A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein - Why Nicki Minaj Threw It All Away For Fascism

00:00:00.000 Dear young men, you have amazing role models

00:00:04.920 like our handsome, dashing president.

00:00:13.560 Handsome, dashing president.

00:00:19.540 So Nicki Minaj, as I'm sure you've seen,

00:00:22.820 joined Erika Kirk on stage at Turning Point USA's AmericaFest,

00:00:27.420 which is basically the huge conference that Turning Point does every year since 2021 to

00:00:32.460 make content that will indoctrinate American youth into conservatism.

00:00:37.100 And I wanted to play one clip that I selected from their discussion. 0.60

00:00:42.080 If as Black women, we felt

00:00:45.620 that we were not being represented and not being

00:00:52.660 admired for our beauty, if we felt like that as black women, why would we want to do that

00:01:01.160 to other women? Why would we now need to make other people downplay their beauty so that 1.00

00:01:09.280 we can feel, no, that's not how it works. I don't need someone with blonde hair and blue 0.99

00:01:14.900 eyes to downplay their beauty because I know my beauty. Do you understand? It doesn't bother

00:01:22.080 me that a woman feels and says that she's beautiful why shouldn't she feel that why have

00:01:30.580 we gotten to a point where certain colors or certain kinds of people have to be afraid of

00:01:36.720 loving themselves and loving the way they look your thoughts it is a big year for nikki minaj

00:01:45.020 haters i never believed that i could get such a you see you see look at her look at her

00:01:57.460 it's dark the fact that the crowd was like gassing her up so so so much i'm sure that

00:02:05.700 felt good for her because like she hasn't been in a situation for a while where she has like

00:02:11.060 this many people being like yes as she's saying something so dumb it's sad because something is

00:02:17.400 obviously i don't know what i don't know i see everybody on the internet is like oh you know

00:02:21.680 our house is about to get foreclosed she must be looking for a pardon for her husband i don't know

00:02:26.760 i don't know what the state of nikki minaj affairs are although i do know it's looking

00:02:30.920 financially bleak they are looking to foreclose that house so yeah we'll get into that obviously

00:02:35.600 something is going on because it's just clear propaganda i went and watched the entire thing 0.95

00:02:39.400 and you can see that Nicki Minaj is she not only has no fucking idea what she's talking about they 0.79

00:02:45.100 were like tell us about your relationship with God she was like but she would like pause and 1.00

00:02:51.860 Erica Kirk would try to like pick up the slack like use that opportunity she'd say some bullshit 0.97

00:02:55.760 about how much he loves Nicki to try to give her a second to like come up with the talking points

00:02:59.180 but every question was designed like Nicki sits and goes oh what do you want to say to young 0.95

00:03:06.880 women and nikki was like 0.92

00:03:08.760 and then she pulls out black women stop hating on white women that's that's what she comes up with 0.99

00:03:18.640 the most oppressed group in america right now are blonde hair blue-eyed white women who are being 1.00

00:03:25.920 made to feel like they don't look good like they can't be beautiful it's such explicit 1.00

00:03:32.400 propaganda it's clear like they had shit in whatever contract she signed like whatever amount 0.97

00:03:37.900 of money she took from this this thing they were clear that you need to hit certain points because 0.99

00:03:42.840 she went out of her way to say i have been all over the world i am a superstar but nothing has

00:03:49.560 ever felt important like what i'm doing here i've performed for crowd huge crowds all around the

00:03:58.240 world and no matter how many songs i do on that stage it didn't mean as much as this

00:04:08.440 because this is a direct link for younger people this is a direct link between young people

00:04:20.740 and god this is the thing i believe in nikki i believe several things i believe nikki is a 0.99

00:04:26.200 jackass i do believe that nikki has stupid views that that go to the right but i don't believe 1.00

00:04:32.080 that nikki minaj believes what the fuck she's talking about up there the fact that the right 1.00

00:04:37.260 is eating it up just speaks to how little you have to say and do to impress them well right 0.99

00:04:43.420 because like to your point like she's not even really making any coherent sense it's just like

00:04:48.320 they hear the buzzwords of like you can be blonde you can be a man like and people are like we love

00:04:54.300 this it's jd vance's whole thing he said it at this conference he said we don't want to apologize

00:04:59.980 for being white anymore in the united states of america you don't have to apologize for being

00:05:04.980 white anymore there's a large cohort of white people in the united states currently led

00:05:14.220 by jd vance and erica kirk who believe that the biggest injustice of our time is that

00:05:19.620 some leftists on Twitter didn't like Sidney Sweeney's jeans commercial. And Nicki Minaj

00:05:26.600 has been told exactly what these people want to hear. And she can't even fully recite that

00:05:33.560 messaging. But they don't care. They just need like the vague contours of it. And one thing that

00:05:39.760 we talk about over and over again on this podcast is how easy it is to charm these people, especially

00:05:45.200 when you're that famous because they are so hungry for validation from mainstream celebrities it was

00:05:50.960 interesting because even when people are as unprincipled as nikki minaj is to do all of this

00:05:55.240 the only time she tried she she went on some little like rant way to tell these are real 0.99

00:05:59.480 opinions eventually like it was in relation to herself and talking about her perceived bullies

00:06:03.760 and enemies and at any time she spoke about herself she accidentally caught herself realizing 0.94

00:06:08.860 like oh shit i'm saying too much about how i'm mistreated as a woman but then every time she 0.99

00:06:12.500 said it she realized like oh shit oh shit let me take that back uh god and and and ultimately i'm 0.99

00:06:17.600 here to say we we need we need trump in office it's so sad because all it tells me is how down 0.99

00:06:22.680 bad she is in whatever situation she's in because the reality is they could clap up there because

00:06:27.580 you validate them all you want like that's what it means to be a token that's what it means to be

00:06:31.620 there to serve a purpose it does not mean it absolutely does not mean that they're invested

00:06:36.380 in you or give a fuck about you in any way they're not gonna stream their music and i know she must

00:06:41.880 know that so it tells you that whatever it is that she's getting she needs so badly in whatever 0.87

00:06:46.560 current situation she's in and that it's scary to think it really strikes me as like the rock

00:06:51.660 bottom moment of a grift where like a huge part of the appeal is that she is kind of presenting

00:06:57.300 like she's switching sides and i think that that is a huge part of what the right loves about 0.76

00:07:02.800 having nikki minaj on their side in air quotes is like they love the idea that a huge mainstream

00:07:08.920 celebrity, who at one point was associated with being more liberal, is now all of a sudden being

00:07:14.800 like, oh, actually, I love Trump. Like that idea of we pulled someone from the mainstream. And

00:07:20.880 particularly in these spaces with like Erica Kirk, Turning Point USA, they want to create the

00:07:26.600 illusion that people on the left have like gotten fed up with like how bad the left is, how bad

00:07:33.140 identity politics is, but it's not even true. So it's like the appeal here is so, so, so cheap.

00:07:39.880 And I'm sure people like J.D. Vance understand that. People in the audience probably are more

00:07:45.120 easily fooled by this illusion that's happening in front of them.

00:07:53.980 Hello, hello, and welcome back to A Bit Fruity. So an analysis of Nicki Minaj's descent into

00:08:00.920 becoming American fascism's newest celebrity mascot is probably the most requested episode

00:08:06.380 I've embarked on up to this point. It's also an episode that I was initially not going to do

00:08:12.660 because the magnitude of Nicki's celebrity is just so enormous and profound. I thought there

00:08:19.580 was no way I could do this episode without leaving stuff out. And I still think that's true,

00:08:24.780 but I also think that that's okay because you don't need to know everything Nicki Minaj

00:08:30.720 has ever said or posted in the last 20 years

00:08:34.240 to draw a solid map of what I think happened here.

00:08:38.720 And I also think that much like Donald Trump

00:08:41.040 and like Jeffree Star,

00:08:42.880 who we've covered at length on this podcast

00:08:44.720 and who Nikki recorded a song with,

00:08:48.740 Nikki has inundated the public

00:08:50.820 with so much bad behavior for so long 1.00

00:08:54.220 that people, especially her fans,

00:08:57.860 learn to never expect better from her.

00:09:00.720 You overwhelm people with this sense that you're not a good person, but you shouldn't

00:09:05.380 be expected to be one either, which is a great way of making sure people never hold you

00:09:10.520 accountable for any of your specific misdeeds.

00:09:12.920 And so I want to resist that trap today, and I think we can do it.

00:09:16.540 Like the rest of us, Nikki's personal, professional, and political timelines exist alongside each

00:09:21.860 other, and I think by weaving together elements from each of those timelines, we can understand

00:09:27.420 how she went from female rap superstar with millions of LGBTQ fans to whatever she's doing 0.99

00:09:34.120 on stage with fucking Erica Kirk. And to do that, we are a trio today that I've wanted to get 0.97

00:09:40.760 together for quite a long time. Welcome to the show, Kat Tenbarge of Spitfire News and Olay

00:09:47.680 Olorin, who is a lawyer who does cultural commentary as Olorinati on YouTube. And she is

00:09:55.520 the woman who famously took down eric adams on the breakfast club fuck eric adams and good riddance

00:10:02.260 to him welcome to the show both of you hey thanks for having us i want to know broad strokes how are 0.71

00:10:09.220 each of you feeling about this topic because i know we all come into this with baggage i think

00:10:14.380 like a lot of people there was a time in my life where i loved nikki minaj like i was a really big

00:10:21.860 fan. I remember in high school and in early college, like it was a point of pride that I

00:10:27.520 had memorized and could do the entire monster verse. Rite of passage. In high school, when I

00:10:32.580 would like dance on the sidelines of basketball games, like the Nicki Minaj songs were always my

00:10:36.760 favorite. And I really loved her for a long time. And then as the years went by, things started to

00:10:44.720 really pile up where I was like, this is terrible. The fandom is terrible. The barbs are awful.

00:10:49.960 the like sort of ability to put that aside and still enjoy the music started to stretch thinner

00:10:56.100 and thinner and thinner and then it like I think again many many people in the last few years it

00:11:01.760 just completely snapped so in 2025 on this current day I am a certified Nicki Minaj hater and I

00:11:09.800 and I have been for quite some time but it's important to note that I did not start out that

00:11:15.100 way and i don't think anybody starts out that way like people like to present it as though

00:11:19.400 the barbs contrary to what they like you lead you to believe that people are just against nikki

00:11:23.440 minaj there is nobody that likes rap in the slightest that doesn't hate women that was not

00:11:29.000 a nikki minaj fan out the gate i loved nikki minaj in the beginning in high school i remember

00:11:34.200 like i remember being there was a time where you barely used to see nikki minaj like you were

00:11:38.140 itching to see with like a video actually show her in it i loved nikki the problem with nikki

00:11:43.180 is squarely this every injustice or unfair or systemic like reality of what Nicki Minaj has

00:11:48.920 had to go through in her career that would have made you champion her in the beginning

00:11:51.580 she is not against any of that and she hates when she doesn't see other women who come up

00:11:57.980 have to experience it like I think Nicki Minaj comes from an era in hip-hop when the women were

00:12:03.500 selected by a male conglomerate of some kind you're like she's the first lady of young money 0.60

00:12:07.820 You have, you know, Olivia with G-Unit. You have Remy Ma with Terror Squad. You have Radiga. You

00:12:13.480 have, you know what I mean? They're picked by these collectives and they're only allowed to

00:12:17.800 really be one. They're pitted against each other. And so Nicki Minaj kind of comes around at this

00:12:21.960 time. Like she emerges as kind of like the queen, somebody that you see dominating, like hip hop

00:12:28.560 and rap in a way that women were not previously. It felt like there was a, you know, a ceiling on 0.94

00:12:32.880 what women could commercially, what heights they could commercially get to. And so you supported 0.99

00:12:37.420 her she was dope artistically she's a beautiful gal and so when you would see like her initial 0.98

00:12:42.080 like feuds with like little kim when little kim was saying all these things about her like 0.58

00:12:45.500 telling you that her attitude is this that she is not somebody who pays homage and all this

00:12:48.900 everybody was inclined to be on nikki minaj's side and i think what happens is as time goes on

00:12:54.200 you live to see her be everything that you defended her against because cardi b is the 0.93

00:12:59.380 beginning of nikki minaj showing her ass in a way that has just been indisputable and i think what 0.89

00:13:04.720 it is is that cardi represents so the opening of floodgates for women in rap ever since cardi b 0.97

00:13:10.160 there are tons of women rappers you like so many you can pick from and nikki hates that you did a 1.00

00:13:16.920 song with cardi you did a song with meg you see she did a song with ice spice and then two seconds 1.00

00:13:21.040 later she's talking shit on these people because you can never kiss nikki minaj's ass enough you 0.95

00:13:26.340 could find interviews and clips a lotto and all these people talking about how much inspiration 0.99

00:13:30.560 they founded Nicki Minaj how much they love Nicki Minaj it's never enough when somebody

00:13:34.620 wants to be the only one in the room and it's that clear from how she's come at every single 0.90

00:13:39.660 fucking woman to come out it's hard to feel no not hard to I don't feel sorry for somebody 0.96

00:13:44.900 who is willing to be a pillar of the same institutions that they felt like were unfair 1.00

00:13:49.900 to them because they wanted to be only them so that she was already that she was already an 1.00

00:13:54.460 unprincipled like bearer of misogyny on women and hip-hop and then you add that with now you 1.00

00:14:00.340 want to be a fascist propagandist bitch shall we get into a little nikki minaj early life we love 0.98

00:14:06.640 chronology on this podcast when the ambulances pass she already heard that the podcast has started 0.99

00:14:13.880 the barbs have intercepted the feed and they're on their way it's the barb siege of a bit fruity

00:14:23.100 literally literally everyone change your phone number now because they're all gonna be leaked

00:14:29.460 We're going to get into early life, but the only other thing I want to say about this is that, like I said up top, this isn't going to be like a documentary episode. There's just too much. So I'm going to talk about her early life and early career rather swiftly. We're going to identify the parts of it that I think are relevant in evaluating what happened to her today.

00:14:50.600 So Nikki was born in Port of Spain, the capital of Trinidad, which is an island in the Caribbean.

00:14:56.600 Both of her parents were gospel singers.

00:14:59.220 Her dad was abusive and addicted to alcohol and crack cocaine and allegedly committed arson on their house when Nikki was five.

00:15:08.960 Nikki spent most of her earliest years living in poverty in her grandmother's house in Trinidad with her 11 cousins.

00:15:16.700 Also random, not fun fact, but I guess just like fact,

00:15:20.480 her dad was killed in a hit and run in Long Island in 2021.

00:15:24.280 Really dark stuff.

00:15:25.100 There are 900 million things to kick Nikki's back in about, 0.99

00:15:29.520 and we should be kicking her back in, 1.00

00:15:31.000 including like the hypocrisy of being an immigrant 1.00

00:15:33.040 actively aligning herself with a fascist administration 0.98

00:15:35.300 as xenophobic.

00:15:36.220 But what we should not be doing is leaning into xenophobia.

00:15:39.400 And I see a lot of people that have always seen this gal

00:15:42.320 as the queen of rap from Queens, New York,

00:15:44.220 going out of their way to talk about her like an alien and I think we should relax on all that

00:15:49.180 I say that as a Caribbean immigrant like don't take it out on Trinidad it's Nikki Nikki has

00:15:54.740 talked about growing up in a home where there was domestic violence like she has talked about

00:16:00.260 a lot of these details publicly and sort of corroborated them but when she gets into fudes

00:16:05.860 with other people specifically Cardi B um a few years ago Cardi posted this like long rant on

00:16:12.500 Twitter, where she makes like further sort of allegations about the beginning of Nikki's life.

00:16:18.440 I'm just going to read part of this. She said, you said out of your own mouth that the little

00:16:22.040 girl in you hasn't forgiven your mother yet. And that's because your mom used to stay silent when

00:16:26.580 your dad used to touch on you every time he did that crack pipe. I know you experienced a lot of

00:16:31.600 trauma and abuse, but drugs is not going to help you. You need to go to therapy now. And then she

00:16:36.420 carries this into more allegations about the present day, the more that I have learned about

00:16:42.380 Nikki's early life, I always like kind of suspected just based on the people who she

00:16:48.060 aligns herself with and like what we've seen of her over the years, that she is someone who is

00:16:55.260 part of like a cycle of abuse that has not been broken. You see the fact that she is like the

00:17:00.020 ultimate cannot break the cycle, the ultimate like she is continuing this cycle. She's pulling up the

00:17:05.820 ladder behind her professionally when it comes to other women in the field she's like aligning 1.00

00:17:10.700 herself with men in the industry who also perpetuate abusive behavior and it's like that 0.99

00:17:16.600 clearly stems from something in her past from like a lot of like trauma it's an explanation

00:17:22.780 it's never an excuse or a justification but you can kind of see how from like this dark sort of

00:17:30.120 beginning and these darker life circumstances like how she evolves into the person who she is 0.69

00:17:35.740 around the time that her dad committed arson on their own house nikki's mom had gotten a green

00:17:42.840 card to come live in america in new york city in south jamaica queens and shortly after nikki and

00:17:50.680 her older brother jelani came to live with her so nikki ended up growing up in queens she attended

00:17:57.220 laguardia high school for performing arts in new york city which is the setting of the movie fame

00:18:03.100 fame i'm gonna live forever laguardia high school is famously extremely hard to get into

00:18:11.260 and i think especially before like the advent of tiktok where you could just get discovered for

00:18:15.440 your talent online it is like the birthplace of like every modern entertainer if you want to see

00:18:20.520 something crazy go to the laguardia high school notable alumni wikipedia page it's wild nikki 0.73

00:18:27.120 also worked at red lobster where she was famously fired for yelling at a customer who didn't tip 1.00

00:18:33.080 and stole her pen. She chased down the customer to their car and banged on the window to return 0.99

00:18:39.180 her pen, which I defend her for. I think that's like a completely valid thing to do.

00:18:46.660 And I disagree with her firing for Red Lobster. In the mid 2000s, Nikki rapped locally with groups

00:18:53.380 in New York. She was posting songs on MySpace, trying to get discovered like everyone else in

00:18:58.060 mid-2000s on myspace she released a series of mixtapes in 2007 and 2008 which caught the 0.93

00:19:04.960 attention of lil wayne who signed her to his then burgeoning record label young money she she starts

00:19:11.760 to make it lil wayne features her on his music and connects her with other big artists including

00:19:17.760 mariah carey jay-z robin thick also i think relevant in her origin story is obviously like

00:19:24.000 Lil Wayne's instrumental to her career with YMTNB

00:19:26.040 and all of that. But there was a time where

00:19:27.820 Gucci Mane and Waka and that

00:19:29.940 kind of collective had a role in their career too.

00:19:32.020 And Gucci famously, 0.91

00:19:33.960 when Gucci used to act a fool on Twitter 0.93

00:19:35.720 back in the day, and he went on this long 0.99

00:19:38.220 Twitter fucking tirade 0.99

00:19:40.100 accusing her or sleeping her way 1.00

00:19:41.960 through the industry and sleeping with him and sleeping with this one

00:19:43.800 and sleeping with the next one. And it was just something

00:19:45.720 that Nicki denied and everybody

00:19:47.560 defended her against. This is toxic, horrible

00:19:50.020 misogyny and the way that 1.00

00:19:51.500 you're slut shame. Only for Nicki to 1.00

00:19:53.720 turn around in 10 plus years and do the same things to Megan Thee Stallion every part of

00:19:59.120 Nicki Minaj's coked out this track I said it yeah that's what it was like all of that was nothing

00:20:05.060 more but the nastiest rendition of the things that was done to Nicki Minaj and that's what she was

00:20:10.840 doing to Meg Thee Stallion. Nicki Minaj is a is a hard person to feel any compassion for because

00:20:16.700 there's nothing you could point to that no matter how horrible it is that she's experienced that

00:20:21.700 you have not seen her make a mockery of to other people's october 2010 nikki is famously featured

00:20:28.700 on kanye west's monster which everybody loved it it was an iconic verse and nobody loved it more

00:20:36.380 than charlie kirk and candace owens which we're gonna circle back on that much later in this

00:20:42.220 outline the following month november 2010 nikki releases her debut album pink friday which had

00:20:50.960 the largest sales week for a female rap album in the 21st century. It was off to the races for 0.51

00:20:56.980 Nicki from there. I remember when Pink Friday came out, Entertainment Weekly did this like big

00:21:04.900 spread where they were like, it's Nicki Minaj's time. And it was like the image of her and those

00:21:10.600 long like photoshopped legs to make her look like a Barbie doll. I remember sitting in piano lessons. 0.70

00:21:16.620 I was probably like in like fourth grade and I was like reading this and I was just like so

00:21:22.700 captivated by this woman I didn't even at the time really have familiarity with the music yet

00:21:29.800 but the imagery of what she was doing was like so captivating to me and it was so unlike anything

00:21:35.540 that I had ever seen before like the electric pink wig the outfits that she wore the way that

00:21:42.400 she carried herself the confidence that she exuded and then you listen to the early verses and you

00:21:48.160 listen to like the work that she's doing at the time and it's very clear why even before she

00:21:52.440 released her debut she had become such a favorite in the industry like if anyone wanted a female

00:21:57.920 rapper to feature on their songs they would go to her and there is like kind of that manufactured

00:22:03.300 scarcity in the industry where it's like she was like one of the few options but it's also just

00:22:08.520 like her immense talent and sort of like adaptability to all of these different genres all

00:22:13.960 of these different people she was such a talented writer and I think that like it just spoke to why

00:22:20.960 she had this almost universal appeal at this point in time yeah I like I said I loved Nicki Minaj

00:22:27.780 in high school I had a Nicki Minaj poster on my boarding school wall I remember I think the thing

00:22:33.060 I loved most about Nicki and I remember is there used to be a mystique around Nicki before things

00:22:38.020 became the time period that we live in where you see everything everybody and everything is just 0.92

00:22:43.080 so overexposed like i remember like you'd be hype when you see like they put nikki on a cover or

00:22:48.460 something like you want to go buy it to go get the poster out of the magazine to go put it on

00:22:52.840 your wall like you were excited when like young money actually put out like the music video and

00:22:57.120 nikki minaj was in it i remember like when massive attack dropped like it was just a song a single

00:23:01.980 nobody even thinks about but i remember nikki minaj had few music videos at the time and being

00:23:06.680 so excited for that and then when you think about like the original mistake around nikki is like

00:23:10.440 nikki was talked about a lot but she wasn't necessarily talking to us i think honestly

00:23:14.980 nikki minaj how nikki minaj has gone down size is a testament to why we really need to start 0.98

00:23:20.580 shutting the fuck up in 2026 like everybody is too fucking accessible you're too overexposed you 0.95

00:23:26.800 to you telling everybody at every thought i think there's a low moral bar we have for our like 0.99

00:23:32.360 artists in terms of what we will accept quietly from them and enjoy our music we could know like

00:23:37.360 I said we know a little way that all of that politics ain't good there's a lot of artists

00:23:41.160 who we know they've said a little something but they keep it quiet but Nicki Minaj like think 0.99

00:23:46.620 about Nicki Minaj has been going on coked outs for the rants for years now saying despicable shit 0.97

00:23:53.100 to people and there's a real Trump like quality to that where it's like Trump similarly uses social 0.97

00:23:59.140 media in a very similar way and because the behavior has been so normalized and because

00:24:05.320 there's a concerted effort to not report on every little thing he says he gets away with so much

00:24:11.500 just like the permissive structure around these individuals and the fact that like there is no

00:24:17.200 bottom where it's like people don't even fully recognize how bad it is getting until it's reached

00:24:22.400 a point of no return i remember being in summer camp jewish summer camp and like stealing my

00:24:29.000 friend's ipod because he had pink friday on his ipod and i didn't have it and like i wanted to

00:24:34.900 listen to fly with rihanna which is such a good song also really random detail i went to the same

00:24:41.700 jewish summer camp as noah snaf at the same time which like it's just so random shout out shout out

00:24:49.420 to the jewish summer camps in the northeast i would like to give a shout out to factor for

00:24:56.900 sponsoring today's episode. My mother continues to lament to me that despite the thousands of

00:25:03.420 hours I spent watching her cook as a child, I never developed the itch to cook. And I have

00:25:08.980 continued to tell her, mom, I love you. I do a lot of other things and cooking is just not one of

00:25:15.640 them. It is not a moral judgment. Maybe one day I will like to cook. It's just not how I currently

00:25:22.420 express myself and that day has not come. But I do love eating and prepared foods aren't always

00:25:29.180 that great and getting takeout all the time obviously gets really expensive. One super

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00:26:41.260 factor. And now let's get back to the episode. It is here that I also want to address Nikki's

00:26:49.300 relationship to the LGBTQ community, because that's come up in the days since she appeared

00:26:55.800 on Turning Point's speaking circuit with Erica Kirk and sort of attempting to parrot the transphobic

00:27:01.080 talking points. And a lot of people have said that she never earned the LGBTQ icon status

00:27:08.960 that she was given and I actually have mixed feelings on that because while it's true that

00:27:17.000 she hasn't really ever done like outreach to the LGBTQ community she hasn't she hasn't done like

00:27:24.360 you know like what Madonna did during AIDS like stuff like that really explicit or like how like

00:27:29.120 Gaga did the born this way there's a number of LGBTQ icon type celebrities who also never did

00:27:37.140 that like to me Britney Spears comes to mind and I and I would die for Britney everyone knows this 0.64

00:27:41.900 not until later in Britney's career did she start like explicitly acknowledging you know her queer

00:27:49.140 fans and stuff like that I think Nikki and her art just like spoke to us in a certain way and for me

00:27:57.580 it was actually very adjacent to Lady Gaga because they both came up around the same time doing

00:28:04.020 something similar which was being like super avant-garde super weird with like the voices

00:28:10.540 and the alter egos and even just like hearing a woman dressed like barbie rap about being a king

00:28:18.480 and like slaying goliath and and the sort of over-the-top femme camp aesthetics like i just

00:28:24.280 remember it really spoke to me ole do you have any lgbtq thoughts the priest to me

00:28:32.660 i think with respect to that i there have been several women rappers not just nikki minaj but

00:28:38.940 there have been several of them that do a thing where they they perform they almost perform

00:28:43.460 bisexuality for the male gaze and leave it completely at that nikki minaj is one of them

00:28:49.240 like in her name like initially they used to be these kind of references that suggest 0.96

00:28:53.560 you like bitches and then all of a sudden it was no affirmatively explicitly not am i right i've 0.94

00:28:59.780 I left that behind. 1.00

00:29:00.620 I don't know what you're talking about.

00:29:01.840 I think Nicki Minaj is probably just a cautionary tale

00:29:05.300 in a lot of different respects,

00:29:06.440 but in this one that like maybe we shouldn't be so hasty

00:29:09.880 to give people like their flowers

00:29:12.140 as like assuming that they have a solidarity

00:29:15.220 with this community or an allyship

00:29:18.700 just because they appeal to that community.

00:29:21.000 Nicki Minaj is someone who's always,

00:29:23.180 despite her nasty attitude that we could see

00:29:25.300 and that you hear about in the industry, 0.84

00:29:26.840 she's always been like save the pleasantness for her fans 0.97

00:29:29.780 But that is about capitalism. 0.90

00:29:31.480 That is about making money.

00:29:32.940 And I'm not saying that as a negative to her.

00:29:35.220 That's what you're going to do.

00:29:35.820 Be nice to your fans.

00:29:36.820 You should be, right?

00:29:37.700 But she's being nice to her fans.

00:29:39.220 And they just so happen to be, many of them are in the LGBT community. 0.99

00:29:42.680 But if you listen to the shit that comes out of her mouth, it's clear that she don't rock 1.00

00:29:46.960 like none at all. 1.00

00:29:48.500 You know, there was actually recently, she was doing like a live with her fans.

00:29:51.700 And one of them came on that's like, come on before that she's spoken to, comes on.

00:29:55.500 And she's like, oh, hey, babe.

00:29:56.980 It's like real sweet.

00:29:58.240 And she's like, well, what's going on?

00:29:59.200 like oh i've been really down lately and she's like oh why and she's like oh well you know it's

00:30:03.380 been really hard forever like this just this trump administration this administration isn't

00:30:07.360 doesn't feel good about like the gays isn't treated as good like it's hard for us right now 0.99

00:30:10.920 nikki massage was like basically i should have known he was like coming with this bullshit 0.97

00:30:16.520 mute their mic cuss them off so i said i have to say i think the lesson here is we we should maybe 0.91

00:30:22.080 not be so quick to embrace people because they appeal to us i used to like the baby and then i

00:30:26.760 found out baby don't like us too too much there was a guy who I had an internship with like probably

00:30:33.300 over a decade ago now who as long as I've ever followed him online he has been a bar before all

00:30:40.420 else like initial like first identity barb then like gay then like entertainment journalist and

00:30:47.460 I have watched him defend Nicki Minaj relentlessly for years and this past week actually he announced

00:30:55.860 he was like indefinitely leaving social media and i'm like this is because of this he didn't say 1.00

00:31:01.060 it's because of what nikki's been doing but i'm like this is exactly why this is happening

00:31:04.640 that cognitive dissonance that has been built up and up and up it's like splintering now in 2012

00:31:10.980 we get our first big political statement from nikki minaj which is through her her verse in

00:31:19.780 Lil Wayne song Mercy, where she says, I'm a Republican voting for Mitt Romney. You lazy 0.99

00:31:26.900 bitches is fucking up the economy. No, I did not know this existed. Really? I did not know this 1.00

00:31:34.720 existed. Oh, I heard it when it dropped. I mean, is you so shocked? Like, how did you get away with

00:31:47.140 this well because it's not even it's not even like a good lyric it's just her saying i am a

00:31:55.280 republican voting for mit romney like it's just so and then obama during that campaign cycle went

00:32:02.140 on a radio show and said that he didn't believe her and that it must have been one of her alter

00:32:06.800 egos speaking because at this point nikki minaj through her art has developed all of these alter

00:32:11.220 egos, one of them being Roman, who is described in some places as a gay man. And then Nicki Minaj

00:32:18.820 tweets in response to Obama, ha, thank you for understanding my creative humor and sarcasm,

00:32:24.900 Mr. President. The smart ones always do. Sending love and support at Barack Obama.

00:32:30.120 I think this is such an interesting moment because it really is, for a lot of Nicki Minaj's career,

00:32:35.540 hard to know which parts of her are, like, you're meant to take seriously because she has all these

00:32:40.880 characters that sometimes she says things that are serious but then regrets them and then

00:32:45.840 retroactively like says oh well that was an alter ego it makes the whole thing very difficult to

00:32:51.340 parse out there's a really strong parallel here for me to trisha paytas i'm sure i'm sure there

00:32:58.280 is kat particularly because at around the exact same time trisha paytas made a video that was like

00:33:05.780 i'm voting for mit romney and i'm not saying you know be a conservative republican like me

00:33:10.700 um because I don't push my beliefs on people yeah so I wanted to make my official video

00:33:17.160 slash support for Romney Ryan 2012 yay so basically one Mitt Romney is super hot Barack Obama did not

00:33:25.220 care about Trisha Paytas because at this point in time there would be no reason for any politician

00:33:30.640 to be commenting on what she was up to on YouTube but it's like it's the exact same kind of effect

00:33:35.940 where there's a built in defense when these people who embrace these types of characters

00:33:42.120 and this type of like trolling because it's like as a fan you can then decide like what I

00:33:48.000 interpret as real and what I interpret as fake. In 2014 Nikki releases her third album The Pink

00:33:55.520 Print. At this point she has for years been one of music's biggest superstars and in 2015 we are

00:34:04.380 now at the run up to the 2016 election, Nikki appears on the cover of Billboard. And in her

00:34:11.460 cover star interview, they ask her about the election. Question, you're from New York. So you

00:34:18.200 also must have an opinion on Donald Trump. Ole, do you want to read the response?

00:34:22.140 There are points that he has made that may not have been so horrible if his approach wasn't so

00:34:26.420 childish. But in terms of entertainment, I think he's hilarious. I wish they could just film him

00:34:31.540 running for president. That's the ultimate reality show. All of this to me is a reflection

00:34:37.200 of what I was saying earlier about being unprincipled. The reality is this, whether or

00:34:41.080 not she tries to pin it on an alter ego, do we know whether or not she's being serious when she

00:34:46.080 says, oh, I'm voting for Mitt Romney. I'm a Republican. This is how I see it. If you are

00:34:50.260 a person that understands politics, you are a Black person in this world, a Black adult that

00:34:54.760 understands the stakes that come with an election, who understood what the Republicans are and why

00:35:00.000 it's dangerous for the Republicans to have power. There's no way you would be playing games with

00:35:04.400 your influence and your platform and the possibility for people to be influenced and

00:35:09.280 not understand. So the fact in and of itself that it doesn't matter enough to you to be definitive,

00:35:14.580 to stay out of something if you're not going to be serious, that in and of itself tells me how

00:35:18.900 you feel. Because it's one of those things like, I don't need you to, in your heart, believe all

00:35:23.220 the things of the oppressor. I just need you to make way for it. And that's how I see people who

00:35:28.440 are unprincipled who don't care one way or the next who don't like recognize the stakes who just

00:35:33.080 do foolishness that's how i feel about like when kanye west says he's running for president whether

00:35:37.600 or not he really is and what he's doing whether he's kind of the fact alone that you're doing 0.99

00:35:41.660 this kind of fucking bullshit when the stakes are so fucking high tells me everything so i've 0.99

00:35:46.840 been thought nikki was full of shit and all my dislike for nikki i never thought she was this 1.00

00:35:50.820 actually i dislike nikki for being somebody who is um um like i said a harbinger of misogyny 1.00

00:35:56.060 somebody who is helping who is helping reinforce a system that discriminates against women because 0.87

00:36:01.000 she would like to be the exception she wants to be the token and i think that is horrible and that's

00:36:06.040 what i didn't like but that that is limited in scope you know what i mean like being a misogynist 1.00

00:36:10.180 you can be a regular run-of-the-mill hating ass bitch who only wants you to be successful 1.00

00:36:15.160 and not be a fascist propagandist like at no point did i think one day that bitch nikki might come 1.00

00:36:21.060 out and try and help manufacture consent for genocide in Nigeria you know when people make 0.99

00:36:25.800 these statements where they're kind of starting off by saying like well Trump maybe has some

00:36:30.700 points but it's like it's the way that he says it that's so immature and childish that that's

00:36:34.860 the problem that to me is like such a massive red flag because I'm like what points do you think he

00:36:41.440 has like what exactly is Trump right about it comes back to this idea that she and anyone who

00:36:48.340 speaks like this is deeply unprincipled because I'm like the fact that you think that there is

00:36:53.700 something underneath like the layers of Trump that is good when there's actually nothing like

00:36:59.160 obviously like he has no good ideas he has no redeeming beliefs so now you've opened up this

00:37:05.120 pathway where it's like I understand how she went from saying this in 2015 to a decade later like

00:37:11.100 fully supporting and endorsing him because there was never anything to support about him but she

00:37:15.740 always left that door open. Trump obviously gets elected in 2016. November 2016, Nicki Minaj comes

00:37:23.600 out with Black Barbies, which is a song that I loved. And in that, she has the lyric,

00:37:30.360 Island girl, Donald Trump want me go home. I don't know. At the time, I just remember thinking like,

00:37:35.620 oh, that was just such a clean diss of Trump's anti-immigration policies at the time. I don't

00:37:40.880 really know if there's anything to add about that. It just seemed like, I don't know, the cultural

00:37:45.720 tide at the time was very anti-Trump right after his first election. That's what I was going to say

00:37:50.200 it's a reflection of convenience like the times. Yes and it's like if you're operating from the

00:37:55.040 perspective of either a Barb or someone who is like of two minds about Nikki at this point

00:38:01.060 when she says things like this you're like oh okay maybe the comment on the radio show was just a

00:38:06.960 fluke. All she has to do is kind of drop these breadcrumbs of like oh I actually am anti-Trump

00:38:11.880 oh i am actually pro-gay and that creates like almost like a justification for people to maybe 0.51

00:38:18.060 think like she's not as bad as it actually seems she's aligning herself with power it's very simple

00:38:23.420 and that's what she made her comment about mit romney and then when obama becomes is popular

00:38:28.860 and likable and addresses something and doesn't outright diss her and people like her then she

00:38:33.040 leans into let me be cute with that on twitter the same way she's always been trying to be cute 0.71

00:38:36.720 with the republican politicians all over twitter and stuff now because that's who's who's in power

00:38:40.140 that's all it is and so she throws out her one little her one little something because she knows 0.92

00:38:44.040 people eat up fucking breadcrumbs like oh they want to send me home because everybody was anti 0.98

00:38:48.780 trump in 2016 but in 2025 when the republicans are moving where it's a fucking regime not an 1.00

00:38:55.260 administration then you see her fucking breaking her fucking ankles to try to any any little she's 1.00

00:39:02.860 salivating any random fucking joe schmoe republican can speak to on twitter and she replying oh blah 1.00

00:39:09.260 blah blah blah she does she wants to be she wants to be alive with power and that's for her own 0.98

00:39:13.460 gains that's all it is here is where we have to talk about nikki's brother jelani nikki has an

00:39:20.400 older brother named jelani he's five years older than her and you may have seen this coming but

00:39:26.400 huge trigger warning for like the basically the rest of the episode for sexual assault pedophilia

00:39:32.080 all of this stuff because it hits Nikki's life hard. In 2017, Jelani, who was then 38,

00:39:39.060 was found guilty of sexually assaulting a child younger than 13. Shortly after Jelani's arrest,

00:39:45.480 Nikki paid his $100,000 bail. She also posted a family photo at the time on Instagram,

00:39:53.220 seemingly in support of her brother. Meanwhile, in the case, prosecutors alleged that Jelani

00:39:58.480 had started abusing this girl when she was 11 and raped her while her mom was at work. This

00:40:04.980 occurred repeatedly between 2014 and 2015. So Jelani was around 35 at the time. Nikki's and

00:40:12.920 Jelani's mother, Carol, as well as Jelani's lawyers, accused the girl and her mom of trying

00:40:18.980 to get money out of Nikki's family. The girl's brother, who was 10 at the time, testified as a

00:40:25.280 witness to the abuse but didn't say anything at the time because he was scared cps would remove

00:40:30.660 their mother from the house jelani ended up being found guilty and is serving 25 to life i know

00:40:36.660 some of the details in there are really hard to hear but i do think that sometimes these

00:40:41.920 celebrity stories of sexual abuse get repeated so often online that they just kind of get turned

00:40:49.020 into memes and it's like oh nikki nikki defends pedophiles in her family nikki this we see that 0.77

00:40:54.280 happening a lot with Epstein. And I think it's so important to just highlight that like, at the 0.88

00:40:59.420 heart of these stories are victims. And with that said, let's talk about Nikki's husband, because

00:41:05.140 he's a huge part of this story as well. I will say in 2018, Nicki Minaj is continuing to criticize

00:41:11.540 Trump's family separation policy. She posts a photo at this point of a migrant detention center

00:41:17.760 with the caption, quote, I came to this country as an illegal immigrant, I can't imagine the horror

00:41:22.880 of being in a strange place and having my parents stripped from me at the age of five. This is so

00:41:28.320 scary to me. Please stop this. Can you try to imagine the terror and panic these kids feel

00:41:33.680 right now? Not knowing if their parents are dead or alive, if they'll ever see them again.

00:41:38.240 Yes, it's just interesting to me that all of this stuff is still happening and happening again and

00:41:44.180 happening in ways ever more brutal. And I guess Nikki doesn't care anymore. But anyway, also in

00:41:50.320 2018, Nikki reconnects with her now husband, Kenneth Petty. Kenneth Petty and Nikki went to

00:41:56.840 high school together in Queens, and they reconnect all these years later after Kenneth has served

00:42:02.160 two prison sentences, one for four years for being convicted of attempted rape in 1994,

00:42:07.680 and another for seven years for manslaughter in 2006. They get married in 2019. They have one son

00:42:15.980 together big papa the details of the 1994 rape were that kenneth petty and the alleged victim

00:42:23.720 jennifer huff were both 16 he held her at knife point while she was walking to school

00:42:29.800 took her to a nearby house and assaulted her kenneth initially denied the first degree rape

00:42:36.600 allegations then pled guilty to the lesser charge of attempted first degree rape and like i said

00:42:42.060 spent four years in prison. This is what I'll say about this. And I'm going to look at this in the

00:42:47.140 like most favorable to Nikki and be as nuanced as possible as somebody who was a defense attorney

00:42:50.820 and an abolitionist. I think it is the general claim that Nikki is somebody that aligns with

00:42:56.100 abusers is true. I think what counts as evidence towards that is it's important where we make the

00:43:02.200 differentiations. I don't think there's anything inherently wrong about Nikki Minaj paying the 0.62

00:43:07.060 bail for her brother so her brother can battle a case from the outside. I don't think it inherently

00:43:11.620 means in paying his bail without anything further, I don't think it inherently means that she is

00:43:18.100 defending an abuser or that's what's going on here. I think you can think, and it's happened

00:43:23.340 a lot of times, a lot of people have family and loved ones who support them or still love them

00:43:27.880 while they are battling a case or maybe even battling their innocence or whatever have you,

00:43:32.760 And it isn't about them trying to vilify their victims or defend them or anything like that.

00:43:38.700 I think that there can be multiple different things happening in the same respect that I don't inherently kick Nikki's back in for marrying somebody who is who is previously incarcerated or for rape and for manslaughter.

00:43:50.180 It's not inherently that. I think there are arguments that can be made and abolitionist arguments that are to be made about accountability and atonement and going through the system and X, Y, Z.

00:43:58.540 I think there are different things to be made. What makes Nikki a problem is it's one thing to

00:44:03.600 pay bail for your brother, right? It's one thing to pay bail for your brother. It's one thing to

00:44:07.240 have a husband who has a previous criminal record. What takes Nikki over the edge is that Nikki is,

00:44:11.940 even in her own personal, professional life, you'll see different artists like R6-9 or The Game,

00:44:17.520 or it almost feels like the minute someone is accused of something like that, it's then that

00:44:22.060 Nikki pops out to be the one person willing to be there for them, to be on their side.

00:44:26.500 I can understand Nicki Minaj saying Kenneth Penny was convicted for something when he was a young teenager and he did something horrible and he served his time and he's done.

00:44:35.680 That's an entirely different thing for harassing the victim.

00:44:39.040 I want to be clear because I think it could be it can be dangerous when we we think it is.

00:44:43.880 But it's not the progressive position in actualities that anybody who's been who's been in the criminal system is to be treated as, you know, irredeemable or whatever have you all across the board.

00:44:54.800 that they can never they shouldn't be a part of society they're not deserving of love they can't

00:44:58.260 be married again of kids again all these different things so i think that like that's a different

00:45:01.600 argument and i want to make sure i step away from that that is not inherently my problem like why

00:45:05.620 nikki minaj has to marry somebody with no it's not that it's the extra stuff that proves this

00:45:09.900 the extra everything that she has to say like i said what she lets us know she thinks about their

00:45:14.380 victim i do think nikki minaj is somebody who absolutely defends and aligns herself with abuse

00:45:18.580 and abusers but i just wanted to be clear as to why and then i'm not drawing this broad stroke

00:45:23.840 that just demonizes and vilifies anybody that's been convicted or previously incarcerated for

00:45:28.720 small or horrible, heinous crimes. There was a 2021 lawsuit filed by Jennifer Huff,

00:45:35.760 the victim in that case, years and years and years later, for $15 million against Kenneth

00:45:41.640 Petty and Nicki Minaj for harassment and attempting to intimidate her into recanting

00:45:47.780 her 1994 testimony. Jennifer alleged that Nikki and Kenneth would bombard her and her family with 0.99

00:45:55.840 phone calls, unexpected visits to their homes, and with bribes allegedly up to $500,000 for her to

00:46:04.720 recant her allegations. And then this legal saga continues when in 2023, Kenneth and Nikki moved

00:46:13.440 from New York to LA, where Kenneth does not immediately register as a sex offender in

00:46:19.200 California. So he's charged with violating the terms of his probation and sentenced to 120 days

00:46:25.300 of house arrest. Nikki has defended this relationship strenuously. She said on Queen

00:46:29.540 Radio, which is her radio show, I didn't know that in our society, you have to be plagued by your

00:46:34.460 past. I didn't know that people can't turn over a new leaf. I didn't know that your viciousness

00:46:39.200 and evilness was this deep rooted, this deep seated. And like Ole said, I'm also someone who

00:46:44.960 believes in like rehabilitative justice. And like, I agree with what she's saying there.

00:46:49.960 But she also isn't just saying that she's harassing her husband's accuser.

00:46:56.220 Exactly. There's nuance to be had, but it would be reasonable if she were operating in good faith,

00:47:00.620 but she's not. And something that I think about with regards to the cycle of abuse,

00:47:05.160 victim psychology and sort of Nikki's evolving political leanings around the same time that

00:47:12.120 she's aligning with these abusers in the music industry and sort of defending and engaging in

00:47:17.580 these harassment of victims related to her family. I think about how there's sort of this

00:47:22.660 expectation that people have that if someone themselves is abused or grows up in like an

00:47:28.360 abusive household, as Nikki has talked about, that you will then for the rest of your life

00:47:32.780 operate from the perspective of being like victim centered and that you will take things like abuse

00:47:37.940 more seriously and that you will take the side of victims over perpetrators because it's something

00:47:42.180 that you yourself went through. But the unfortunate reality is a lot of times victims and people who

00:47:49.160 are sort of bystanders to abuse develop the opposite sort of ideology and perspective around

00:47:54.760 abuse. And the reason that this is, is because these cases and how abusers and victims are

00:48:00.860 treated does not happen in a vacuum. A majority of times people are not held accountable. And this

00:48:07.180 reminds me of sort of what Cardi B was talking about in that tweet where she was like, Nikki,

00:48:11.780 you were not protected as a child and you did not receive justice. And so now today you are sort of

00:48:17.700 repeating this cycle against other people. You see that in a lot, a lot of cases. If you see power

00:48:24.620 and abuse of power be enabled and rewarded, and you go through that process yourself, in order

00:48:30.720 to rationalize that and sort of move on from that oftentimes people internalize that sort of logic

00:48:37.000 of abuse where it's like actually the person in power is right and the victims are wrong and that

00:48:42.780 can be sort of an internal thing where you view yourself as in the wrong and so then you like

00:48:46.980 carry that with you into other situations and it can also apply more broadly to society and I think

00:48:53.060 a lot of times like conservative rhetoric sort of is this logic of abuse where it's like people who

00:48:58.960 have power in situations who abuse their powers in situations should be enabled they should have

00:49:04.860 like the advantage here there's a direct parallel here to trump and to epstein and to all of these

00:49:10.740 things that we see happening at like this macro societal level where it's like this logic that

00:49:16.480 facilitates and enables abuse also facilitates and enables conservative ideology like they go

00:49:22.680 hand in hand and oftentimes are one in the same that to me like speaks to I think a lot of the

00:49:29.280 way that Nicki Minaj carries herself and why the things that she went through perhaps in her own

00:49:34.020 childhood and also the way she was treated in the music industry she's now repeating that cycle and

00:49:39.740 doing it to other people because she has yet to sort of internalize or externalize that it was

00:49:45.180 wrong she's not really seeking justice in these situations she's just repeating the exact same

00:49:50.960 cycles of harm and abuse that happened to her. One of the things that really turned me off from

00:49:55.620 Nicki Minaj where I sort of like drew my own line in the sand and was like I don't even really want 1.00

00:50:00.200 to listen to this woman's music anymore because I can no longer stand her as a person was her 1.00

00:50:05.480 association with 6ix9ine. Wait can you explain as like I almost exclusively listen to pop music so 1.00

00:50:12.120 you gotta you gotta help me out here. 6ix9ine is a rapper who around this time uh was doing like

00:50:19.820 really highly charting music with nikki minaj she was she did trolls with him i was gonna say

00:50:25.040 didn't they do the troll song together six nine has had a lot of different legal issues but one

00:50:31.060 of the things that really bothered me was that in 2015 he pled guilty and i'm reading directly

00:50:37.620 from the wikipedia description here he pled guilty to a felony count of use of a child in a sexual

00:50:45.160 performance. So he had this video involving this 13 year old girl that was distributed online. And

00:50:52.860 it was part of a music video. And I remember reading about this incident being so disturbed,

00:50:57.320 seeing that Nicki Minaj was like working with him at the same time. And being like, this to me

00:51:02.120 really like has shaken like my perception of her like, I kind of think this is my personal breaking

00:51:06.940 point. But what's interesting about this as well, is that six nine is still accepted broadly in our

00:51:12.540 culture today i'm home for the holidays and my brother put on the jake paul fight on netflix

00:51:18.320 when jake paul came out into the stadium he was literally with six nine i mean fork found in

00:51:23.720 kitchen but yeah but it's like this is on netflix like people aren't really talking about this

00:51:27.920 people aren't really like condemning this or even taking notice of this and that's because we live

00:51:31.700 in a culture that enables and rewards this behavior there's any consolation six nine is 0.99

00:51:36.480 broke right now like i had to bankrupt all these things sell all this shit like he is down the fuck 0.99

00:51:41.240 bad like fully fully ain't nobody fucking with six and a half crumbs of justice crumbs of justice 0.99

00:51:46.720 we exist in this culture that rewards and enables this cycle of violence nikki minaj again she's not 0.99

00:51:53.060 operating or making these decisions in a vacuum she's responding and engaging with like the exact 0.90

00:51:58.120 same incentive structure that exists more broadly in our culture and so that's not an excuse or

00:52:03.740 justification for anything that she does it just like it occurs to me that like she is doing what

00:52:10.960 essentially society is encouraging her to do yeah yeah yeah absolutely right Kat like she's

00:52:16.640 convinced herself she's convinced herself that the victims are wrong and the people who are doing the

00:52:20.060 abuse are on the right but in addition to that she's also hoping to protect herself she's trying

00:52:25.100 to keep herself safe and she's she's convinced herself that this is inevitable but there is the

00:52:30.520 token you know Charles Derrick Bell talks about this in faces at the bottom of the well and he

00:52:33.780 talks about rules of racial racial stomach she thinks okay if I'm in the if I'm in the music

00:52:38.340 industry that treats women like this and sees women like this, I'm going to be the woman 1.00

00:52:42.320 that parrots what they're saying. So they'll protect me and fuck them. It's the same thing 1.00

00:52:47.040 she's doing now. It's like, okay, Donald Trump in number of power, whatever, I'm going to be the

00:52:51.040 one to get up there and say all this about black women, say all this about this group, say all

00:52:54.260 this, say what y'all want to hear. So you protect me while everybody else is in danger. It's a

00:53:00.200 foolishly short-sighted defense mechanism, but it's one that we've seen Nicki Minaj employ in 0.64

00:53:05.040 every situation. She's always going to be the one to speak against the interests of the group that 0.99

00:53:09.540 she is actually a part of because she thinks that the majority will protect her if she aligns with

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00:54:37.840 slash fruity. And now let's get back to the episode.

00:54:43.400 So amidst all of this legal drama, and what I would say at this point is like reputational

00:54:49.560 turmoil, COVID hits. And up until this point, most of what we know about Nicki Minaj's political

00:54:56.580 identity is basically everything I've told you so far. It's pretty incoherent. It's more or less

00:55:02.400 anti-Trump based on immigration policy, but she doesn't come out like that stridently against

00:55:08.060 anything he does. And then in September of 2021, she hits us with perhaps the tweet that kicked off

00:55:16.900 the undoing of the United States as we know it today. I feel like I have this tweet burned in

00:55:24.000 the back of my brain like i could recite it in my sleep but nonetheless my cousin in trinidad 0.87

00:55:30.240 won't get the vaccine because his friend got it and became impotent his testicles became swollen

00:55:37.540 his friend was weeks away from getting married now the girl has called off the wedding so just

00:55:44.220 pray on it and make sure you're comfortable with your decision not believe this was basically an

00:55:50.400 explanation of why she wouldn't be at the Met Gala the following day because she wasn't vaccinated

00:55:54.640 and there was a vaccination requirement now this was the tweet heard around the world my my like

00:56:03.440 in hindsight wasn't the cousin her cousin's friend in Trinidad like wasn't he just didn't 0.95

00:56:07.880 he just get chlamydia isn't that because like his balls got swollen and he became impotent so his

00:56:14.000 wife left him it's not making none of this is making sense the the i do think the real explanation

00:56:20.300 here is that her cousin's friend who never gets identified by the way cheated on his fiance got

00:56:27.560 chlamydia because he got chlamydia the wife finds out and then leaves it like isn't that the most

00:56:32.240 plausible explanation tell me if i'm wrong the most plausible explanation is that nikki minaj 1.00

00:56:37.320 be doing substances and talking shit on twitter there's no there's no evidence that if she didn't

00:56:43.320 pull all of this out like does any part of this sound like why would it even be let me ask yourself 0.99

00:56:50.540 what caribbean man do you know would volunteer to anybody that he can't get his dick up so his 0.98

00:56:57.680 wife leave him let alone volunteer it to somebody that might tell it to a rap superstar who might 0.94

00:57:03.480 tweet it i i agree it makes no sense at all and it strikes me as like part of a pattern of like

00:57:13.300 Like, okay, she's getting heat because she didn't go to the Met Gala.

00:57:16.500 Rather than say, like, it's because I refuse to get vaccinated.

00:57:20.160 She concocts this, like, wild story to sort of, like, shift the blame, shift the attention.

00:57:26.520 I mean, it worked.

00:57:27.720 It worked because this became such a massive, like, meme.

00:57:31.680 And even people who, like, don't pay attention to Nicki Minaj at all were, like, taking note of this.

00:57:38.140 And it just became, like, such a pivotal moment in pop culture at this point in time.

00:57:41.900 This was during like the height of like the vaccination wars, let's say. And I remember like Tucker Carlson being on Fox News like Nicki Minaj is one of us. Officials in Trinidad, the health ministry in Trinidad investigated this claim. They were like, who is Nicki Minaj's cousin's friend?

00:58:01.400 they ended up releasing public statements saying that they, quote, wasted so much time trying to

00:58:07.580 confirm Nicki Minaj's comments about the COVID jab. The White House got on the phone with Nicki

00:58:14.020 Minaj to discuss like why the vaccine was safe, and she didn't need to worry about it. And it's

00:58:21.000 interesting that government officials from multiple countries got involved as a result of this one

00:58:26.240 tweet. But I think it just speaks to her influence, right? It speaks so much attention we give

00:58:29.960 coked outs with a rant you see what i'm saying like this is what this that's what this is like

00:58:34.280 you don't listen to if you see a crazy person on the road raving and ranting you don't you don't

00:58:38.800 ask yourself hmm i wonder what they mean like you don't you don't try to make sense of it but that's

00:58:44.040 what people do with nikki minaj and it doesn't make sense because look at the words that are on

00:58:48.080 the paper like look at the words that we're pretending could have come from somewhere

00:58:52.100 legitimate my cousin in trinidad won't get the vaccine because his friend got it and became

00:58:58.260 impotent his testicles became swollen and we over here maybe her cousin maybe the cousin friend 1.00

00:59:05.580 don't exist they don't exist none of it's real Nicki Minaj would be talking fuck Nicki Minaj 0.99

00:59:14.260 would double down on her anti-vax politics in December of 2023 where she said every time I

00:59:21.600 talk about politics people get mad I'm sorry but I am not going to be told who I should get on

00:59:27.580 social media and campaign for her. There's a lot we don't know that's going on in the government,

00:59:32.000 and I don't think it changes whether you lean to the left or the right. I don't know. I just think

00:59:36.800 the whole vaccine thing, to your point, it was so absurd, but she also got a lot of backlash for it.

00:59:45.220 And one thing that I think becomes extremely visible about Nicki Minaj from here on out is

00:59:51.160 that she just does not know how to deal with backlash and she always as many people do 0.97

00:59:57.940 politically especially celebrities and you know people like jk rowling come to mind she pushes

01:00:04.240 herself deeper into what she already thinks and already says no matter how unfounded it is no

01:00:09.340 matter how wrong it is no matter how hurtful it is because people telling her that she's wrong

01:00:13.440 reinforces her belief that she's right i feel like we've seen this kind of it's not like so

01:00:18.040 much of a shift in that I think a lot of celebrities have felt this way and a lot of people have like

01:00:22.720 felt this way for a long time and behaved this way but there's much more transparency and sort

01:00:27.820 of pride I feel like in that perspective in celebrity culture now in a like post 2020 era

01:00:34.540 than I feel like we had before. It's also interesting to me that during these years the

01:00:38.800 latter 2010s and the early 2020s the landscape of female rap is really rapidly changing in a way

01:00:45.880 that clearly threatens Nicki Minaj,

01:00:48.480 who for her whole career has identified

01:00:51.820 as female rap's number one star. 1.00

01:00:54.760 And rightfully so from the beginning.

01:00:57.160 But by the early 20s, Cardi B is a similarly statued rival.

01:01:03.340 Megan Thee Stallion has blown up.

01:01:05.020 Doja Cat, Lotto, Sweetie, Ice Spice, Flo Millie, Glorilla.

01:01:09.380 All of these women finding their own success

01:01:11.820 in a way that makes Nicki insecure. 0.99

01:01:15.320 I think it's interesting that she goes through some version of this like mid-career crisis

01:01:20.200 that a lot of entertainers who make the MAGA pivot go through.

01:01:25.140 No, you're right.

01:01:25.840 But she's only in crisis because of that, like, again, it's a gatekeeper mindset.

01:01:30.660 Like, she never stopped being successful.

01:01:32.580 She's actually been able to be successful and have a sustained amount of relevance and

01:01:37.500 legitimacy longer than most ever have.

01:01:40.080 but that's the problem with when you are greedy and selfish and you want it to only be you you

01:01:45.120 can never have enough if you think you're supposed to have everything and Nicki Minaj has made it

01:01:48.780 very clear that she does not want or like other women in rap to have a mod not even just other 0.93

01:01:55.280 women in rap she was talking shit about SZA the other day she does not like women period to have 0.99

01:01:59.860 a modicum of success so she'll never be happy Nicki Minaj thinks that she's supposed to have 0.98

01:02:04.800 it all and there's just nothing you can do about a person like that you can have a bottomless pit

01:02:08.960 of ambition. I suffer from that. You can also even be an egomaniac and make it, but you still

01:02:14.340 have to be realistic. For example, 50 Cent is an egomaniac with a lot of ambition, who's an

01:02:19.460 unpleasant person. But 50 Cent has managed to be really successful because he clues into reality.

01:02:25.220 50 Cent has a book, Hustle Harder, Hustle Smarter. I've read it. He talks about in there,

01:02:30.220 50 Cent, too, wanted to dominate rap and dominate hip hop and all these things. And he did for a

01:02:34.060 long time. And he said, and then he realized, hey, listen, hip hop is a young man's sport.

01:02:37.760 Like I realized I was going to venues and realized this is not the same as what it was.

01:02:41.600 They're not responding to me here the way that they were. 0.91

01:02:44.520 And I realized like, oh shit, if I still want to be who I want to be, I still want to be 0.97

01:02:49.540 a big thing. 0.99

01:02:50.220 I still want to make money.

01:02:51.000 I want to do this.

01:02:51.620 Like I can still do that.

01:02:52.740 I can still have like more ambitions and visions, but I have to pivot in some way.

01:02:56.800 Nicki Minaj does not, is not a person who wants to change with times or adapt. 0.90

01:03:02.160 She doesn't want to adapt.

01:03:02.780 She expects and demands that the world adapts to her and it doesn't work like that. 0.96

01:03:07.840 And when it doesn't, she just continues to lash out and lash out and lash out and lash out year after year after year. 0.91

01:03:13.240 Yeah. And she definitely also struggles, as so many celebrities do, so many celebrities who end up going right do, with conflating all criticism as hate.

01:03:23.480 And I think this is especially unfortunate because Nicki Minaj struggled so much, as we've identified, especially early in her career, with like so much sexism, so much racism, misogynoir.

01:03:34.520 I think something that she does is like when she gets flack, for example, for this lawsuit of harassing the victims of her family members who are sexual abusers, she, I think, compartmentalizes that with all of the actual like bigoted hate that she's received and puts it all under this umbrella of like, well, everyone's out to get me.

01:03:57.520 She just becomes, it's almost like a broken machine, unable to process any sort of criticism.

01:04:04.600 And there is no better example of this happening than her beef with Megan Thee Stallion, which could be its own series of seven episodes.

01:04:14.040 And I know we've already been recording for like two hours.

01:04:17.120 But do we want to just very quickly touch on what happened with Megan Thee Stallion?

01:04:23.080 It's following like a very similar formula to some of what we've already talked about.

01:04:26.980 nikki hated cardi nikki and cardi were at each other's throats after megan collabed with cardi

01:04:32.760 this is when things went really really south of her relationship with nikki then you have kind of

01:04:37.680 the back and forth through the music where megan releases hiss which is an amazing song well before 1.00

01:04:43.460 hiss important to mention you gotta remember um red ruby the sleeves nikki minaj was dissing her

01:04:48.700 calling her a horse and making jokes about the tori lane shooting her this is a response to at 0.90

01:04:53.520 least two years of Nicki Minaj talking openly, talking shit about Megan Thee Stallion every 0.99

01:04:58.020 time she got. And like, Hiss is significantly more subtle than I think what Nicki had been doing to 0.90

01:05:04.180 Megan. But after Hiss, that's when Nicki releases the AI generated monstrosity. Megan Thee Stallion

01:05:11.440 said, these hoes don't be mad at Megan. These hoes mad at Megan's law. Do you want to explain 1.00

01:05:16.180 what Megan's law is? Megan's law is the law that requires sex offenders to be registered. And as 1.00

01:05:20.640 you know nikki minaj's husband is not only a sex offender he was also recently convicted

01:05:25.100 for not registering as a sex offender when he moved to california and nikki minaj

01:05:29.520 married to a man under said jurisdiction as a as a registered sex offender was shot to the chest 0.73

01:05:36.400 personally offended upset and crashed the fuck out on twitter for like i don't even know how long 1.00

01:05:43.220 it was it was 40 days and 40 nights she was crashing the fuck out just like she always does 0.91

01:05:48.520 it was disgusting like go listen to the song i think that this is an important point too because 0.80

01:05:53.640 everybody always feels the need whenever anyone anyone criticizes nikki minaj anybody you could 0.59

01:05:58.920 be the biggest nikki minaj hater and everybody feels the need to give her her flowers like oh 0.52

01:06:03.160 you know nikki is talented nikki is this nikki was that but let's let's let's start to talk about 0.99

01:06:08.460 the fall off completely because it's not just it hasn't just been a fall off of of mental stability 0.52

01:06:14.580 or a principal or anything like that. 0.99

01:06:17.480 Did you hear that bullshit diss track? 0.97

01:06:19.240 The music ain't been in either, chief. 0.99

01:06:21.100 So not only is it moral bankruptcy, 0.98

01:06:23.240 but it's also garbage. 0.99

01:06:24.660 Because I'll bop to some moral bankruptcy 1.00

01:06:26.240 if it's a banger, all right? 0.99

01:06:28.180 A banger it was not.

01:06:29.640 Megan Thee Stallion just recently won 1.00

01:06:31.580 a defamation lawsuit against a blogger

01:06:34.320 named Milagro Grams,

01:06:35.920 who had been going after her,

01:06:37.820 who tweeted AI generated like deep fakes 0.83

01:06:40.180 of Megan Thee Stallion.

01:06:41.660 Milagro was a Nicki Minaj stan.

01:06:44.000 Like, Milagro was a barb. So not only is Nikki attacking Megan in this way, but she has her fandom getting involved in it, too. You see the way in which, like, the behavior that Nikki is engaging in is both, like, enabled and echoed by this fan base that she has developed, that she has egged on and encouraged to do this, like, antisocial harassment. 1.00

01:07:07.740 ends. So fast forward one more year, November 2025, just last month, Nikki shared a White House 0.69

01:07:15.180 TikTok touting Trump's achievements, including, quote, no men in women's sports and making cities

01:07:22.380 safer, which was just a reference to the deployment of the National Guard. And then Nikki applauds

01:07:29.040 Trump for his outspokenness in the supposed Christian genocide that is supposedly taking

01:07:35.980 place in Nigeria. She took a screenshot of Donald Trump's Truth Social post about the Christian

01:07:44.860 persecution in Nigeria, and she tweeted, reading this made me feel a deep sense of gratitude.

01:07:50.700 We live in a country where we can freely worship God. And she goes on. And then, and this was all

01:07:56.300 in the span of a few days, accepted an invitation to speak at the United Nations on behalf of the

01:08:01.920 administration about the importance of fighting Christian persecution in Nigeria. Now, I was

01:08:08.240 really shocked by this happening and by how little it was discussed at the time. And I also

01:08:17.080 didn't totally know how to talk about it because I, up until this point, was not really privy to

01:08:25.720 nigerian religious extremist paramilitary violence like that's just not something i

01:08:31.360 knew that much about so i didn't want to like speak out of turn but ole i know you know a lot

01:08:36.700 about this so can you explain to people what this is all about i will say i wouldn't i would not

01:08:44.540 qualify myself but it's myself as somebody who knows a lot about it but i do have the basic

01:08:48.160 understanding that everybody could and should have on the issue so it is long time um conservative

01:08:55.960 propaganda conservative evangelical propaganda that they've been doing where they've been saying

01:09:00.200 that there is a genocide happening to christians in nigeria that is not true let me tell you what's

01:09:04.960 happening there is violence happening nigeria there is extremist extremism happening christians

01:09:10.280 are dying but they're not dying for being christian and they are not the majority of who's

01:09:14.300 dying or the targets or being targeted for being Christian. Boko Haram is a terrorist extremist 0.83

01:09:19.380 group that actually mostly targets Muslims because they are like fundamentalist Muslims who want like 0.84

01:09:25.140 the strictest version of Islam to be in practice. And so they target like specifically Muslims that

01:09:31.720 they feel like are open or sympathetic to Western this or anything. You're too soft for them. So 1.00

01:09:37.020 mostly who are going after are Muslims. That's who the majority of the victims are. But conservatives 1.00

01:09:43.000 and have been positioning and intentionally propagandizing it 0.98

01:09:47.140 as Christians are being genocided 0.87

01:09:48.920 because they know that, one, they are playing on the fact 0.99

01:09:51.060 that conservatives and Americans care more about Christians

01:09:54.020 than anybody else.

01:09:55.080 And that is, I want to say that that is a fundamental,

01:09:57.140 like, important thing that has to be recognized.

01:09:59.480 The outright implication that those lives don't matter at all. 0.99

01:10:02.960 They're Muslims who are being killed in droves, 0.99

01:10:06.040 and that doesn't matter. 0.99

01:10:07.220 Nicki Minaj, Donald Trump, what they're saying is,

01:10:09.460 we will defend Christians.

01:10:11.160 We will defend Christian lives.

01:10:12.720 It doesn't matter all these other lives lost, but regardless, it doesn't matter about any

01:10:16.500 of that at all.

01:10:17.260 All this is, is Trump and the Republicans trying to manufacture consent for people to

01:10:22.220 support them invading Nigeria.

01:10:23.760 You hear them saying, we're going to go in there, guns a blazing.

01:10:26.340 And that in and of itself is unfortunate that even if it was what they're trying to pretend

01:10:30.400 it to be, the idea that that would just automatically give America authority, unilateral authority

01:10:35.940 to invade Nigeria, invade Africa and kill who they want in and of itself.

01:10:40.820 And I think that's important because you don't hear anybody saying that. 0.73

01:10:43.580 I have not heard anybody recognize that even if it was what Nicki Minaj and them were saying,

01:10:49.060 that would not give the United States government justification to think they could go into Nigeria guns a blazing.

01:10:55.560 But that is what Nicki Minaj is applauding.

01:10:57.820 That's what she is suggesting.

01:10:58.780 And that's not what's happening.

01:10:59.860 And that is just another excuse for them to go in Africa, not only because Nigeria is a huge country with some of the biggest oil gas reserves in the world.

01:11:09.100 but on top of that what having a foothold in nigeria would mean for their power in the rest 0.79

01:11:13.740 of the region so this is just a power grab that would actually end up with people dead so i say 1.00

01:11:18.400 i'll say nikki minaj is full of shit she's a fascist she's a fascist propagandist and i think 1.00

01:11:24.540 this is worse than anything she's ever done because so far the things that nikki's done 1.00

01:11:29.640 nikki has caused real and material harm the things like what her husband has done what she's alleged 0.92

01:11:34.080 to have done and harassed his victim and all of that nikki has harmed people in the industry or 0.95

01:11:38.280 women dealing with her but what nikki's doing now goes way beyond us having moral objections to it 0.96

01:11:44.260 or not seeing ourselves in our wishing she didn't act like that or anything like that what she's 0.95

01:11:48.160 doing now is quite literally potentially endangering countless people she is helping a fascist white 0.97

01:11:56.800 supremacist regime justify being able to go and murder african people under whatever justification 0.97

01:12:03.640 So that to me is like, you got to hang Nicki Minaj up. There should be no more defenses 0.83

01:12:09.640 of Nicki Minaj in 2020 fucking six. Thank you so much for explaining that so 0.90

01:12:14.720 succinctly. Also, because like when I saw that, I'm like, I don't really understand this. But

01:12:21.260 it's like if there's, you know, religious persecution, violent religious persecution

01:12:25.460 anywhere, it's like as a, you know, as a progressive person, you want to stand against

01:12:29.680 that but also like the concept of trump and trump's administration spearheading in overseas

01:12:36.600 you know human rights issue when they are conducting a genocide in gaza when they

01:12:42.200 refuse to recognize the armenian genocide it's like i'm like something has to be fishy here

01:12:47.960 because i this is this is an administration known best for how little they care about human rights

01:12:53.060 abuses so that makes a lot more sense one of her gay fans on twitter replied to all of this activity

01:13:00.260 at the time and said nikki as a diehard fan who genuinely sticks beside you through every single 1.00

01:13:04.320 scandal you cozying up to this fucking loser meaning trump i might actually have to tap out 0.99

01:13:09.140 your gay fans are so disappointed etc etc and then nikki replies imagine hearing that christians are 1.00

01:13:15.800 being murdered and making it about you being gay when my home was swatted multiple times with my 0.99

01:13:21.580 innocent toddler inside with maybe 20 officers with guns drawn pointed at our home due to 0.99

01:13:27.000 political corruption you being gay couldn't save me crazy she just said imagine hearing the 0.99

01:13:34.860 christians being murdered and making it about you being gay but somebody telling you about what 0.99

01:13:38.400 their experience in being gay and she made it about she got squatted in the house this cuts 0.84

01:13:43.680 directly to the actual issue going on here because you have to wonder right like i have wondered

01:13:51.500 so many times over the last two months. Why has Nicki Minaj suddenly just got so interested in

01:13:58.580 right-wing politics? Could it be that she's actually just taken on a genuine interest and

01:14:04.760 fervor for right-wing politics? Maybe. But she gives away the game a little bit when she seamlessly

01:14:11.640 goes from, apparently I care about Christian persecution in Nigeria, but also I want to

01:14:17.280 talk about the political corruption that led officers to swat my mansion in California.

01:14:23.020 Okay, now we're getting to what's actually going on here. So Nicki Minaj continues throughout

01:14:30.900 November and December to feud with the California governor, Gavin Newsom. Remember, Nicki Minaj

01:14:37.580 lives in California. Gavin Newsom went on Ezra Klein's podcast recently. He said that he would

01:14:44.160 like to see trans kids in the sense that like he would like to see trans kids grow up. Listeners

01:14:49.120 of this podcast know that I will be very hard pressed to go out of my way to defend Ezra Klein

01:14:55.600 or Gavin Newsom. But this was a pretty innocuous statement to which Nikki replies on Twitter.

01:15:02.480 Imagine being the guy running on wanting to see trans kids. Ha ha. Not even a trans adult would

01:15:08.560 run on that normal adults wake up and think they want to see healthy safe happy kids so again now

01:15:16.120 we're doing the transphobic talking points and i'm just wondering what is going on here and i'm still

01:15:22.340 at this point pretty confused because i'm like why does nikki have it out for gavin newsom like this

01:15:28.220 and it goes back to that little blip that she couldn't resist tweeting out about her getting

01:15:33.460 swatted. So Nicki Minaj's house has been swatted, which is basically when for no good reason,

01:15:40.660 people, strangers, oftentimes strangers on the internet stands to call the police to come to

01:15:46.020 your house. It's become more of like a looser term, but it originates from basically like

01:15:50.940 claiming that there's an active hostage situation at someone's house, like filing false reports

01:15:55.880 so that a SWAT team will show up. So Nicki's house in Hidden Hills, California has been swatted

01:16:01.360 a whole number of times, including times where she was home with her then infant child.

01:16:08.820 Now, this is horrible. Swatting is traumatic. I've read so many stories from celebrities and

01:16:15.660 child stars who have been swatted, and it seems truly terrible. But this seems like the product

01:16:21.400 of deranged stans more than like corruption from the California government. And it seems like she's 1.00

01:16:28.840 pinning the trauma of being swatted on gavin newsom and the fact that like he didn't do

01:16:33.800 anything to stop it i think she is pinning who didn't do favors for her i think that's ultimately 0.96

01:16:39.620 all that we are seeing is like it's very clear we've seen based on her nut ass tweets how her 0.98

01:16:45.020 nut ass tweets were taken seriously by the u.s government by the trinidadian government she is 0.98

01:16:49.480 somebody who expects government officials people to stop what they're doing and give her problems 0.83

01:16:55.380 air and it's clear that with Nicki Minaj they don't they don't ever tell us the whole picture

01:16:59.960 but it's clear that whatever situations and problems she finds herself in with her legal

01:17:03.860 and financial troubles she's having with her house with her husband facing more trouble with

01:17:08.240 him not being able to do this she feels like the gag Gavin Newsom is not overextending himself to

01:17:13.540 help her in the way that we see these Republican officials to win it that's it and that's all

01:17:17.680 that's all it's about she has a politic she's a grievance politic and she has that in every 0.90

01:17:22.960 capacity and i think like it's okay to process shit in your own time it's okay to want to be mad 0.58

01:17:28.820 want to be mad about something we want to operate in your own but it's an entirely different thing

01:17:33.860 from like making that your flagship cause and agenda you know what i mean something that you

01:17:38.940 come into the internet with and i think i don't think people of the barbs have ever asked of nikki

01:17:43.080 that she do anything more but not make it so they she's not indefensible and i think that's where 1.00

01:17:49.220 she is now because her entitlement is that is that she thinks the fucking governor of california 0.96

01:17:53.860 should be checking for her like ultimately that's what it boils down to is like no matter what it is 0.99

01:17:58.440 you were going through a normal fucking person doesn't think like you know who should stop what 0.88

01:18:02.540 they doing right now and check on me the governor yes there's also like kind of like a level of 0.99

01:18:09.500 paranoia and delusion to the way that she's drifting that to me indicates that she's just

01:18:15.540 really lost the plot and there could be multiple factors like causing that but regardless she's

01:18:21.640 drawing all of these connections in things that don't necessarily connect to each other she's

01:18:26.620 somehow able to take the trump administration's propaganda around nigeria and connect that to like

01:18:32.800 i'm being swatted online and anyone who's of right mind is not going to connect these things like

01:18:39.220 there is there's a deeper issue also here at this point that she's reached totally and another

01:18:46.120 local grievance political issue that i think is contributing to this anger towards gavin newsom

01:18:52.900 which has become anger towards democrats in general which has led her into the hands of the right

01:18:57.440 is that nikki minaj and kenneth petty her husband were sued by a former security guard

01:19:03.680 who says that Kenneth assaulted him backstage in 2019, they were ordered to pay the guard $500,000

01:19:11.520 and never did. So now currently, a California judge is threatening to force the sale of her

01:19:19.240 $20 million home so they can pay that guard. And I think this is another situation where she's like, 0.52

01:19:26.160 Gavin Newsom, why aren't you doing anything about this? And when you are online, and you're a public

01:19:32.660 figure who starts tweeting about how Gavin Newsom is doing X, Y, and Z wrong. The people who will

01:19:38.520 start cheering you on immediately are very online Republicans. And you start following them and you

01:19:45.500 start seeing what they're posting that lands well. And nothing lands better with a lot of these very

01:19:51.360 online right wingers than transphobia. And here you have this woman through like petty grievances 0.99

01:19:58.460 with the california government but like not even she's just decided to assign the blame there 1.00

01:20:03.400 we have her being fed into the hands of the right where she very quickly like in a matter of like 1.00

01:20:10.240 days ascends the ranks and shows up at america fest because it's the easiest thing to do

01:20:17.200 the easiest thing you do you can do is align with power and drift to the right there's literally 0.99

01:20:22.540 nothing easier and it's not a hard role to play you just get up and say all the bullshit that 1.00

01:20:27.340 you know they want to hear you shit on your people if tomorrow you woke up and said fuck the gays 1.00

01:20:32.160 come right here matt like you know what i mean i've thought about this so many times oh i've 1.00

01:20:37.880 thought about this so many times if i got on this podcast and i got on instagram and i said

01:20:44.940 everything that i've said for the last seven years i realized was wrong and the left is intolerant

01:20:51.760 they're pressuring me to say things that i don't believe in and i'm so afraid that if i say the

01:20:56.960 wrong thing that they're just gonna cast me out and i'm tired of feeling like beholden to the dogma 0.97

01:21:02.640 i wonder how fast turning point usa would have me on that street eat that shit not not to get 0.97

01:21:08.320 not to have a big head about it but like it's so compelling they love they love it they're like 1.00

01:21:15.220 i tried to be liberal but they made it impossible that is their big thing they would fucking 0.98

01:21:21.860 if you said they'd be rich tomorrow. 1.00

01:21:24.740 I mean, this is exactly what Candace Owens did.

01:21:27.120 She literally said, like, overnight, I went from being liberal

01:21:31.300 to realizing that conservatives were right all along

01:21:34.120 and look at what she has built for herself because of that.

01:21:37.060 And the right has also developed this pipeline

01:21:40.060 where they can take advantage of whether it is a malicious,

01:21:44.440 like, fully sane decision to go down that path

01:21:48.960 or whether they're like preying on someone who's in a state of like delusional paranoia or whether

01:21:53.920 it's a combination of both. They have perfected this pipeline. And like, you can see how fast

01:22:00.140 they're able to execute on that and get these people up on a stage where the audience has no

01:22:05.380 discernment of what is happening in front of them. Nicki Minaj was a featured speaker at America

01:22:10.360 Fest within like weeks of her actually openly embracing the Trump administration. Like they

01:22:16.820 have that shit on lock the only value that they have for marginalized people is to be validation 1.00

01:22:22.220 piece for them to point to and say see this that black person said that anti-black they said it's 1.00

01:22:27.020 okay that gay person said it that immigrant said it that's all you're there for it's a very easy 1.00

01:22:31.740 role to play they will always come come come come they don't like nikki minaj i don't give a fuck 0.99

01:22:35.920 about nikki minaj they didn't listen to fucking super bass but they see an opportunity that's all 0.99

01:22:41.060 it is they see and they're like oh great a black superstar black rap superstar ready to shill for 0.98

01:22:45.760 us beautiful let's invite her in all she needs is a little bit of ego stroking and that's it 0.76

01:22:50.600 because that's all she wants out of it and that's what i said it's clear in all her responses all 1.00

01:22:54.880 the time she likes power and she wants to see who is willing to give her a breadcrumb that's why

01:23:01.320 she goes oh mit romney oh obama said something nice to me okay mama thank you thank you mama

01:23:05.460 babe you know what i mean oh trump oh you you saying something funny you saying whatever all 0.99

01:23:09.260 of a sudden that's all it's about if gavin newsom had said fuck coddie b and her new album was 0.99

01:23:14.540 was trash nikki minaj would be here campaigning for him right now it's such a shallow way to 0.99

01:23:22.560 engage with politics because it's not even engaging with politics it's just engaging with 0.85

01:23:27.780 like ego and and it's such to me it's like it's like an abuse of of power and of of influence

01:23:35.020 yeah it's a politic of grievance your politics are moved based on how what your grievance is

01:23:40.500 and her grievance is about her and so her politics are about her unfortunately it harms more than just

01:23:45.800 her and that's the issue i want to play just two selected clips from this uh america fest appearance

01:23:53.980 she made with erica kirk who just watching these two women try to interact with each other

01:23:59.740 having zero shared lived experience is so funny it was so awkward they didn't have nothing to say

01:24:06.620 Erica's just like, I love her.

01:24:08.620 Yeah, I know what you mean.

01:24:10.020 People be trying to judge me too.

01:24:11.700 Why do you think speaking your mind has become so controversial?

01:24:17.860 Because people no longer are using their minds, their brains.

01:24:28.500 So right now, just imagine we're not allowed to have a different opinion anymore.

01:24:36.620 we're not allowed to think out loud anymore we're not like it just this is not what the world used

01:24:47.380 to feel like and especially for the young people I don't want them growing up in a world where they

01:24:54.620 feel like that I mean they deserve for their voices to be heard they have valid feelings and

01:25:02.300 and they're thinking about things and it and it deserves attention you know we we should we should

01:25:08.980 listen to what they're saying one thing i will say about the right-wing grift and one of my least

01:25:15.100 favorite things about it that i've lamented on this podcast many times is that it takes even the

01:25:20.880 most skilled even if you hate someone like nikki minaj jeffree star these are people who at their

01:25:28.740 height like they were so interesting whether you like them or not they were so interesting

01:25:33.980 and it makes these people so boring you are just doing what you can't even have an opinion anymore

01:25:40.320 you're just doing like old man yelling at cloud you sound like bill maher yes oh she just has

01:25:47.120 nothing to say they literally they've gone over that with her like these are the questions this

01:25:51.300 is how to answer and then she's just trying her best to remember a little bit of what they said 0.99

01:25:55.180 like try to recall it and make it sound natural she doesn't she doesn't believe the shit that's 0.99

01:25:59.480 coming out of her mouth she's just saying whatever and i think that's i think that's just as bad as 0.99

01:26:03.440 believing it and she and she can't even recite it either and i love that they clap regardless when

01:26:08.320 she goes people no longer use their minds that's exactly my dream my auntie when she's drunk is

01:26:16.620 just like that why do you think like people have a problem with people speaking their minds it's so

01:26:21.340 funny because it's a leading question like erica's already like trying to feed her the answer

01:26:25.200 like in the question because it's clear she's struggling to remember the script and still all

01:26:29.120 she came up with was because they're not using their minds and the whole audience still goes

01:26:34.680 crazy for it because all they need is like the vague contours of like cancel culture it's just

01:26:41.500 buzzwords or things approximating buzzwords are enough they like the idea that they think we're

01:26:46.880 upset and so every time she says something they're like they're like it's like pump that into my

01:26:50.980 veins and they think people are angry right now that's the reason why when people are leaving

01:26:54.760 twitter they wanted to go on blue sky they need to be they're not comfortable enough to believe

01:26:58.880 what they want they want attention it's like when you see them post the videos and they put on the

01:27:01.840 maga hats and they're like looking for someone around to say something like it's not enough 0.99

01:27:06.560 for them to just be there and enjoy their racist bullshit no that's the whole thing about oppression 0.99

01:27:11.100 it needs someone to suffer in their mind they don't give a fuck about mickey minaj what they 1.00

01:27:16.620 like is in their mind they're going oh oh i know those fucking woke liberals are i know they're 1.00

01:27:21.160 fucking mad now you're queen like they're telling themselves all kind of bullshit that we're like 1.00

01:27:25.980 foaming at the mouth because nikki's a fool that's why they're excited that's what they're really 1.00

01:27:29.800 applauding like yeah a hundred percent they a don't realize that like most people do not care 0.99

01:27:36.220 about or like put stock into what nikki minaj says at this point and also like it is so wild

01:27:41.960 that they are doing this victimhood mentality 0.91

01:27:44.400 as they control like all three branches of government

01:27:47.460 in the United States.

01:27:48.680 There's also a moment in this conversation

01:27:50.660 where Erika Kirk is like,

01:27:52.440 do you have any advice for boys?

01:27:55.020 And Nicki Minaj, she's like,

01:27:57.000 well, boys will be boys

01:27:59.360 and there's nothing wrong with that.

01:28:01.680 For boys, boys, be boys.

01:28:07.200 Amen.

01:28:08.200 Be boys, it's okay.

01:28:10.220 Be boys.

01:28:11.040 there's nothing wrong with being a boy how about that amen how powerful is that

01:28:19.700 how profound is that amen boys will be boys and there's nothing wrong with that

01:28:26.020 um yeah that's what i want to say and you can tell it's like she's trying to vaguely adhere

01:28:37.300 to the transphobic talking point, but she doesn't really know it. And she's just trying to say

01:28:43.260 whatever she needs to say for the crowd to go wild, because that's really, I think,

01:28:47.880 what she wants out of this. You know, there's this theory that is going around that Nicki

01:28:52.320 Minaj's rightward shift is an attempt to get Trump to pardon her husband. I don't fully buy

01:28:59.980 into that. First of all, the president can't pardon state level convictions. And a legal

01:29:07.020 scholar Matt Bernstein. You're correct. But Kenneth Petty's attempted rape conviction is

01:29:14.620 a state conviction. So there's nothing Trump can do about that. To me, I think her shift can be

01:29:20.800 more explained, and this is my thesis, through a psychological lens of wanting to be loved without

01:29:26.620 fear of criticism than any strategic or legal lens. Like on the professional side, I think this

01:29:33.640 as someone whose career has stagnated, whose art has regressed, who identified so closely with

01:29:40.480 the early title of being the only female rapper that she couldn't handle having peers. And so

01:29:46.040 she did what so many entertainers in mid-career crises do, which is a pivot to the hard right, 0.92

01:29:51.660 which is a demographic so hungry for mainstream celebrity support that they will adore anything 0.92

01:29:57.320 she says or does. And there's nothing Nicki loves more than adoration. And then on the personal

01:30:02.760 side, this is someone who cannot receive criticism ever, and whose inner circle is chock full of 0.99

01:30:08.740 people who have committed rape, child rape. She was tired of getting flack for that. So she goes 0.97

01:30:13.940 to the place where nobody holds anyone accountable for anything, least of all pedophilia, the American

01:30:19.940 right. Right-wingers will never question her support for her husband or her brother or her

01:30:25.280 harassment of their victims, because then they'd have to question their own support for the president

01:30:29.420 who has done all of these things,

01:30:31.540 which is the one thing they're never allowed to do.

01:30:34.020 So she's created a world for herself

01:30:36.260 where she can forever be adored and unchallenged.

01:30:40.480 And the only thing she had to pay for it was her reputation.

01:30:43.940 The thing is, as all tokens learn is that's not true.

01:30:47.020 That's the dream they sell you, but it's not true.

01:30:51.320 You're only useful insofar as you're beneficial

01:30:53.940 and you're only beneficial

01:30:55.020 as when you're parroting their talking points.

01:30:56.880 the very moment and each and every time you do anything else anything autonomous the minute you 0.98

01:31:02.560 want to like actually speak as you not just repeat their talking points they're fucking done with you 0.89

01:31:07.020 and they're and they're done with you now because they haven't bought in they're not gonna go support 0.99

01:31:10.740 your shit they're not gonna be who buys your music they're not gonna be who keeps you popular 1.00

01:31:14.800 the fucking conservatives there are not trying to dress like nikita you're not gonna be their 1.00

01:31:18.280 influencer you're not gonna be any of that you're just a fucking talking beast a token and just like 1.00

01:31:23.860 Herman Cain and Ben Carson and all of them before them, 1.00

01:31:27.960 your Omarosa and Stacey Dash and every fucking body else 0.98

01:31:31.820 that has pipped themselves out has learned 1.00

01:31:34.240 they will have no use for you and then they will discard you.

01:31:37.940 And you'll be left begging for the same communities

01:31:40.380 that you turned your back on to embrace you.

01:31:42.500 And we won't because the music ain't it no more, Chief.

01:31:45.780 I think the sad thing is like,

01:31:47.940 she may get a momentary boost from this new audience,

01:31:51.840 but it's not actually going to work out in the long run.

01:31:54.820 This is kind of like it for her.

01:31:56.480 This is her grand finale.

01:31:58.100 And what a way to go out.

01:32:00.480 I have a teeny tiny epilogue, which is that

01:32:03.500 a video started circulating after this whole America Fest fiasco with Nicki Minaj

01:32:08.320 of Charlie Kirk at one of his college debate events

01:32:11.620 saying that Nicki Minaj is a bad role model.

01:32:16.260 Right now, Black culture is being held captive by influences, songs,

01:32:21.160 and role models. Which influences? I mean, Nicki Minaj, Cardi B. Okay, Nicki Minaj is causing dads 0.98

01:32:26.600 to leave the home. Hold on a second. I don't think that's a good role model for 18-year-old 0.91

01:32:29.440 black girls. I don't. Now, this is just so entirely predictable. But what makes it really 1.00

01:32:35.260 funny to me is that Candace Owens, after Charlie Kirk's death, shared texts that she had exchanged

01:32:43.180 with Charlie, where the two of them were queening out about Nicki's verse on Monster.

01:32:51.160 I'm looking at these texts right now. Charlie sends Candace a screenshot of him listening to

01:32:56.860 Monster. He says, yeah, first things first, I eat your brains with five S's. 0.98

01:33:06.480 He goes, when Nikki drops, I lose my mind. Yes, it gets the blood flowing. I'm about to run a few 0.95

01:33:13.060 miles jamming to it. And I just love this interaction so much because you know what,

01:33:18.140 it's grifters all the way down charlie has no real opinion or worries about whether or not

01:33:25.760 nikki minaj is a good role model for people charlie loves listening to nikki minaj and for

01:33:30.820 whatever it's worth like i think charlie would be so proud of what nikki is doing right now

01:33:35.640 not because she's you know espousing conservative ideals but because she is

01:33:40.560 grifting off of them that's my conclusion you done i usually land on some sort of like joke

01:33:48.360 or something but i feel like that was a great final word cat and ole this was treacherous

01:33:57.960 thank you so much for coming on the journey with me thank you for having us yes this is fun i'm 0.74

01:34:04.520 really i am happy for you ole because you've been like a self-identified nikki hater for a long time

01:34:10.020 and and it's also so hard to feel good about any of this but it's like it does feel like the the

01:34:17.580 blinders have been taken off yes absolutely and you know what we love to see it we love we love

01:34:23.060 to see it it's about time it'd be a safe space for the humanage haters

01:34:26.360 if this terrible year could bring us one good thing it's the fall of the barbs

01:34:33.180 yes legitimately like the barbs are a terrorist organization that we needed to put a stop to

01:34:39.000 where can people find more from each of you you can subscribe to me at olarinati that's my main

01:34:47.900 channel on youtube as well as that's my social media handle on instagram and tiktok and all the

01:34:52.720 places but on youtube olarinati i also have olarinati pop and olarinati bites which has a

01:34:58.180 great video about nikki minaj's foolishness with respect to her propaganda about nigeria and the

01:35:03.320 trump administration and i have ole and chill i have ole and friends so subscribe to any of my

01:35:08.640 channels in the allure nativerse and then i'm at spitfirenews.com and you can also find me at

01:35:14.160 kattenbard on blue sky and instagram and i am matt bernstein and you can find me at a bit fruity 0.99

01:35:19.600 the podcast you just listened to oh wait hee hee ha ha no i'm gonna kill that that was stupid 0.98

01:35:24.180 that was stupid no i like it i am so appreciative that you chose to listen to this episode with us 0.99

01:35:31.880 today it's weird fucking times but i hope that we can make sense of it together 0.99

01:35:35.960 and uh go stream hiss by megan the stallion i love you so much and until next time stay fruity 0.95

A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein - December 26, 2025

Why Nicki Minaj Threw It All Away For Fascism

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Transcript