Dixie D’Amelio Is a Republican, Not (Necessarily) a Trump Supporter

“Have a good life,” Donald Trump said to a small group of his supporters Wednesday morning, before blasting “YMCA” and flying from Washington, D.C., to Florida for (hopefully) the final time. By her own account, Dixie D’Amelio, 19-year-old singer and TikTok star, would never count herself among that crowd of Trump devotees—and she’s currently battling internet haters who claim otherwise. “I don’t fucking support Trump… I’ve said it 100 fucking times,” D’Amelio wrote on her Instagram story on January 8. 

The damning piece of evidence, according to D’Amelio truthers, is the fact that a quick search shows she's a registered Republican in her hometown of Norwalk, CT, where she requested an absentee ballot this election cycle (for future reference: anyone can look up anyone else’s voter registration with their hometown and birth date, both of which are publicly available pieces of info for D’Amelio). That, however, is effectively meaningless in terms of who she actually voted for. 

While D’Amelio is undeniably registered as a Republican, her registration does not dictate which candidate she votes for, per se: registered Republicans can vote for Democrats in a general election, and vice versa. The “benefit” of registering with a party in some states is that it allows the voter to participate in that party’s primary elections, to choose which elected candidate from each party will run in the general. (Not all states require registering with a party to vote in their primaries; Connecticut does, Vermont does not.)

An added wrinkle that makes D’Amelio’s actual political orientation even harder to suss out is that her father, Marc D’Amelio, ran for state senate as a Republican in 2018 (and lost). That means the elder D’Amelio sister could very well have registered as a Republican to support her dad in his primary, vibed for two years while becoming TikTok famous, and then requested her absentee ballot when she cared about politics again in order to cast a vote for Joseph Robinette Biden. Plausible! Are Dixie and her father still registered Republicans? Yes. Does this prevent them from being diehard Biden supporters? Not really. 

Still, rumors about D’Amelio’s supposed Trump support have been persistent—they cropped up initially in May 2020, per Insider and the Daily Dot, after a 2017 VSCO post with visible Trump/Pence campaign signs began circulating on social media. D’Amelio denied the photo was taken in her house via Twitter, though the photo was thrown back into circulation earlier this month in tandem with claims that she quit Twitter in solidarity with the platform permanently banning Trump. 

Confused yet? I know I am! All this speculation, coupled with continuous denial from D’Amelio, amounts to something close to conspiracy—and for what? What’s the shocker here? That rich people are Republicans? That a 19-year-old who spends all her time learning dances has the same political leanings as her parents? D’Amelio’s political affiliation on paper doesn’t mean much if she isn’t espousing those views through her content—besides, there are overt Trump supporters and influencers all over TikTok. Wouldn’t time be better spent bullying them instead?

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