Conservative Black and gay influencer Rob Smith is calling out GQ Magazine after the outlet published an article on gay Trump supporters, but failed to mention his race.
Smith told Fox News Digital that when he first read the piece, he thought it was “surprisingly fair,” but later he noticed an “angle” that caught him by surprise. The writer of the piece failed to mention Smith’s race and, while other social media influencers’ handles were in the article, Smith’s were left out. Smith says he believes this was the writer and editors’ way of pushing a “narrative that all Trump supporters, whether gay or straight, are White, and therefore, i.e. racist.”
“The omission of mentioning that I was Black and the omission of my social media handles or the omission of any photos of me, led me to believe that this person wanted people that were reading this article and had maybe never experienced me to think that I was White,” Smith told Fox News Digital.
Rob Smith appears on Fox News on Aug. 30, 2020
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The GQ Magazine article entitled “My Afternoon With the ‘Normal Gay Guys’ Who Voted for Trump,” profiles several gay Republican influencers and discusses the “budding faction of the LGBTQ+ community.”
The title of the piece references something that now-Vice President JD Vance said during an appearance on the Joe Rogan Experience just before Election Day 2024.
“Frankly, I wouldn’t be surprised if me and Trump won just the normal gay guy vote because, again, they just wanted to be left the hell alone,” Vance told Rogan in October 2024.
A rainbow Pride flag blowing in the wind. (iStock)
Smith touched on this idea in both his interviews with GQ Magazine and Fox News Digital, pointing out the disconnect between some gay men and gender ideology.
Additionally, Smith accused GQ and other “liberal outlets” of trying to “erase” Black Republicans’ identities. He slammed the mainstream media’s portrayal of Republicans as being out of date, saying that they aren’t seeing the face of the party in the “Trump era.”
“Any gathering of conservatives, particularly young conservatives these days, is going to be just diverse. It’s just kind of where we are right now as a party. And I think that a lot of the liberal outlets, even when they want to throw us a bone by acknowledging that we exist, they still cannot quite wrap their heads around the fact that there are people of color who are conservatives, Republicans and Trump supporters,” Smith told Fox News Digital.
The incident with GQ comes just a few weeks after New York Magazine was slammed for cutting Black party-goers out of a photo taken at an inauguration event. Its piece, entitled “The Cruel Kids’ Table,” features a photo from a party hosted by conservative influencer CJ Pearson, who is Black.
Pearson is taking legal action against the magazine over the image, saying it paints Republicans as racists.
“They don’t get to slander us as racist. They don’t get to libel us in print. We need to fight back and hold their feet to the fire,” Pearson told Fox News Digital.
In addition to the cropped image, New York Magazine’s piece contained a quote from an attendee who reportedly complained that “the entire room is White.”
(Reuters/New York Magazine)
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Smith called on “liberal outlets” to start recognizing the changing face of the party and its supporters who “own the culture right now.”
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“Conservatives and Republicans and Trump supporters are gay, they’re straight, they’re Black, they’re White, they’re Asian, they’re Latino, they are everything in between,” Smith said. “They’re gonna have to join the rest of us in 2025.”
