Donald Trump Jr. ran through a list of Democratic plans he wanted an Ohio crowd to fear, and one of them was making Ohio a state.
Trump Jr., executive vice president of the Trump Organization, drew silence from a midterm rally crowd on Monday, Nov. 2, 2026, inside a hangar at Swanton’s Eugene F. Krantz Toledo Express Airport outside Toledo, when he said, “They want to pack the Supreme Court. They want to make Ohio a state.”
The crowd had cheered nearly every line before that one. Moments earlier he had warmed them up with a question about the opposition: “They want to, what is it? Save democracy by destroying democracy?” he asked. After the Ohio line landed flat, he never came back to it, pivoting straight to Washington, D.C.
Trump Jr. was warming up the crowd for Vice President JD Vance, part of Vance’s closing sprint through his home state a day before the Nov. 3 midterm elections. Vance had stepped off Air Force Two to Ted Nugent’s “Stranglehold” before taking the stage. The rally backed the Ohio GOP slate, including gubernatorial nominee Vivek Ramaswamy and Senate candidate Jon Husted.
Ohio has been a state for more than 220 years. Congress admitted it as the 17th state in 1803, passing the admitting legislation on Feb. 19, 1803, with the official statehood date later established as March 1, 1803.
There is a wrinkle, one that researchers noticed much later: no final congressional vote specifically ratified the state’s 1802 constitution. Congress passed a resolution in 1953 formally admitting Ohio, and President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the resolution on Aug. 7, 1953, backdating statehood to March 1, 1803 and closing a 150-year-old clerical loose end.
Washington, D.C., sits in a different position. The U.S. Constitution created it as a federal district, it has no voting representation in Congress, and it sends a single delegate to the House. Statehood for the capital remains contested, and Republicans argue it would hand Democrats additional House seats. Trump Jr. told the hangar that Democrats want the capital made a state to secure “permanent one-party rule.”
“Someone Needs to Tell This Genius”
Attorney Aaron Parnas posted video of the remark to Threads, where it drew more than 3,000 comments by Nov. 3. The top reply expressed horror at the prospect of Ohio becoming a state and predicted Trump Jr. would top himself before the night was out.
On Reddit’s r/politics, one commenter said statehood would be a terrible idea, while another wondered what residents of a hypothetical state of Ohio would be called. Glenn Chavez posted on X: “Someone needs to tell this genius that Ohio has been a state since 1803.” Brian Allen, another X user, did the math and made it 223 years.
A TikTok creator reacted on Nov. 3 to footage of an Ohio voter with mock bafflement that anyone in the state could vote at all, then broke character and told followers to go vote.
No Evidence Behind the Minnesota Line
Trump Jr. had spent several minutes earlier in the speech accusing Democrats of trying to “trans” children and of sliding toward communism and socialism. He also targeted the Somali immigrant community in Ohio over alleged “ballot harvesting” and its support for Amy Acton, the Democratic nominee for governor, pointing to Minnesota as a cautionary tale. He offered no evidence of electoral wrongdoing.
“How did that work out in Minnesota? What ended up happening with a lot of that?… There will be ‘Quality Learing Centers’ all over the great state of Ohio. Paid for by you and other American taxpayers as they defraud the country,” he said at the Nov. 2 rally.
He also repeated allegations about Acton’s supposed alcohol abuse, claims already running in Republican campaign advertising. PolitiFact judged misleading an ad that treated a “yes” on her 1994 medical license application as proof of alcohol or drug abuse. Her campaign said that answer covered a question lumping several conditions together and referred to outpatient therapy she received after being abused as a child; she answered no to the separate question on alcohol or drug dependency.
Who Paid for the Bahamas Wedding
Trump Jr. celebrated his wedding with Bettina Anderson in the Bahamas, and his “friend” Umar Kremlev, a Russian businessman close to Vladimir Putin, paid for part of it. Kremlev later claimed Trump Jr. had paid him back. That revelation reportedly left the president furious with his eldest son.
The president’s eldest son has never served in an official capacity in either of his father’s administrations, though some on the right have floated him as a political heir. He runs the family business. In 2024 he co-founded the crypto venture World Liberty Financial, which helped net President Donald Trump more than $2.4 billion over the following year — 6,000 times the annual presidential salary.
Hannity Weighs In on the Sweep
The clip was still circulating as Ohio voters went to the polls on Nov. 3. With most votes counted, Democrats won control of both the House and the Senate, according to projections.
Fox News’ Sean Hannity offered his own reading of the sweep on election night, Nov. 3. “I’m going to add one other factor here. Hatred is a hell of a motivator, and Jesse [Watters] is not wrong in saying he wasn’t on the ballot. You can say you were on the ballot all you want. He was not on the ballot this year,” he said.
Harold Ford Jr., a Fox News contributor, asked whether backlash to Trump’s second term had “inspired” Democratic turnout. Hannity answered: “Oh, I think, I think the hatred for this man is unprecedented. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
