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One of this year’s most talked-about campaign ads didn’t come from a party or a candidate. It was instead released by Vote Common Good, a nonprofit progressive group that works to mobilize religious voters, and it appears to have touched a nerve among some of the right.
The 30-second spot, narrated by actor Julia Roberts, is intended to remind women, who might feel pressure to vote for Donald Trump, that they can support Kamala Harris in private. “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 NBC News reported, the commercial appears to have “enraged prominent conservatives.”
In a phone interview with Fox News on Saturday, Trump said that he was ‘so disappointed at Julia Roberts’ and that she will one day look back at the ad and ‘cringe.’ He added that he doesn’t believe the video portrayed a realistic marital dynamic, calling it ‘ridiculous.’ ... ‘I mean, can you imagine a wife not telling her husband who she’s voting for?’ Trump said. ‘Even if you have a horrible, if you had a bad relationship, you’re going to tell your husband.’
A few days earlier, Fox News’ Jesse Watters told viewers that if he discovered that his wife had voted for the Democratic vice president, he’d consider that “the same thing as having an affair.” The far-right media personality added, “That violates this sanctity of our marriage. What else is she keeping from me? What else has she been lying about?”
Also last week, conservative podcast host Charlie Kirk, founder of a group called Turning Point USA, called the ad “nauseating.” Noting the fictional woman featured in the ad, who assures her apparent husband in the commercial that she made the right decision, Kirk criticized her for deceiving “her sweet husband who probably works his tail off to make sure that she can go and have a nice life and provides for the family.”
It’s a perspective I find difficult to understand, though it’s possible that conservatives are outraged because the Vote Common Good ad reflected real-life circumstances for some. NPR, for example, spoke to a Wisconsin woman identified only as “T,” who mailed her absentee ballot from a relative’s home “to avoid a confrontation with her husband over her support for Harris.” T added that she’d voted Republican her entire adult life, until Trump came along. She described the former president as “misogynistic” and a “buffoon.”
The NPR report added:
One of those moments, when Trump held up a Bible in front of a church near the White House after calling in police to shut down a protest in 2020, was also a breaking point for another woman, K. “I was horrified. That was actually when I left the Republican Party,” K says. She lives in a red state in the Midwest and asked that we use her first initial because of fear of losing her job. K says she hasn’t told most of her family, including her husband, that she’s voting for Harris.
It’s difficult to say with confidence just how many other women fall into this same category — though the election results might help offer some hints. Watch this space.