Bulwark Takes - John Husted Is the Fakest Republican in America

Episode Date: October 10, 2026

Tim Miller takes a closer look at Ohio Senate candidate John Husted, whose carefully crafted moderate persona masks a record of corruption allegations, MAGA loyalty, and political opportunism. From his ties to Ohio’s utility scandal and donations from Jeffrey Epstein associate Les Wexner to his opposition to releasing the Epstein files, Husted has plenty of explaining to do.Tim also examines Husted’s role in bringing data centers to Ohio, his support for the Iran war and Trump’s tariffs, his dismissive comments about people living in poverty, and his decision to hire a political director with a history of Nazi imagery and white nationalist associations. As Husted tries to appeal to both MAGA Republicans and swing voters, Tim makes the case for why Ohioans should reject his candidacy and send Sherrod Brown back to the Senate.

Hey, everybody. It's Tim Miller from The Bull Work. We are continuing our running series of crazy extreme Republicans trying to bring a modicum of balance to the world and where the mainstream media decides that Trump is so crazy. That's like it's hard to give attention to some of the other crazy Republicans. And so they got to bring a fake balance and focus on kind of random extreme stuff. Democrats say. And it's unfortunate because there's a big list of characters running all across the country in Republican races. Too many for us to even get. to in the series, to be honest. So we are focused mostly, I have one or two personal acceptance, but mostly on the statewide Republicans running in swing or swingish states. And for this edition, I want to turn to John Hustad in Ohio. Just cards on the table. John is not as crazy or as extreme as some of the other candidates we've talked about. You know, Mike Collins in Georgia, who John Ossoff kind of just twisted the knife on him

in the debate the other night. Or running for governor in Arizona, Andy Biggs is like a point person on the January 6th insurrection. Hustead was like a traditional regular Republican who has gone along was Trumpism and had a dash of corruption on the side as well. And that makes me hate him more, actually. Of all the care notes we've talked about, I think John Hustead is the one that I have the most personal dislike for because, number one, you know he knows butter. And number two, it's just so fake.

And the whole thing is fake. His whole campaign, his whole persona, he wants the magas to think he's a maga. He wants the, you know, swing voting, suburban, former Republicans to think he's one of them. He's nothing. He's nothing. He just wants power for himself, money and power for his friends. And in a lot of ways, I will take a crazy ideologue over somebody that is this hollow at their core, particularly, you know, given the context.

He's running for Senate in Ohio against Sherry Brown. Obviously, we did the big fundraiser in Dayton for the Haitians in Springfield a couple weeks ago. And to have somebody be so hollow and cowardly in the face of these atrocities that are happening to their neighbors, to people in their state, to their constituents. For me, that just makes what John Hustadt is doing particularly noxious and unacceptable. So let's go through the worst hits on his resume. I want to start with the data centers.

This is the thing he's trying to fix right now. There's some bill going through Congress that is allegedly going to help alleviate the costs on rate payers. And the Republicans are letting John Hustead be the sponsor on that because they know he has so much baggage when it comes to the data centers. Ohioans have seen the second largest utility rate increases in the country over the past year. Hustead played such a large role in bringing the data centers to Ohio. that he was made the face of the data centers. He led the charge to give billions in tax breaks to the out-of-state corporations

building the data centers in Ohio. The editor of Cleveland.com referred to him as the data center's best friend. So, you know, just kind of a human data center lover. And now he realizes the political toll that's taking on him and like in everything else with his phony persona, he's trying to change it at this late hour to try to appeal to more people.

And fortunately for us, for John. It ain't working on this one. I mentioned the corruption. Ustead played a central role in a bribery scandal that folks in Ohio are going to be familiar with, but around the rest of the country, maybe not as much. This one is related to different energy projects. It was Ohio's first energy-linked nuclear plants. And the deal here was they needed a bailout. The Ohio voters paid for it, about $660 more on their utility bills as a result of this scheme. So First Energy and Allies basically donated about $60 million in order to receive a $1 billion bailout. That was funded by $150 million a year from ratepayers from Ohioans themselves.

Hustead was Lieutenant Governor at the time. It was the person that was the chairman of the state public utilities commission that was bride, but who said was deeply involved in it. He had a dinner with the executives in 2018 when he was running for lieutenant governor. They're discussing this issue. An executive wrote in a text that who said it called him. And what was the one that was going to help get the bill's language into the Ohio Senate version? A lobbyist also told federal agents that first energy money went to nonprofits that benefited

who said were aligned with him. His role in the scandal, so centrally to testify in defense of the utility company executives. The other kind of big thing that everybody's going to be familiar with, Jeffrey Epstein's, I guess, largest benefactor, Lex Wexner, the Victoria's Secret fellow. He donated over $115,000 to Hustadt, including a maximum donation just last year. Hustead then voted against releasing the Epstein files, which had tons of incriminating tax conversations, investigations that related to Wexner. There's still a bunch of files that we haven't received. And I mean, all signs would imagine or point to the idea that Wexner is in the unreleased documents as well. And Wexner was so mobbed up with Epstein that he gave him a broad power of attorney, which is kind of a legal document.

that lets one person act on behalf of another, I mean, we still, I think, are only at the surface of that relationship and who knows how gross additional revelations could be or incriminating for that matter. So for John Hust had to take money from Les Wexner, and this is not like, you know, sometimes we do, you do these hits in politics for like one candidate will do an ad talking about another candidate and like, he took money from Bill Cosby or whatever. And it's like, well, it was 1998. You know, nobody knew any better. Husset took a max donation from Wexner last year.

Did you need the money that much? I mean, it's we know everything. We know just how tied in he is to Epstein. So, I mean, who says just basically unapologetic about this? Can we cover up the FC filed? Some of the women, some of the victims, excuse me, that testified about this, talked about being flown to Ohio. Like this happened in his state.

He wanted to cover it up. And he's taking money from the, co-conspirators that were named in the files. And he's still covering up additional information. So that's John Hustead for you. Let's talk about some of the policies. He's not really in touch with what's happening with regular folks on the economy, I wouldn't say. Earlier this year, he was talking about people in poverty. Let's just watch that, actually. And people living in poverty are just not very, they're not very experienced at navigating the real world. And look, there are three ways to make things more affordable. Earn more,

keep more of what you earn and drive down prices. They're just not very experienced at navigating the real world, you know. They should try a little harder. Maybe if they just tried harder than the economic pain that the Trump administration is inflicting on them, you know, wouldn't hit as bad, right? You know, if they just, like, worked a few more hours, that could offset the increase in price and gas and groceries that they're paying because Donald Trump started. started a stupid war of choice in Iran that John Hustad was fully backing from the start.

Voted 13 times in support of the war. He said earlier that it was going much better than anyone thought it would. Much better. John Huston thought the Iran war was going much better than anyone thought it would. It's unclear how much worse it could be going. It's certainly going way worse than what Donald Trump and Pete Hanks that the Marco Rubio promised, but he was, who's such as full speed ahead, not affecting him. He's in his little country club bubble.

He can afford it. He's paying, you know, he's filling his tank up with that 92 gasoline, so he doesn't care that much. But for the regular folks, for folks that are struggling, they're just going to have to deal. Their work ethic is just not enough. They got to work John Hustadt hours. I mean, what, how many days do they think they worked in the Senate this year? Like 82?

They're working John Hustead hours. maybe they'd be in better shape. He voted three separate times to block efforts reining in the tariffs that are also increasing costs for regular Ohioans. When the tariffs ruled illegal and Jared Brown called for a refund to Ohio households, Hustadt argued against giving the money back.

Finally, like all of the other Republican candidates, it seems like, John Hustad is giving Groyper's and far-right white nationalists. And in this case, Nazis literally, like not not kind of just saying it for rhetorical affect but nazis literally high influential roles on their campaigns in the case of who's did he made stephen weitech his political director you know back when i worked on campaigns a political director for a senate campaign that's a legit job okay like you're the one kind of in charge of endorsements

you're in charge of the grassroots campaign you know like you have influence within the campaign you're in the senior staff meetings if you're the political director for that job John Hustead hired a guy that likes to dress up like a Nazi you know I mean being in the South I you encounter the people like to dress up as a civil war characters

and always makes me a little bit uncomfortable you know when people are dressing up as the Confederate but usually they've got both sides out there. There's a great book about this, Tony Horowitz, RIP Confederates in the Attic, that I would recommend people that just do the Confederate cosplay stuff. I got to tell you, until I read this story, I'd never encountered somebody that was doing Nazi cosplay, like out in the fields.

The other thing about the Confederate cosplay is like they go to battle sites. You know, the World War II battle sites weren't here in America. But, you know, kind of getting out there, dressing up at Nazi regalia, and kind of like pretending like you're doing the battles that took place in Europe. It was February 2018 that he was marching in that area. They had Nazi flags around. They were kind of wearing the costumes.

That was a new one for me. This guy was super into that. He used a photo of SS Soldiers also as his Facebook profile photo. He had a playlist of songs. I'm a big playlist guy. You know, create a lot of playlist for you guys. a lot of times it's kind of music that I like every time you don't endorse every lyric necessarily in every song but in this case his playlist included songs celebrating Rhodesia

a white minority-ruled nation that is venerated by the white supremacists that feels like on the wrong side of the line there doing a Rhodesia-themed playlist I think that if you paro that with the Facebook profile with the dressing up in Nazi costumes A little too excited about that period in history, as Mark Raven had said in succession. So there we go. John Hustadt, trying to pretend like he's a blue blazer and khakis, moderate Republican, but hiring white nationalist gropeers, going fully on board with Trump's idiotic trade war, idiotic war in Iran, being unbelievably dismissive of people's economic pain,

full Epstein file cover up, taking money from one of Epstein's biggest boosters and donors and confidence. This dude is dog shit. And I do hope that the people of Ohio do the right thing coming up here in a month and support Sherrod Brown. That's the latest in our series. We've got a couple more coming between now and November. Subscribe to the feed. If you've got friends in Ohio, send this one to them. Tell them about the bulwark.

We appreciate all your guys support for what we're up to. We'll be seeing you soon. Thank you.