Fans Are Side-Eyeing Addison Rae Over Eagerly Introducing Herself To Trump
Like, she was eager eager.
Addison Rae is in hot water… again. The 20-year-old TikTok influencer recently landed a gig as a correspondent at UFC 264, which went down on Saturday, July 10. After Rae poked fun at her lack of qualifications for the job, Twitter went *in* — many fans believed her comment was insensitive, as broadcast journalism opportunities are rare for actual journalists. But the Addison UFC controversy doesn’t end there. Now, fans are upset over Addison Rae introducing herself to Donald Trump in a very, very excited fashion, which is... fascinating.
Rae may be one of TikTok’s most popular creators, but she’s not quite popular with everyone. Her involvement with this past weekend’s big UFC fight evidenced that. It all started on July 9, when the Lousiana influencer tweeted photos of herself on the UFC red carpet.
“I studied broadcast journalism in college for 3 whole months to prepare for this moment,” she captioned the photo set. Rae — who briefly studied sports broadcasting at Louisiana State University before dropping out and moving to Los Angeles — received tons of backlash for her tweet, primarily because media professionals who earn correspondent gigs usually put in a lot of work to do so (earning a degree, working internships, starting off in entry-level positions, etc). On the contrary, fans deduced that since Rae had no professional experience, she was likely given the job due to her influencer status.
The correspondent situation blew over soon enough, but it was quickly followed by more drama: A video surfaced of the “Obsessed” recording artist making a super conscious effort to introduce herself to Donald Trump at the UFC fight.
The clip shows Rae making her way through the stands to greet the former U.S. president, who is sitting in a different row than Rae. When she reaches him, she taps his shoulder from behind and introduces herself. “Hi, I’m Addison,” she told Trump. “Nice to meet you. I have to say hi, hello. So nice to meet you!”
Naturally, Twitter users were *not* having it — so they went offff on Rae.
Many fans were particularly critical of Rae’s behavior considering she’s repeatedly squashed rumors she’s a Republican voter (she’s not registered to vote at all, actually) and owns Trump merch (the merch in question was actually an Independence Day tee). Still, she has not explicitly denied being a Trump supporter, hence some people’s doubtfulness.
On the other hand, some fans thought it was NBD that Rae was visibly excited to meet Trump.
Rae hasn’t yet spoken out on social media about the situation, although, when asked about her tendency to avoid talking about politics or social justice in an April interview with Bustle, the influencer — who has over 81 million followers on TikTok alone — expressed little interest in doing so.
“It’s really just about your comfortability when it comes to those things,” she said. “I don’t think people should ever feel like they need to speak on everything that happens. If I know I’m fully educated on it, then I will allow myself to speak on it. I definitely think it’s a weird position to be in, when you don’t really know what you need to say.”
To each her own.
