Former New York congressman George Santos has told gay Republicans attending the Republican National Convention (RNC) that they should come out and be open about their sexuality.

Santos uploaded a video to X/Twitter about a satirical post calling the RNC in Milwaukee “Grindr’s Super Bowl”, referring to the popular gay dating and hook-up app.

The post came from a satirical account called The Halfway Post which claimed that “an executive” at Grindr had told them that the RNC is “basically Grindr’s Super Bowl” because of the potential surge in users in the area where the convention is held, suggesting that many Republicans may be closeted.

“I’m openly gay, no qualms about it, proud conservative Republican,” Santos said. “Just come out of the closet, boys. Come on, it’s fun! You can be gay and conservative.”

He added that the gay dating app would be “outing” people anyway, based on the number of hits it would get in Milwaukee while the RNC is “in town”.

Downdetector recently recorded a significant increase in outages for Grindr, with a large number of those occurring in the Milwaukee area, suggesting that more people than usual are using the app.

In 2016, Grindr told Broadly that usage in Cleveland increased during the week that the RNC was held there.