BLOOMFIELD HILLS, MI – A week after Kathy Zhu was stripped of her Miss Michigan crown by the Miss World America beauty pageant because of tweets the organization deemed were “insensitive,” she doubled down on her comments while speaking in front of Michigan Trump Republicans.

Zhu, 20, vice president of the College Republicans student group at the University of Michigan, talked about “coming out” as a conservative in high school on Friday, July 26, in front of an audience in Bloomfield Hills, describing it as more difficult than coming out as gay.

“After I came out as a conservative, which I think is very hard to do nowadays – it's harder than coming out as openly gay,” she said. “Ever since junior year, I’ve been ridiculed online, bullied online, on Twitter and Facebook. … People (told me) I was a white supremacist, even though I’m Asian. I don’t know why that’s even a thing.”

Zhu was unapologetic in explaining the tweets that cost her the title and kept her from competing in the national championship in October after pageant officials discovered her comments on black-on-black crime and refusing to try on a Muslim headscarf.

Pageant officials took issue with a particular tweet about violence in black communities.

“Did you know the majority of black deaths are caused by other blacks?” she tweeted in October 2017. “Fix problems within your own community first before blaming others.”

And in February 2018, while attending the University of Central Florida before transferring to Michigan, Zhu tweeted “there’s a ‘try a hijab on’ booth at my college campus. So you’re telling me that it’s now just a fashion accessory and not a religious thing? Or are you just trying to get women used to being oppressed under Islam?”

Zhu stands by her comments, saying they were based on facts.

Pageant officials told Zhu her tweets violated requirements that contestants must be “of good character and whose background is not likely to bring disrepute to Miss World America or any person associated with the organization.”

The controversy has garnered widespread attention for Zhu, with the 20-year-old appearing on CNN and Fox News, in addition to a number of national publications.

Zhu, who transferred to UM last winter, said she has mostly received support in the days that followed, and was cheered throughout her speech for the Michigan Trump Republicans. She said the support has reinforced her decision to stand behind her comments.

“If they were to (offer the crown back) I wouldn’t want to take it,” she said. “I would rather be real about my stances and my beliefs than to than to back down and say, ‘yeah, I’ll accept this crown.’”

Zhu said much of the support she has received in the past week has been from her friends in UM’s College Republicans.

That has been particularly valuable as a member of a student population at UM that is largely liberal, Zhu said, with particular disdain for President Donald Trump.

“I think that Trump is a very big role model for a lot of people because he openly expresses what he believes in,” Zhu said. “I think that for me to stand here as an Asian-American, to come here and say, ‘I am a conservative, I support Trump,’ I guess the left finds it hysterical that I’m doing this, but a lot of people have reached out to me and said ‘you inspired me to be a conservative,’ and I’m so glad I was able to do that.”