Minutes into President Trump's rally at the Shoemaker Center in Chillicothe, Ohio, on Wednesday night, a man in the crowd shouted, "Trump went on Epstein's plane!" — and the president answered him from the stage: "I threw Epstein out of a club like 20 years ago because I thought he was a whack job… He was a Democrat… I was totally exonerated." Trump added: "I threw Jeffrey Epstein the hell out of Mar-a-Lago. That was a great thing I did; I must tell you."
The heckler was Rob Potylo, a comedian and activist who performs as "Robby Roadsteamer" and travels to political events to heckle; he filmed the moment himself and posted the footage the same night. The crowd drowned him out with boos and chants of "USA! USA!" as sheriff's deputies and security escorted him out, and moments later a second protester, a woman, was also removed. There was no immediate word on Wednesday night on whether either of them was arrested. It was the third consecutive night of disruption on Trump's midterm swing, after a heckler in Corinth, Mississippi, on Monday shouted about the Epstein files and got the same answer about paid protesters.
Trump told the crowd the disruptors were "professional protesters" who are given money, saying of the heckler: "They gave him $250." He produced no evidence for the payment claim, and Potylo mocked it in his own post: "Trump says I got $250 as a paid protester. Prove him wrong!" The president's account of Epstein is his own and long-standing: he has previously said the break came after Epstein hired away Mar-a-Lago spa staff. At the rally he offered no evidence for the ejection itself, as Raw Story noted on the night, and on the record Trump has never been charged with any crime connected to Epstein, fiercely denies any wrongdoing, and a mention in the released Epstein documents does not imply wrongdoing.
The rally — the first appearance by a sitting president in Chillicothe in more than two decades — was a campaign stop six days before Election Day. Trump was stumping for Senator Jon Husted, whose special-election race against former Senator Sherrod Brown is tied in recent polls, for gubernatorial nominee Vivek Ramaswamy, and for Issue 3, the proposal to write Ohio's photo voter-ID requirement into the state constitution.
For citizens, the exchange put the fight over the Epstein files — and over whether the public has been told the whole truth — on the stage of a tied Senate race in the campaign's final week. Trump's closing answer to Ohio voters was the one he gave the heckler: he says he cut Epstein off two decades ago, was totally exonerated, and that the disruptions themselves are bought and paid for. Whether voters believe that answer is now part of what Tuesday decides in Ohio.
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