(Luis Cornelio, Headline USA) In an unexpected intersection in politics, the gay hookup app Grindr suffered an outage near the Republican National Convention (RNC), prompting speculation that the convention attendees might be responsible.
This scenario isn’t far-fetched given the Republican Party’s efforts under President Donald Trump to appeal to all Americans, as evidenced by the diverse guests invited to speak at the RNC.
Over 1,000 individuals reported that Grindr went out of service in the Milwaukee, Wisconsin area on Wednesday, where the RNC is taking place, according to the Daily Mail, citing data from Downdetector.
A Grindr spokesperson did not immediately respond to Headline USA’s request for comments about the alleged Milwaukee outage.
Former Rep. George Santos, R-N.Y., reacted to the alleged outage at the RNC, with satire news site Halfway Post calling it “basically Grindr’s Super Bowl.”
In a video message, Santos said, “Just come out of the closet boys! Come on! It’s fun! You can be gay and conservative. But look Grindr has already outed you based on the hits. Guess who’s in town? It’s all you conservatives.”
👏🏼Come👏🏼out👏🏼the👏🏼closest👏🏼boys👏🏼! pic.twitter.com/3peFp8KOHh
— George Santos (@MrSantosNY) July 17, 2024
A video of a user on Grindr, claiming to be at the RNC, appeared online, showing several active profiles. However, a Headline USA review found the video was taken at a Troye Sivan concert. Sivan is a popular gay singer.
According to the Mail, this would not be the first time Grindr has crashed at conservative events, as it reportedly went out of service at the 2023 Conservative Political Action Conference.
The alleged outage comes after the RNC amended its party platform to remove what some considered anti-same-sex marriage language and included a section promoting a “culture that values the sanctity of marriage.”
Trump praised the platform in a Truth Social post, writing, “Ours is a forward-looking Agenda with strong promises that we will accomplish very quickly when we win the White House and Republican Majorities in the House and Senate.”
In 2020, Trump became the first U.S. president to have an openly gay cabinet member when Rick Grenell became acting director of national intelligence.
“President Trump is the most pro-gay president in American history. I can prove it,” Grenell said in a video released by the Log Cabin Republicans ahead of the 2020 election.
In contrast, Biden has voiced anti-gay opinions since his early years as a senator in the late 1970s.
In 1973, Biden referred to gay individuals as “security risks” under civil service regulations. He also voted for the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy and the Defense of Marriage Act in 1996.
