Nicki Minaj Has a MAGA Coming Out Party With Erika Kirk at AmericaFest

On Sunday morning, Nicki Minaj joined Turning Point USA CEO Erika Kirk as a surprise guest at the right-wing organization’s annual AmericaFest. Onstage, the rapper tried to give the conservative movement something for which it has long been desperate: the cultural upper hand. “We’re the cool kids,” Minaj said, gesturing to the audience. “The other people, they’re the ones who are still just disgruntled, but really they’re just disgruntled with themselves.”

Kirk began the conversation with a comment that pointed to the memory of her husband, Charlie Kirk, who was shot and killed during a public event on September 10. “Charlie was very good about having a surprise for every AmFest,” she said before turning to Minaj. “We are so blessed to have you. We are so grateful.”

She then asked Minaj to do a dramatic reading of her recent posts about California governor Gavin Newsom, a potential 2028 contender and one of the weekend’s main conservative bogeymen. After obliging, the rapper started to riff by adding some new insults. “Dear Newscum,” Minaj said, “we don’t have a problem cleaning up the scum if we have to. Please tread lightly. That’s what I would say to Gavvy pooh.”

In certain ways, choosing Minaj as a surprise guest was a baffling homage. Though Charlie apparently enjoyed Minaj’s music, he wasn’t a fan of what she stood for: During a 2024 debate with a student, he said that neither Minaj nor Cardi B was “a good role model for 18-year-old Black girls.”

But that was before Minaj began her rightward migration—a political journey that began amid the pandemic with skeptical tweets about COVID vaccines, including one alleging negative effects on her cousin’s friend’s testicles, and has concluded with effusive praise for President Donald Trump. Last month Minaj made her support for the MAGA movement official when she accepted an invitation from Mike Waltz, the US ambassador to the United Nations, to deliver a speech at the UN’s US headquarters. On November 18, she spoke about the alleged persecution of Nigerian Christians, a Trump-favored issue; ever since, she’s been alternately retweeting fans and making posts complimentary of Trump and Vice President JD Vance. (Minaj, for the record, said last year that she is not a US citizen, meaning she can’t vote in federal elections.)

During her conversation with Kirk on Sunday, Minaj claimed that her metamorphosis started with a religious reawakening after her time in the music industry pulled her away from Christianity. “Like, if you haven’t seen a long-lost best friend for a long time and then you bump into them again, that’s how it’s been feeling for me,” she said. “Just going back to God and praying and talking to him.”

She added that she also doesn’t like the current political climate: “People no longer are using their minds, their brains. So right now, just imagine we’re not allowed to have a different opinion anymore. We’re not allowed to think out loud anymore. This is not what the world used to feel like.”

Onstage, Minaj tripled down on praising both Trump and Vance. “I love both of them—they’re both powerful men, smart, strong, all of that,” she said. “Both of them have a very uncanny ability to be someone that you relate to. I can relate to them. When I hear them speak, I know that they’re one of us.” Minaj was attempting to praise the pair’s looks when she made a strange comment. “Dear young men, you have amazing role models like our handsome, dashing president,” she said. “You have amazing role models like the assassin JD Vance, our vice president.”

Almost instantly, Minaj seemed to remember that she was appearing with a woman whose husband was recently assassinated. She tensed up and put her hand to her mouth.

But Kirk immediately jumped in to brush off any offense. “Trust me, there’s nothing new under the sun that I have not heard, so you’re fine,” she told Minaj. “I love you. I love you. You have to laugh about it, truly. I have been called every single thing, and you know what? God is so good. You let it roll right off your back.”

The brief acknowledgment of Kirk’s painful situation was a moment of uncomfortable grief in a weekend full of them. Throughout AmericaFest, which ran from Thursday to Sunday, Turning Point USA tried to memorialize its founder as a newly minted Christian martyr. Inside the Phoenix Convention Center, the organization set up a tent identical to the one under which Charlie was shot at Utah Valley University; the display stayed up all weekend, functioning as a spot where fans could pay homage—and take selfies.

During the event, Kirk also sat in front of a TPUSA tour bus to imitate the “Prove Me Wrong” debates for which her husband often went viral—though MS Now’s Brandy Zadrozny noted that no one came to challenge her. Instead, admirers asked kind questions. “Erika’s answers, which sometimes rambled,” Zadrozny wrote, “included stories about her husband and insights into biohacking, divine timing, vitamin C, the dangers of Botox, her two small children, and her grief, which felt heavy in the room.”

None of these issues came up when Kirk spoke to Minaj. Instead, the focus was on the rapper and her opinions about culture. At one point, Minaj began to speak about representation and making all people feel beautiful—common concepts in the more diversity-friendly 2010s, when Minaj first got famous. Then she shifted gears, blaming the media for “making young Black children feel proud of themselves,” but “at the same time telling other children not to be proud of themselves.” She added, “No, that’s not how it works. I don’t need someone with blond hair and blue eyes to downplay their beauty, because I know my beauty.”

It was an awkward moment, but at least one person in the audience was paying attention. On Monday morning, Vance—who made headlines of his own with an AmericaFest speech in which he crowed that “in the United States of America, you don’t have to apologize for being white anymore”—went on social media to praise Minaj’s similar message.

“Nicki Minaj said something at Amfest that was really profound,” he wrote. “I’m paraphrasing, but she said, ‘just because I want little black girls to think they’re beautiful doesn’t mean I need to put down little girls with blonde hair and blue eyes.’ We all got wrapped up over the last few years in zero sum thinking. This was because the people who think they rule the world pit us against one another.”