The Miss Michigan who was stripped of her crown because of controversial tweets reportedly claims it’s harder to publicly admit you’re conservative than it is to come out as a gay person.
Kathy Zhu, 20, who is the vice president of the College Republicans at the University of Michigan, also doubled down at a state GOP event on previous remarks that led to her losing the crown, MLive.com reported.
“After I came out as a conservative, which I think is very hard to do nowadays – it's harder than coming out as openly gay,” she told the crowd, the news outlet reported.
“Ever since junior year, I’ve been ridiculed online, bullied online, on Twitter and Facebook. … People [told me] I was a white supremacist, even though I’m Asian. I don’t know why that’s even a thing.”
She was unapologetic about the tweets that cost her the title.
“Did you know the majority of black deaths are caused by other blacks?” she tweeted in October 2017.“Fix problems within your own community first before blaming others.”
And in February 2018, while attending the University of Central Florida before transferring to Michigan, she reportedly tweeted “there’s a ‘try a hijab on’ booth at my college campus. So you’re telling me that it’s now just a fashion accessory and not a religious thing? Or are you just trying to get women used to being oppressed under Islam?”
Zhu stands by her comments, and was cheered by Michigan Republicans at a Bloomfield Hills event, MLive.com reported.
“If they were to [offer the crown back] I wouldn’t want to take it,” she said. “I would rather be real about my stances and my beliefs than to than to back down and say, ‘yeah, I’ll accept this crown.’”
Zhu is currently on the Women For Trump advisory board.
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.