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Conservatives had an extreme reaction to a video posted by Ohio gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy on Monday ― with many convinced it must be AI.
Even worse for Ramaswamy: One of the ideas proposed in the clip was apparently so extreme that people inclined to support his candidacy were convinced the video was a smear made by his Democratic opponent, Dr. Amy Acton.
In the original video, later deleted and reposted in a reedited form, Ramaswamy proposes ideas to make life for Ohio citizens more affordable, including year-round schooling and a 9-hour school day from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. each day.
As you can see in the video below, Ramaswamy claims the plan could reduce child care costs and “make parenting more affordable,” according to the Columbus Dispatch.
Republicans are currently accusing OH Dem gov candidate Amy Acton of posting an AI video of Vivek Ramaswamy suggesting year-round school for kids. One big problem: the video is real and was up for hours on TikTok before that portion was edited out. We have the original here. https://t.co/ztfSBfrEhK pic.twitter.com/wLjeetLTjN
— MeidasTouch (@MeidasTouch) November 25, 2025Ramaswamy’s campaign issued a statement to the Dispatch saying that the video was legit, but that his suggestion was more like a “casual back-and-forth on TikTok” and not a serious “policy rollout.”
A spokesperson for Acton told the paper that they simply shared a clip initially posted by Ramaswamy, and said it was “not surprising” he was trying to distance himself from his proposal.
He later posted another video.
Unfortunately for Ramaswamy, Republicans who saw the video thought the year-round school idea was so, so, so not Republican that they assumed Acton’s camp created a deep fake video to make him look bad to voters.
This video is made by AI (Vivek does not want year round school) but it is getting millions of views and lots of engagement in quote tweets with little push back.
Probably the most successful example of a political deepfake I've seen so far.
One of the reasons deepfakes work… https://t.co/QeTRSKdzRH
If you’re a candidate and you share AI-altered videos of another candidate and pass it off as reality, you should be fined a lot of money.
— Gabe Guidarini (@GabeGuidarini) November 25, 2025Acton made sure to point out the disconnect with Ramaswamy’s supporters over the video.
Agreed. The bad news for Vivek Ramaswamy is that his plans for Ohio are so backwards, his own party is convinced they’re AI.
Spoiler alert: they’re not. https://t.co/LwMspvMHsH
Ramaswamy tried to counter the controversy by posting another video in which he accused Democrats like Acton of “distorting my position” on education, but didn’t mention the year-round proposal from the earlier video.
Democrats like @amyactonoh drone on about “educational inequality” while creating the very problem with her disastrous public school closures during COVID. She owes our kids an apology. Now it’s up to us to fix their mess & we will. pic.twitter.com/NLrijOmmEG
— Vivek Ramaswamy (@VivekGRamaswamy) November 26, 2025A 2020 study published in the National Institute of Health said that there was no real proof that year-round schooling improved academic outcomes, but suggested that some at-risk student populations might benefit.
This isn’t the first time Ramaswamy’s views about the American education system have come back to bite him.
Last December, he was heavily criticized after declaring that “American culture has venerated mediocrity over excellence for way too long,” and that a “culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math olympiad champ, or the jock over the valedictorian, will not produce the best engineers.”
HuffPost reached out to Ramaswamy, who is a stakeholder in BuzzFeed, the parent company of HuffPost, for comment, but no one immediately responded.
According to 270towin.com, he currently has a 3% lead over Acton.
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