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By Kate Plummer
Senior US News Reporter
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JD Vance featured a Republican politician who once defended an incident of blackface as "funny" at a recent political rally.
Vance, Donald Trump's running mate for the 2024 presidential election, spoke at a rally on a farm in Big Rapids, Michigan, on Wednesday. He was joined by Michigan GOP figures, including former gubernatorial candidate Tudor Dixon, whom he described as "the great Tudor Dixon" during his address.
Dixon, a former TV news anchor for Real America's Voice, ran for governor in Michigan in 2022 with Trump's endorsement but lost to Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer by around 10 points.
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In June 2020, she defended blackface after the YouTuber Jenna Marbles apologized for wearing dark makeup while impersonating the rapper Nicki Minaj in a video.
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"What she was doing was she was being funny. So she had this funny skit of her as Nicki Minaj," Dixon said on her Real America's Voice show of Marbles' performance. Dixon added that Marbles had made "another racial comment that was inappropriate, so I won't talk about it," though said the skit "was clearly comedy."
"It was clearly comedy, and so this is where we are right now. Comedians have to go by the wayside. We can no longer have comedy."
"What is acting if you are not acting like someone else?" she added. "I don't see the problem here."
Sara Broadwater, a spokesperson for Dixon disputed that Marbles wore blackface. She also told Newsweek: "Tudor has repeatedly condemned all forms of racism, bigotry and sexism. Of course, Newsweek already knows that as you've previously written on her efforts to combat and call out racism even within her own party."
Newsweek also contacted representatives for Vance by email outside of normal business hours to comment on this story.
Dixon has also made a number of other comments for which she has been criticized by opponents. In August 2022, the Republican, who said she was pro-life with exceptions for the life of the mother, told Fox 2 Detroit that "the bond" between children of rape victims and their mothers could be "healing" for rape victims in response to a question about whether she would support terminating the pregnancy of a 14-year-old rape victim.
In October 2022, she said that the COVID-19 pandemic and protests after the killing of George Floyd in 2020 were part of a Democratic conspiracy to bring down the United States in retaliation for losing the Civil War, CNN reported at the time.
In an October 2022 rally, Dixon said the concept of single women working was "a pretty lonely life."
Meanwhile, writing on X, formerly Twitter, in April 2023, Dixon said: "Trans women are not women."
In June 2024, she compared the conviction of Trump in his New York civil fraud trial to that of Alexei Navalny, the critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who died in prison earlier this year.
During his rally, Vance attacked Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee for the presidential election, saying she was responsible for expensive housing and inflation.
He called Michigan "one of the most important states" in the election and said he and Trump "want to rebuild a good middle class so that people can live the American Dream."
Correction 8/28/2024, 11:09 a.m. ET: This article was updated to correct the spelling of Nicki Minaj and to note that Dixon's remarks were on Real America's Voice.
Update 8/29/2024, 12:27 p.m. ET: This story has been updated to include comment from Dixon spokeswoman Sara Broadwater.
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