Roy Wood Jr. didn’t take too kindly to Vice President JD Vance standing by Ohio gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy’s attack ad against Democratic opponent Amy Acton this week. And considering the ad featured Acton’s own estranged mother calling the politician a liar, Wood decided to take a jab at the VP’s own mom.
“After awhile, you start to understand why JD Vance momma sold him for Percocets, right?” the comedian posed while hosting Saturday’s “Have I Got News for You.”
The show’s panelists, including Amber Ruffin and Michael Ian Black, were visibly startled by the barb and burst into laughter.
The moment came as Wood broke down the week-long controversy, playing a clip from Ramaswamy’s ad featuring Acton’s estranged mom Donna Arthur, who lost custody of Acton and her brother in 1978 after stepfather Cledith Arthur was charged with sexually assaulting Acton. The Democrat has said she has not seen or been in contact with her mother since they were in a courtroom together in 1978, nearly 50 years ago.
The ad was roundly condemned by Democrats and several Republicans this week for attacking a victim of sexual abuse in a way that was especially beyond the pale. MS NOW host Chris Hayes this week even called it “one of the most despicable things I’ve seen in politics.”
Vance, meanwhile, defended the ad at a rally in Cincinatti on Wednesday.
“Now I don’t wannna be too mean, becausee when your’e mean to Amy Acton, she sics American media and of course the Democrat Party operatives all across the state of Ohio after you,” Vance said in a clip aired on “Have I Got News for You.” “And now the media and the Democrats in the state of Ohio are obsessed because guess what? Vivek Ramaswamy had the audacity to run a TV commercial which calls it out like it is and calls Amy Acton a liar.”
That’s when Wood let us know exactly how he feels about Vance, nodding to his mother Beverly Carol Aikins’s well-documented battle with addiction.
Watch the full episode of “Have I Got News for You” below:
