Donald Trump Jr., the president’s eldest son, drew a wave of online ridicule after complaining that Democrats want to make Ohio a state.
Trump Jr. made the remark Monday while actually in the Buckeye State to campaign for Republican candidates.
“They want to, what is it? Save democracy by destroying democracy,” Trump Jr. said of Democrats. “They wanna pack the Supreme Court. They wanna make Ohio a state, make D.C. a state, have permanent one-party rule.”
“I don’t know how it works, but, you know, they can do these things and get away with it, all in the name of somehow preserving democracy,” he continued. “They’re saying these things out loud. They’re not even hiding from it… They’re running on it.”
Critics on X began mocking the remark within seconds.
“Don’t do drugs, kids,” wrote Ron Filipkowski, editor-in-chief of MeidasTouch News.
“Oh no, how terrible if Ohio was to become a state,” wrote the X account ChrisO_wiki, whose profile describes an independent military history author. “It might even vote for Democrats occasionally!”
“Wait, if Republicans are against Ohio statehood now, that could win me over,” wrote Atlantic staff writer Jonathan Chait.
“Democrats want to make Ohio a state?” asked progressive commentator Alex Cole. “Don Jr. is campaigning against something that happened 223 years ago.”
Trump Jr.’s list mirrored a plan Democratic strategist James Carville floated in April, when he said that if Democrats win the presidency and both chambers of Congress, “on day one, they should make Puerto Rico [and] D.C. a state, and they should expand the Supreme Court,” according to Legal Insurrection.
President Donald Trump answered later that month on Truth Social that Carville “wants the Democrats to make D.C. and Puerto Rico States and, most importantly, pack the Supreme Court,” theGrio reported.
Trump Jr.’s list named the court and D.C. too, but put Ohio where theirs had Puerto Rico.
The Ohio remark was not the first time Trump Jr. drew backlash during an election season.
“If I had a bowl of Skittles and I told you just three would kill you,” Trump Jr. wrote on Twitter in September 2016, Reuters reported. “Would you take a handful? That’s our Syrian refugee problem.” The maker of Skittles objected to the post, the news agency reported.
In late October 2020, Trump Jr. told Fox News host Laura Ingraham that COVID-19 deaths had dropped to “almost nothing” on a day when more than 1,000 Americans died of the virus, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported.
The claim prompted a strong response from critics and medical experts, the newspaper reported.
Trump Jr.’s Ohio remark came a day before Election Day in a state where Republicans are fighting to hold a Senate seat that could be key to the majority, CNN reported last month.
Former Sen. Sherrod Brown, a Democrat, is challenging Sen. Jon Husted (R-OH) for the seat, the network reported.
Ohio, the state at the center of Trump Jr.’s remark, is widely known as the 17th state, admitted in 1803, according to the Ohio History Connection.
But it was not officially admitted to the union until 1953, when the House voted to grant statehood retroactive to March 1, 1803, the group notes.
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