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Kathy Zu: Who is Miss Michigan World America 2019 winner stripped of title for ‘offensive, insensitive’ tweets?

Kathy Zhu
Kathy Zhu was stripped of her Miss Michigan title over her ‘offensive’ tweets. Pic credit: Fusion/YouTube

Kathy Zhu is the University of Michigan student who won the Miss Michigan World America 2019 pageant title earlier this week.

Days after she won the title, the organizers stripped her of her Miss Michigan title due to what they considered to be controversial comments she had posted in the past to her Twitter account @PoliticalKathy.

Zhu has a fairly large following on social media, including Instagram and Twitter, and she often posts comments expressing her views on social and political issues.

But according to organizers of the Miss World America 2019 pageant, the President Donald Trump-supporting model was stripped of her title due to “offensive, insensitive and inappropriate” tweets that make her unfit to represent the pageant.

Zhu, 20, posted screenshots of emails and text conversation with Laurie Dejack, Michigan’s Miss World America (MWA) state director, and other top officials of MWA.

In the text messages and emails, the organizers told Zhu that their attention had been drawn to her @PolitcalKathy Twitter account and that they considered the content to be in violation of their requirements for contestants.

The decision to strip her of her Miss Michigan title means that she will not be able to compete at the national level for the Miss World America 2019 title.

https://twitter.com/PoliticalKathy/status/1152044900407549952

https://twitter.com/PoliticalKathy/status/1152044590645616640

Who is Kathy Zhu?

Kathy Zhu was raised in Kissimmee, Florida, but was born in Qingdao, Shandong, China. She is 20 years old. She and her parents immigrated to the U.S. when she was 5 years old.

She was admitted to the University of Central Florida to study political science but she later transferred to the University of Michigan in 2018.

https://www.instagram.com/p/B0HBC8ZH6Bg/?utm_source=ig_embed

Zhu is a big fan of President Donald Trump

Back in November 2016, the website Next Shark profiled Zhu in an article titled “Meet the Chinese-American Teen Who’s Donald Trump’s Biggest Fan.”

According to the article, Zhu campaigned for Donald Trump during the 2016 general election and was very vocal on social media about her support for the then-Republican presidential candidate.

Her vocal support for Trump helped her draw a fairly large following on Twitter. She currently has more than 120,000 followers on Twitter.

She describes herself on her Twitter account as an “independent thinker” and “political commentator.”

“Let’s fight for freedom of thought,” she writes.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BzpHfuHnspY/?utm_source=ig_embed

According to Next Shark, Zhu said that she was originally a Democrat before she switched to Republican. She said she abandoned the “Hillary Clinton bandwagon” after she started doing research of her own.

“I was a liberal-Obama lover. But I opened up my eyes to reality,” Next Shark reported she said.

She claimed that her parents were Hillary Clinton supporters but she converted them to Donald Trump supporters. According to Zhu, one of the factors that influenced her to abandon the “Hilary Clinton bandwagon” and become a Donald Trump supporter was Trump’s focus on national security.

She said that the Orlando nightclub mass shooting in 2016  scared her and she realized that only Trump was concerned about making America safe.

“I used to be democrat, and I changed to republican because I realized the danger we could be in if we don’t act now,” she said.

Zhu is active on social media

Zhe has more than 24,000 followers on Instagram. You can also find Kathy Zhu here on Facebook.

Zhu is the vice-chair of College Republicans at the University of Michigan, according to her Facebook page.

She also runs a YouTube channel where she uploads covers of her favorite songs.

Zhu accused the MWA organizers of prejudice

Zhu protested the decision to strip her of her title, accusing the organizers of being prejudiced against people who hold different political views.

She also alleged that the organizers decided to strip her of her title because she refused to wear a hijab during World Hijab Day at the University of Central Florida in 2018.

https://twitter.com/PoliticalKathy/status/1152032028151312384

However, she said she was not contemplating legal action against the organizers of the pageant.

Zhu’s controversial ‘black-on-black violence’ tweet

Zhu was also known on social media to be a vocal supporter of the “All Lives Matter” backlash against the “Black Lives Matter” movement that emerged in 2013 to protest alleged police brutality against blacks.

She sparked a backlash on Twitter when she responded to a tweet about police brutality against black people by tweeting in response: “Did you know the majority of black deaths are caused by other blacks? Fix problems within your own community first before blaming others.”

https://twitter.com/PoliticalKathy/status/917081887486734337

Many found the comment offensive, alleging that it was a racist trope used to shut down legitimate concerns among residents of America’s inner-city about heavy-handed policing.

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