Republican Candidate Under Fire for Posing for 'Family Photo' with Someone Else's Family

An unmarried and childless Republican candidate in Virginia is under fire for allegedly using his longtime friend's wife and their three daughters to bolster his family image in a recent video.

Derrick Anderson, the anti-abortion Republican candidate for Virginia's 7th Congressional District, used his friend's wife and three daughters to present a family-man image that may not reflect his personal life, according to a report by The New York Times.

In reality, Anderson is newly engaged and lives alone with his dogs.

However, the video footage, posted on Anderson's YouTube page and a website paid for by the National Republican Campaign Committee, shows the GOP candidate posing with the woman and her three daughters and later sitting around a dining room table with them.

Anderson's spokesperson told the Times there's no pretense to the footage as it shows Anderson posing "with female supporters and their kids."

"Derrick's opponent and every other candidate in America are in similar pictures and video with supporters of all kinds," the spokesperson wrote.

The HuffPost reported another spokesperson for Anderson called it a "normal campaign video."

"The false, politically-motivated reporting on Derrick – who is happily engaged and very proud of/vocal about his family – appearing in a normal campaign video with female supporters and their kids is both hilarious and sad," the spokesperson said in an email.

Many social media users branded Anderson "weird" and "creepy" for the ruse.

Others swarmed to the comment section of his tweet celebrating the Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe v. Wade to mock the footage.