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For those of us who are sadly caught in the hellscape that is X, formerly known as Twitter, posting on that platform can sometimes feel like sending messages into the void. The latest person to scream into that void is former RuPaul’s Drag Race judge Santino Rice, whose weekend tweet in support of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign hardly got enough likes fill a drag brunch.
On Sunday, Rice tweeted, “I would love to see an intelligent and capable woman President some day, Kamala Harris is not her. There’s only one obvious candidate to rebuild America and stabilize the rest of the world and that is President Donald J. Trump.” At the time of writing, the tweet had 41 likes, which is about as many people bought tickets to see Joker 2: Folie à Deux this weekend.
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Adding insult to the 41-times-liked injury, Rice has more than 69,000 followers and is a verified Blue account, yet his post currently has 89 replies, more than twice its number of likes.
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Several famous Drag Race queens picked up the tweet and, without having to pay for Twitter Blue, got much more engagement than the former judge.
“Sashay away,” Drag Race UK season 2 winner Lawrence Chaney wrote.
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Replying to the original tweet, Drag Race U.K. season 1 winner and All Stars 7 contestant The Vivienne wrote, “You’re really unhinged.”
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Rice’s support of Trump is not his only controversial opinion, however. He has been known to tweet vaccine denialist propaganda and in 2020, he tweeted and deleted an anti-COVID vaccine statement.
After Donald Trump made comments suggesting that disinfectants such as Lysol or Clorox could cure COVID-19, Rice jumped on board, adding that there was “no difference between injecting disinfectant or injecting a random vaccine.” After the initial tweet, Rice issued several more tweets doubling down, while accusing his followers of attacking him rather than “trying to educate [themselves] on why they think injecting random chemicals into the body is a good thing.” He later deleted the posts and said his account had been hacked.
Prior to becoming a judge on RuPaul’s Drag Race for its first six seasons, Rice competed on Project Runway’s second season. Rice’s views certainly make him an outlier among other queer and trans members of the electorate. In September, Kamala Harris was found to have a 67-point lead among LGBTQ+ voters.
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