A group of Hollywood actor-vists are leading the effort to convince electors not to vote for President-elect Donald Trump on Monday, a hastily-arranged last-ditch bid that has led to at least one embarrassing mistake.
Martin Sheen, who played fictitious President Josiah Barlett on “The West Wing,” is featured in a personalized video designed to sway a Kansas elector, Politico reported. The piece is titled “Mr. Ashley McMillan” and Sheen implores “Mr. McMillan” to follow the example of America’s Founding Fathers. He’s hopeful that McMillan will switch his vote and become one of the 37 Republican electors required to possibly deny Trump the presidency.
Just one problem with Sheen’s pitch: Ashley McMillan is not a man.
“It’s my job to represent the people of Kansas on Monday. It was Martin Sheen’s job to get my name right. He failed. I won’t,” McMillan, who plans to vote for Trump, told The Daily Caller.
Sheen is joined in the main, non-personalized Unite for America video by the likes of “Will & Grace” actress Debra Messing, “Better Call Saul” star Bob Odenkirk and musician Moby.
“I’m not asking you to vote for Hillary Clinton,” Moby says during the ad, as soft piano music plays beneath his voice.
“What is evident is that Donald Trump lacks more than the qualifications to be president,” “M.A.S.H.” actor Mike Farrell says, with Messing delivering the blow: “He lacks the necessary stability.”
Sheen says the electors have “the opportunity to go down in the books as an American hero” if they don’t vote for Trump.
Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway on Sunday dismissed the effort as “out of work actors and actresses embarrassing themselves.”
“One guy played the president on the show ‘The West Wing.’ He’s not the president going to the West Wing. That’s Donald Trump,” Conway told Fox News’ Howard Kurtz on “Media Buzz.”
Trump is in line to get 306 of the 538 electoral votes under the state-by-state distribution of electors used to choose presidents since 1789.
The Associated Press tried to reach all 538 electors and was able to interview more than 330 of them. Many reported getting tens of thousands of emails, calls and letters asking them to vote against Trump.
But the canvass found overwhelming support for the system, and the nominee, among Republican electors. The AP found only one pledged to Trump who will refuse to vote for him.
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