TLC’s Chilli donated to Trump but claims she’s “not MAGA”

It’s a tale we all know too well: you’re scrolling through Instagram when you see a heartwrenching post beseeching you to help veterans. You tap to assist in this benevolent cause and then—whoops!—you donate $900 to a Donald Trump presidential campaign superPAC. Okay, so maybe you’ve never had that happen to you, but you know who has? TLC’s own Rozonda “Chilli” Thomas. Or so she claimed in a recent post on that same fickle app, insisting that the uncovered documents showing she had given almost $1,000 to Trumpian PACs were the result not of personal ideology but of poor reading comprehension.

MeidasTouch, a progressive media company, revealed in an article on Saturday that Chilli had contributed money to Trump and his allies on 17 different occasions, beginning on April 20, 2024 and ending on November 5 of that year—the day of the 2024 presidential election. Soon thereafter, Chilli attempted to clear matters up. “I am not MAGA and do not support any of the many policies that are causing great harm to the American people,” she wrote on Instagram. “I made a mistake too many make: I did not read the fine print. I thought I was supporting causes against human trafficking and for veterans, two things I care deeply about as my dad is a veteran and everyone knows I love children.” But failing to read the fine print once is one thing, and failing to read the fine print 17 times over eight months is another.

Chilli’s pseudo-apology is further belied by the singer’s past statements, including a recent repost of an article spreading the widely-debunked theory that Michelle Obama is transgender, as well as a 2017 interview in which she stated, “For me, all lives matter.” Chilli has walked back both claims, claiming she had “no clue” she reposted the story on Obama (which has since been wiped from her account) and that she thought “of course Black lives matter.” TLC is slated to team up with fellow ‘90s R&B girl groups Salt-N-Peppa and En Vogue this summer on the It’s Iconic tour. As of now, there’s no slated performance at the snazzy forthcoming White House ballroom, but maybe Chilli can use the profits to help veterans and babies in other ways.

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