From Kamala Harris’ viral “coconut tree” meme to online renderings of Republicans as has-been musicians, social media is quickly becoming a valuable battleground for this year’s already chaotic presidential race.
Most recently, social media platform TikTok has been responsible for resurfacing a video in which Rudy Giuliani is seen motorboating former President Donald Trump… while dressed completely in drag. Yes, you read that right, and no, it isn’t the product of artificial intelligence that seems to have an affinity for drag-draped politicians of late.
In a sentence that perhaps no one should be subject to reading, the viral video shows the former New York City mayor adopting a drag persona to flirt with Trump, call him a “dirty boy”, and fondle his chest. Elsewhere in the video, Trump can be seen nuzzling Giuliani’s neck and commenting on his “special scent” (anyone got a barf bag?).
The clip, unearthed by TikTok account Under The Desk News, has since amassed nearly 300,000 likes, and each of those users likely had to gauge their eyes out after watching. If all of this seems a little nonsensical, a quick internet sleuth will provide a little context that goes some way in explaining this inexplicable video.
It appears the clip — which was recorded in 2000 — was intended as a “comedy” skit as part of the Inner Circle Show, an annual event put on by the media to poke fun at the NYC mayor and other local political figures. At the time, Trump was just a celebrity businessman, though reports show Giuliani had adopted the drag persona, whom he called “Rudia”, for previous skits as part of the Inner Circle Show. Needless to say, Rudia did not have what it takes to appear on RuPaul’s Drag Race.
It seems Trump and Giuliani were trying to emulate the stand-up sets that feature in events like the annual White House Correspondents Dinner, and of course the internet thinks they both failed miserably. “The way my mouth dropped when I realized this wasn’t AI,” one user commented, with another declaring they “can’t believe [the video is] not being shared more than it is.”
Others wrote that they had “blocked this from my memory” (a smart move) and said they considered themselves “officially blind now.” While it is currently doing the rounds online, this is not the first time the clip has gone viral. In 2016, the drag version of Giuliani regrettably resurfaced amid Trump’s impeachment inquiry, as questions mounted around Giuliani’s — who was his lawyer at the time — level of involvement.
The video emerged again that same year when Trump was accused by multiple women of making unwanted sexual advances, many of which sounded eerily similar to those subjected Giuliani to in the clip.
Last year, the clip yet again received renewed interest at a time when a slew of bills – mostly in Republican-led states – were seeking to restrict or prohibit drag show performances in the presence of children. Ironic, since that would spell the death of “Rudia”, though in this case that might be a good thing.
Of course, this topic reared its head again in 2024, when Democratic politician Robert Garcia protested the continuation of these anti-drag bills by displaying a screenshot of Giuliani’s drag in parliament. At the time, Garcia said the clip was evidence that, despite the efforts of his party, even Trump “knew that drag can be fun and sometimes silly.”
The resurfacing of the clip now comes in the wake of Giuliani’s appearance at the Republican National Convention in Miluawkee, where he gushed about Trump (despite their tenuous friendship), and went viral yet again for stumbling into a row of chairs (not while dressed in drag, unfortunately).
Trump himself has yet to publicly address the resurfaced clip — as one TikTok user stated, it’s the kind of thing most politicians “hope never sees the light of day” — but it’s unlikely he will take it in his stride in the same way Harris has with her infamous “coconut tree”.
We’d love to go back to the simpler times when we didn’t even know this video (or “Rudia”) existed, but the internet will have no such thing. As one commenter wrote, “I just love that nothing dies on the internet.”
