Conservatives in furor over Julia Roberts ad
(The Hill) -- A new Harris-Walz campaign ad voiced by actor Julia Roberts encourages women to vote for Vice President Kamala Harris in the presidential election, even if their husbands are backing former President Donald Trump.
The Roberts ad, put out by Vote Common Good, also alludes to abortion rights, which is seen as a pivotal issue in a race that has seen Trump with big polling leads among male voters and Harris with a large lead among female voters.
“In the one place in America where women still have a right to choose, you can vote any way you want. And no one will ever know,” Roberts says in the ad as a woman on screen meets up with her husband after casting her ballot for Harris.
The voter winks at a fellow female voter as her husband asks if she made the “right choice.”
Republicans have responded to the video with outrage, with some claiming that a wife lying about her vote is as bad as an affair.
“If I found out Emma was going to the voting booth and pulling the lever for Harris, that’s the same thing as having an affair,” Fox News host Jesse Watters said on air Wednesday in a clip highlighted by Mediaite.
Other GOP members including Charlie Kirk said the thought was “nauseating.”
In criticizing the ad, he discussed a husband working hard to afford his wife's lifestyle and then said a wife who lied to her husband about whom she backed would amount to undermining her husband.
“I think it's so gross. I think it's so nauseating where this wife is wearing the American hat, she's coming in with her sweet husband who probably works his tail off to make sure that she can go you know and have a nice life and provide to the family, and then she lies to him saying, 'Oh, yeah, I'm gonna vote for Trump,' and then she votes for Kamala Harris as her little secret in the voting booth,” Kirk fumed to radio host Megyn Kelly.
“Kamala Harris and her team believe that there will be millions of women that undermine their husbands and do so in a way that it's not detectable in the polling,” he added.
In response to his statements, former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) called Kirk a "twit."
"Listen to this twit make Donald Trump’s closing argument. Women, you know what to do. #VoteKamala," Cheney wrote in a post on the social platform X.
Cheney is one of the highest-profile Republicans backing Harris for president.
Vote for Common Good, the nonprofit organization responsible for ad, responded to backlash.
"The backlash from certain men who are horrified to think their wives might disagree with them actually proves our point. We know the MAGA movement is putting increased pressure on people, but we also know the strong will of Americans when they stand in the voting booth," said Executive Director Doug Pagitt.
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"Our work is all about helping people do the thing in the voting booth that they know in their heart they want to do. We’ve traveled the country and met people all over who have a higher calling for their vote than just what their political party or friends demand of them," he added. "We know they’ll think about who they love the most when they vote and not just what their political party or religious community tells them to do.
“Kamala Harris and her team believe that there will be millions of women that undermine their husbands and do so in a way that it's not detectable in the polling,” he added.