Throughout the crowded Republican primary for an Ohio seat in the U.S. Senate, author and venture capitalist J.D. Vance has scrambled to be the rightmost candidate.

He's said professors are "the enemy." He defended far-right Fox News host Tucker Carlson's promotion of the white supremacist "Great Replacement" conspiracy theory. He's said Americans should "promote" the "virtues" of Kyle Rittenhouse, the teenager who shot three people during unrest in Kenosha, Wisconsin last year, killing two of them.

And, of course, he's worked tirelessly to embrace former President Donald Trump, considered the kingmaker of the GOP.

But an anti-Vance Republican group, the Club for Growth, is running ads targeting Vance's past statements regarding Trump, calling him an "idiot" and "noxious," while presenting himself as a "never Trump guy."

Watch below

"Real" CFG Action TV Ad (OH-SEN)www.youtube.com

In one moment of the ad, Vance says:

"As somebody who doesn't like Trump, I may have to hold my nose and vote for Hillary Clinton."

While Vance certainly doesn't welcome the ads, another prominent Republican hates them as well: Donald Trump.

According to Politico, Trump called Club for Growth president David McIntosh last month to decry the ads, saying he feared they would hurt his popularity in Ohio, rather than Vance's.

Though McIntosh vowed to explore the possibility of removing the ads, the club invested another half million dollars as recently as Wednesday to keep the ads running.

The mockery was swift.

Some just had to laugh.

This past summer, Vance apologized for criticizing Trump, saying he regretted "being wrong about the guy."