a video of himself nodding along approvingly as Trump called Acton “a radical left lunatic pretending to be a moderate.”