Former Drag Race star slammed by queens after endorsing Trump

Former RuPaul’s Drag Race judge Santino Rice has been slammed by queens and winners of the franchise after endorsing Donald Trump for the US presidency.

Best known for appearing as a contestant on Bravo’s Project Runway in 2005 and then as one of RuPaul’s regular right hand-judges on Drag Race from seasons 1 to 6 (with a guest spot on season 7), Santino Rice has largely slipped from the public consciousness since 2015.

Every now and again, though, Rice pops up to make a statement or two – and his latest hasn’t gone down well with fellow Drag Race alumni.

“I would love to see an intelligent and capable woman President some day, Kamala Harris is not her,” Rice wrote on X (formerly Twitter).

“There’s only one obvious candidate to rebuild America and stabilize the rest of the world and that is President Donald J. Trump.”

Multiple queens have slammed Rice’s statement, including Drag Race UK winner The Vivienne.

Fellow UK-based winner Lawrence Chaney also reacted to the post, telling Rice to, “Sashay away” in reference to Drag Race‘s iconic phrase.

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.

— Santino Rice (@SANTINORICE) October 13, 2024

Rice’s X profile contains several posts in support of Trump and slamming Harris, including one saying that calling Harris “r*tarded” is “offensive to r*tards”. He also shared several AI-generated images of Kamala Harris holding a gun in her mouth.

He is also opposed to vaccines, having previously claimed, “there’s no difference between injecting disinfectant and a random vaccine.”

Trump’s campaign has included multiple attacks on the LGBTQ+ community, including the baseless claim that Democratic nominee Kamala Harris was “conducting trangender operations on illegal aliens” in prison.

A far-right faction of the Republican party also has a proposed manifesto named Project 2025, which claims that one of the biggest problems facing the US today is the “toxic normalisation of transgenderism with drag queens and pornography invading school libraries”.

Project 2025, published by the hardline right-wing Heritage Foundation, pledges to strip away anti-discrimination policies, making it easier to target and discriminate against LGBTQ+ people.

Harris, meanwhile, has been endorsed by Taylor Swift, Charli XCX, Billie Eilish and more.

And, as RuPaul said during an early episode of Global All Stars, “Where is Santino Rice now?”