Photo: Caylo Seals/Getty Images
Nicki Minaj is fully committing to her MAGA pivot. On Sunday, the rapper made a surprise appearance at a Turning Point USA event in Arizona, where she was interviewed onstage by Charlie Kirk’s widow, Erika Kirk. At the event, billed as “AmericaFest,” Minaj effusively praised Donald Trump and J.D. Vance. “I love both of them … When I hear them speak, I know that they’re one of us,” she said.
Despite a brief gaffe where Minaj covered her mouth after describing Vance as an “assassin,” she seems to have had a great time — she called California governor Gavin Newsom “Newscum” and at one point read aloud one of her own tweets mocking him for his advocacy for trans children. When Kirk asked her about the backlash she’s faced in the entertainment industry for her right-wing views, Minaj dismissed her critics as people “determined to just stay mad.” “We’re the cool kids,” she told the cheering crowd.
Though Minaj spoke out against Trump in 2020, she seems to have really come around on him in his second term. In November, she appeared at the United Nations in support of the Trump administration, where she spoke about persecution of Christians in Nigeria, a popular talking point on the right. Since then, she’s stayed committed to posting favorable tweets about Trump and Vance, often by way of a Chucky meme, and mocking Newsom on X.
Minaj, of course, resumed her haphazard MAGA posting after the TPUSA event, reposting several clips from her interview with Kirk. Under one video of her claiming not to have noticed the backlash to her increasingly conservative politics, she wrote, “Didn’t have a clue. Carry on.”
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