How Nicki Minaj Became Trump’s ‘No. 1 Fan’
The rap superstar is throwing her weight behind the White House agenda after being courted by Trump’s 29-year-old celebrity whisperer
By Erich Schwartzel, Josh Dawsey, Maggie Severns
Shortly before the 2024 election that would move him back into the White House, Donald Trump took a phone call on his plane from a secret supporter.
Nicki Minaj was on the line, and she wanted Trump to know she was supporting his re-election, according to people familiar with the matter.
Trump’s campaign managers, sensing an opportunity to score an endorsement from the rap world’s most popular female star, asked Minaj to take her support public. But Minaj—and her management team—said she needed to stay behind the scenes because taking a political stance posed a risk to her brand and businesses, some of these people said.
Not anymore.
Today, the 43-year-old best known for chart toppers like “Starships,” for leading an online army of mega-fans known as “Barbz” and for bringing a theatrical streak to contemporary hip hop has embraced a new status atop MAGA’s A-list.
She has visited Trump in the Oval Office, spoken in support of administration priorities at the United Nations and encouraged her tens of millions of social-media followers to lobby their legislators on the White House’s behalf. She has gabbed onstage with conservative influencers. She’s also put her own money behind Trump accounts for children, filmed a TikTok meme video with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and recorded a podcast with conservative commentator Katie Miller. At the Washington premiere of “Melania,” the documentary about the first lady, she wore a cleavage-baring baby-blue dress and was seated near the president and his family.
All of the work, she told Miller, has become a “second job” she felt called to do.
Speaking at a Black History month event in February, Trump made clear the fandom went both ways when he started talking about Minaj’s long, manicured nails. “I said, ‘Nicki, are they real?’ But she didn’t want to get into that. But she was so beautiful and so great—and she gets it, more importantly,” he said.
What appears on the surface to be an unlikely relationship between the president and a star who once opposed some of his policies is in fact an outgrowth of a calculated effort to lure cultural heavyweights away from the Democratic Party.
Minaj, who once lambasted Trump’s immigration policies, found a conduit to MAGA through one of the president’s strongest young allies, a 29-year-old former campaign staffer named Alex Bruesewitz who scouts stars and influencers who back the president.
The rap star is joining the cause at the height of her fame. Minaj’s support, says Bruesewitz, equals “a big cultural victory for Republicans.”
The White House hopes Minaj’s megaphone will help reverse a decline in support among Black voters who helped return Trump to office. The slippage now threatens to hurt Republicans in this year’s midterm elections.
Her political vigor has her allies and foes searching for a hidden agenda, speculating that she is angling for a pardon for her husband, who was convicted of violating a requirement to register as a sex offender, or her brother, now serving a long prison sentence for child rape.
A pardon for family members has “never been brought up or even referenced by her or anybody,” said Bruesewitz. White House officials said any such favor hasn’t been discussed and that Trump’s federal pardon power wouldn’t extend to the state conviction of her brother, although it would cover a federal offense of Minaj’s husband.
Efforts to reach Minaj for comment, including through her business representatives, Bruesewitz and an attorney representing her in an assault case, weren’t successful.
She said recently in an interview with Time magazine she had been moving toward Trump’s politics for a while but had kept quiet for fear of alienating fans. Eventually, she said, she didn’t feel like keeping it a secret anymore.
A spokesman for Minaj’s record label, Republic, said the company had nothing to do with her recent political moves. “As Nicki Minaj’s record label, we do not comment on her political activities,” the spokesman said. “When she’s ready to discuss music, she knows how to reach us.”
Minaj’s February speech at a forum hosted by World Liberty Financial, a crypto company co-founded by Trump family members, fueled talk that she is being paid for her appearances or sees lucrative opportunities in Trump-affiliated businesses. Bruesewitz said she isn’t profiting from the arrangement.
As her political profile has risen, Minaj has also shown support for conservative leaders in the U.K., praising Kemi Badenoch, a prominent critic of Prime Minister Keir Starmer. “Truly one of a kind,” Minaj said on social media on Wednesday, predicting that Badenoch will one day be the subject of movies and TV shows the way Margaret Thatcher has been.
Those close to Minaj said her public embrace of conservative causes is the culmination of a political awakening that began as skepticism toward Covid-19 vaccinations and has been fueled by criticism of rivals in the music business who are Democrats.
Backlash to her support of Trump “actually motivates me to support him more,” she said in January.
Minaj allies also pointed out that beneath the surface, the artist and the president have things in common. Both were raised in Queens. Both know the power of a fervent online following. The allies also said that Trump, who has pardoned several influential rappers including Lil Wayne and NBA YoungBoy, has long held the fascination of the hip-hop world for his association with conspicuous wealth and power.
“I will say that I am probably the president’s No. 1 fan,” Minaj said in Washington at an event announcing Trump accounts for children with the president in January. Later the two held hands.
Olivia Wales, a White House spokeswoman, lauded Minaj’s success and credited her for advocating for Christians in Nigeria, among other issues. “President Trump is proud to have Nicki Minaj’s strong support,” she said.
Early conservative leaning
Minaj was born Onika Tanya Maraj in St. James, Trinidad and Tobago, in 1982 and moved with her family to Queens at age 5. Crack vials littered the streets around her home, Minaj would later say, a far cry from the Upper West Side neighborhood where she went to high school at LaGuardia, the school for performing arts, alma mater of Jennifer Aniston, Sarah Paulson and Timothée Chalamet.
Minaj worked as a waitress at Red Lobster in the Bronx in between uploading songs to her Myspace profile. By 2010, frequent collaborations with more established performers made her ubiquitous.
Minaj, friends said, leaned conservative back then. In the 2012 song “Mercy,” she rapped, “I’m a Republican voting for Mitt Romney / You lazy bitches is f—ing up the economy.”
The following year, in the song “I Wanna Be With You,” Minaj cited a Trump property as proof of her elevated status over the skeptics who had said she’d never make it. “At the Trump,” she rapped, “and you bitches at the Radisson.”
She was among dozens of rappers who used “Trump” as a ready shorthand for money and status in their songs, signaling a kinship with the flashy businessman who parlayed a real estate career into tabloid fame and reality television stardom.
In 2010, Minaj became the first artist in history with seven songs on the Billboard Hot 100. She has since sold more records than any woman in the genre and is known as the “Queen of Rap.”
Her Barbz army—named for one of Minaj’s Barbie-inspired alter egos—has been with her since her 20s, a loyal fan base that music industry executives acknowledge with awe and a bit of fear. The Barbz have been known to promote her music—and attack critics who go after the star for any personal or professional reason.
As her fandom exploded, close family members faced a series of legal woes. In late 2015, Minaj’s brother, Jelani Maraj, was accused of repeatedly raping his 11-year-old stepdaughter. She posted her brother’s $100,000 bail and supported his defense, which failed to convince the jury that Maraj’s ex-wife had exaggerated her daughter’s claims to extort her rich sister-in-law. Maraj was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison in January 2020.
Around the same time, Minaj’s husband, Kenneth Petty, was indicted for failing to register as a sex offender in the state of California. Petty, who first met Minaj when the two were teenagers, was convicted of first-degree attempted rape of a 16-year-old in 1995, and must register as a level two sex offender when he moves to a new state, which he and Minaj did in 2019. Petty was eventually sentenced to three years of probation and a year of house arrest.
Separately, the couple faced a lawsuit filed against them in 2019 by a security guard who claimed Petty had broken his jaw. Minaj and Petty ignored the suit for years, eventually prompting the court to pursue the sale of their $20 million Los Angeles mansion to satisfy a $500,000 default judgment. Minaj paid the $500,000 shortly thereafter.
Currently, a former tour employee, Brandon Garrett, is suing Minaj after he said she assaulted him after a 2024 show in Detroit. Minaj grew angry with Garrett after learning he had been sent to pick up prescription drugs for her, rather than the usual employee, according to the lawsuit. Minaj hasn’t responded to the claims, prompting Garrett’s attorney to ask the court to compel her deposition.
Minaj’s attorney in the lawsuit didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Vaccine shift
When Trump’s 2016 campaign for president took off, Minaj called his approach “childish” but allowed: “In terms of entertainment—I think he’s hilarious.”
Once Trump was in office, she joined other music-industry stars in publicly criticizing the president, particularly over immigration policies that separated children and their parents entering the U.S. illegally. On social media, she invoked her own history as a 5-year-old coming to America, writing, “Can you try to imagine the terror & panic these kids feel right now? Not knowing if their parents are dead or alive, if they’ll ever see them again.”
When Trump ran for re-election in 2020, Minaj said those separation policies had led to her deciding to stay off the “Trump bandwagon,” she said at a conference hosted by the concert company Pollstar.
But soon after her brother was sent to prison, Minaj and the rest of the world went into lockdown as Covid spread, and her politics appeared to shift, according to friends and associates.
In 2021, as the first rounds of vaccines were being administered, Minaj shared a story with her followers on social media. A friend of her cousin in her native Trinidad, she said, had suffered from impotence and swollen testicles after taking the Covid vaccine.
“His friend was weeks away from getting married, now the girl called off the wedding,” she wrote. She urged Barbz considering the vaccine to “just pray on it & make sure you’re comfortable with ur decision, not bullied.”
Doctors quickly pointed out that swollen testicles weren’t a side effect of Covid vaccines, and Minaj was pilloried by government officials and other celebrities for spreading false theories. Health ministers in Trinidad said there were no reports of vaccine-related testicular swelling. The intensity of the backlash, she said soon after, only made her question things more.
“The minute you guys started going this hard was when this seemed…strange to me,” she said in a voice-over video posted to Instagram in late 2021. “I want you guys to see What. Is. Happening!” she yelled.
A few months later, Minaj told Vogue that the remarks were further evidence of her approach to politics. “I like to make my own assessment,” she said. She added: “Everytime I talk about politics, people get mad.”
Some of Minaj’s more recent comments have tipped into conspiracy theories. Earlier this year, she accused others in the music industry of “satanic practices,” and told Miller on her podcast that she believed the 1969 moon landing was faked.
Leveraging star power
Minaj’s entry into Trump’s sphere started with a 2024 introduction to Bruesewitz, the Trump celebrity conduit, by model and actress Amber Rose. Rose is an ex-girlfriend of rapper Kanye West, a onetime mentor of Minaj who has at times been an ardent supporter of Trump. Rose was among the few celebrities to speak at the July 2024 Republican National Convention.
In late 2024, Rose connected senior Trump aide James Blair with Minaj on a phone call, where Blair made a case for an official endorsement ahead of the election. The campaign was trying to give Black voters and others a “permission structure” to vote for Trump, according to a person familiar with the matter, and believed a few high-profile validators such as Minaj would go a long way.
Minaj was supportive of the president on the phone with Blair but said she wasn’t sure if she should go public—and needed to ask others in her life for advice, including those who work with her on her music, the person said.
After Trump won, Minaj gradually warmed to publicly championing some of the administration’s causes. In November, she spoke at the United Nations on behalf of Trump administration efforts to help Christians in Nigeria, who have been persecuted and targeted by Islamic extremists. She was joined by her longtime pastor, Peters Adonu, who lives in Nigeria, where his own safety has been compromised.
“This isn’t about taking sides. This is about standing up in the face of injustice,” she said. After her address, she was presented with a U.N. hoodie—customized to a shade of her signature pink.
Her Trump World tour guide, Bruesewitz, is among the most prominent members of a new generation of Washington lobbyists tied to the Trump administration. As a campaign staffer, he emphasized Trump’s star power. Now, as a supporter operating from the outside, he has leveraged connections in the White House to lobby on behalf of clients and causes—often with a bit of stardust thrown in, such as a recent effort to reclassify marijuana that counted boxer Mike Tyson as a supporter.
He’s become friendly with Minaj—she attended Bruesewitz’s wedding to former Miss Nevada Carolina Urrea in January. It was held at a Trump golf course, with a guest list that included Donald Trump Jr. and a menu featuring a seven-tier wedding cake and Shake Shack fries.
Minaj’s initial reluctance spoke to the challenges Bruesewitz faces as Trump’s ambassador to the show-business world, where stars such as Bruce Springsteen and Beyoncé regularly back Democratic candidates, leaving Republicans with B-list options.
With Minaj, the party has a supporter unafraid to go after Democrats. She has attacked likely 2028 presidential candidate Gavin Newsom over remarks that critics said implied African-Americans were dumb, and borrowed Trump’s nickname for the California governor: “New-scum.”
She also advocated for stricter voter ID laws and urged Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer to vote for Trump’s Save America Act on the issue when it was before the chamber.
The increasingly fervent support for Trump has also led to fresh scrutiny of Minaj’s active online fan base. A report by the cyberanalysis firm Cyabra found thousands of bots appear to magnify Minaj’s online posts—including her criticisms of politicians such as Newsom and other Democrats—and helped her score millions of views on her pro-Trump content on X.
Oval Office visit
Minaj’s recent work with Trump has made her a target for rivals in the rap world, where political alliances have become a new fault line in a battle that some in the music industry equate with the East Coast-West Coast feuds of the 1990s.
Minaj and her MAGA allies have increasingly feuded with hip hop stars who have supported Democrats. Minaj repeatedly attacked Jay-Z, a supporter of former President Barack Obama, in recent months, a hostility that stems from a business dispute involving the streaming service Tidal, which Jay-Z acquired in 2015 then later sold.
Vice President JD Vance in December weighed in on Minaj’s longtime feud with Cardi B, who spoke at a Kamala Harris rally in 2024. “Nicki > Cardi,” Vance posted to X.
When she visited the White House a few weeks after Vance’s clapback, Minaj was reluctant to disrupt the president, Bruesewitz said. After Trump learned that Minaj was outside the Oval Office, he said she could join him in a meeting he was having with House Speaker Mike Johnson. Minaj joined the men. Staffers asked for photos with her, and she offered thoughts on ending a government shutdown.
Minaj again stopped by the Oval Office later that day, interrupting a meeting that Trump was having with auto workers. She was wearing a white TRUMP baseball cap to match her white fur coat, and shook hands with the guests in their AUTO WORKERS FOR TRUMP hats. The president noticed that the excitement had pulled focus away from him.
“See, they forgot I was here now,” he said.
Corrections & Amplifications
Nicki Minaj was born in 1982. An earlier version of this article incorrectly said she was born in 1984. (Corrected on May 18.)
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