Clip resurfaces of Rudy Giuliani in drag as Republicans target performers

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An old clip of Rudy Giuliani appearing in drag alongside Donald Trump has resurfaced on social media, at a time when several Republican-led states are looking to restrict drag performances.

The clip shows the future US president pushing his face into the then-New York mayor’s fake breasts for a comedy sketch.

The video was filmed in 2000 when Mr Trump was a property magnate and part of the mayor’s Inner Circle Press Roast, an annual event which sees New York politicians and White House journalists stage skits and parody themselves for charity.

On Twitter, the old clip of the two Republicans resurfaced this week with people pointing out the hypocrisy of the party now going after drag performances.

“Donald Trump motor-boating Rudy Giuliani in full drag,” wrote the Twitter user who shared the video. “Meanwhile, these people keep a straight face while they tell us how awful drag is.”

“The skit was good for a few laughs at the turn of the 20th century. But now it reappears routinely to baffle the internet as the lives of its two protagonists take stranger and stranger turns,” said a Business Insider report the last time the 2000 clip went viral.

“Oh, you dirty boy, you!” the former mayor can be heard saying and lightly slapping Mr Trump on the face after he pushed his face on to the former mayor’s chest.

“Donald, I thought you were a gentleman!”

“Can’t say I didn’t try!” Mr Trump replies.

The clip had earlier surfaced after Mr Trump’s comments about groping and making unwanted advances on women went viral.

It had also gone viral during the 2016 presidential campaign when late-night TV host Stephen Colbert showed it on his show in the wake of an attack by Mr Giuliani, then a Trump campaigner, on Democrat presidential rival Hillary Clinton.

The clip is being shared now at a time when a slew of bills – mostly in Republican-led states – are looking to restrict or prohibit drag show performances in the presence of children.

“If drag wasn’t rooted in gay culture and rooted in queer community, I don’t think it’d be up for debate,” Jonathan Hamilt, the executive director of Drag Story Hour, a non-profit that features performers reading to children told CNN.

“Nobody is banning clowns, nobody is banning miming. This is nothing new, this is just the 2023 trending version of what homophobia looks like.”