Donald Trump decried critics of Ohio Republican gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy over a provocative campaign ad that threatens to damage the party’s midterm election prospects.

The president on Wednesday night made his third visit to Ohio and the first since the uproar over the ad by Ramaswamy, who is in a close race with his Democratic opponent, Amy Acton, a Democrat and the former state health director.

But Trump made clear he had no intention of trying to move past the furor, repeating the claims made in the video despite misgivings from many in his own party.

“And whether you like it or not, and I asked a couple of people, I’d like to say I like to talk about things, because Vivek was treated very unfairly.” he said at a rally on the Ohio University campus in Chillicothe, near Columbus.

“The mother said that Amy Acton, the daughter, is a liar. That she’s no good. That she lied about the opponent. How the hell is that his problem? Very unfair. And if he were a Democrat, they would have gone the other way. Believe me, it’s a very unfair situation,” Trump said.

Acton has called the ad “despicable” and accused Ramaswamy’s campaign of taking advantage of her long estranged mother, whom she said is “not well.”Her mother’s husband was charged with raping Acton when she was 12. Acton was removed from her mother’s custody and has said she has not seen her in decades.

Earlier: Ramaswamy Faces Blowback on Ad With Rival’s Estranged Mother There are worries that acrimony over the ad, which the Ramaswamy campaign is putting $4 million behind, could drag down other Republicans in a conservative state Trump carried easily in all three of his presidential campaigns.

The state also has a closely contested Senate race, with the incumbent Republican, Jon Husted, battling former Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown. While polls show Democrats are likely to retake the US House, control of the Senate remains uncertain, making combative campaigns like the ones in Ohio critical for both parties.

In a toss-up election in which Republicans already face broad political headwinds, Husted also has to contend with any voter backlash from the ad Ramaswamy’s campaign ran, according to a person working to elect Republicans nationally. If Husted doesn’t ultimately prevail, his defeat would in part be due to the reverberations from that on the GOP ticket, the person said.

The RealClearPolitics polling average shows Brown with a more than three percentage point edge over Husted and the nonpartisan Cook Political Report rates it as a toss-up. In the governor’s race, the polling average has Acton up by more than four percentage points, with Cook seeing it as leaning Democrat.

Husted sought to distance himself from Ramaswamy’s ad — and the controversy. “I said I wouldn’t have run the ad but we’re past that,” he told reporters this week. “I’m running against Sherrod Brown.”With Election Day on Nov. 3 now less than a week away, Republicans are on the defense across the Senate map. Trump has spent the last month traveling to normally safe Republican states to shore up the party’s candidates dragged down by voter frustration over high costs of living that are straining household budgets and the war on Iran, which has exacerbated the problem by the rise of energy prices.