Rao considers herself a
progressive. Prior to the
election of Donald Trump, Rao had been a long-standing supporter of the Democratic party and particularly
Hillary Clinton, who lost in that election. Subsequently, Rao felt disillusioned by the party leadership, which she felt had failed to respond properly or to listen to the concerns of non-white women. In 2017, she wrote an opinion piece for
HuffPost about her reasons for "breaking up" with the party. She said afterwards that she was "mortified" in retrospect by her support of Clinton, but said that it was not the
party she was breaking up with, as she'd previously put it, but rather the "Democratic Party establishment". In an op-ed for
Teen Vogue she identified her main goal in running as being to promote and achieve "equity —
racial,
social, and
economic", with policy positions including reforms to
gun law, a
path to citizenship, and reducing the influence of corporate
money in politics. Rao has on occasion been fiercely critical of Democrats whom she does not regard as sufficiently progressive—"true blue". During the
primaries for the
2020 presidential election she accused candidate
Pete Buttigieg of "OPEN racism" and cited his
Vanity Fair cover as an example of "the media" as a "white supremacy leader". She also said that because
speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi is a
white feminist, she is a
white supremacist, and therefore "if you idolize Nancy Pelosi, you may as well declare allegiance to
David Duke". She has written that "private messages of support is another form of white supremacy", "white supremacy is behind all violence" and "whiteness is literally killing us all". In February 2022 she declared that all Republicans, or anyone married to or friends with a Republican, are fascists.
Pro-Palestine activism and accusations of antisemitism In 2023, during the ongoing genocide of Palestine, the
Creative Artists Agency severed ties with Rao after she referred to Israelis as "bloodthirsty genocidal ghouls" who are so "obsessed with land and power and money that you murder newborns to obtain this STUFF". She claimed that "the vast majority of white Americans are pro-genocide", as is the CAA itself, for failing to condemn what she alleges is the
ongoing genocide of Palestinians. Rao received attention for a post on X/Twitter in which she attacked
TIME Magazine for naming
Taylor Swift as its
Person of the Year; Rao accused the magazine of "White nonsense, white violence, white love of
Black and brown genocide" for selecting Swift, who Rao alleged would be able to singlehandedly stop the genocide of Palestinians with one
Instagram post, but chooses not to. In 2024, Rao alleged on X/Twitter that Zionist medical professionals pose a threat to Black and Muslim patients. Rao's tweet was condemned as
antisemitic by Knesset member
Ahmad Tibi, former cable news pundit
Mehdi Hasan, and sociologist
Philip N. Cohen, but was defended by
anti-racist activist
Bree Newsome, professor of hospital medicine at the University of California San Francisco
Rupa Marya, and German-Palestinian film director
Lexi Alexander. Zionist publication
The Forward compared the post to the
Doctors' plot, a state-sponsored propaganda campaign in the
Soviet Union alleging that a cabal of Jewish doctors were trying to assassinate Soviet officials. ==Race2Dinner and Haven==