Nicki Minaj Blames Obama and Gavin Newsom for Her MAGA Turn
In 2025, Nicki Minaj fully embraced the MAGA movement. The rapper expressed her support for Donald Trump and spoke at several conservative events. While she previously criticized Trump, she said that two leading Democrats led her to turn her back on the party.
Nicki Minaj shared why she embraced MAGA
Minaj said her frustration with the Democratic Party began with Barack Obama. She didn’t like that people expected Black celebrities to support him. She also didn’t like that he was friends with Jay-Z. Minaj has long feuded with him and believes that a lot of other rappers feel the same way about him as she does.
“I think Jay-Z ended up costing Obama a lot, whether he knows it or not,” she told Time. “Lots of rappers don’t like Jay-Z and were afraid to say it.”
In 2024, Obama campaigned for Kamala Harris. In a speech, he wondered if Black male voters were uncomfortable voting for a woman. Minaj said this made her irritation with him grow.
“I just saw so many videos of Black men saying that they didn’t like the way they felt about that speech that Obama gave,” she said. “They felt like they weren’t being listened to.”
Minaj also said California Governor Gavin Newsom rubbed her the wrong way. In 2022 and 2023, her home repeatedly became the target of anonymous calls that brought the police to her door. She said she reached out to Newsom for help, and didn’t receive it.
“He just completely ignored me, with all the money I spent in taxes,” she said.
In 2025, Republican congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna reached out to Minaj about the swatting calls. She said that this made her feel ready to publicly come out as a conservative.
Nicki Minaj criticized Donald Trump before her MAGA turn
While Minaj is now one of Trump’s most vocal celebrity supporters, she once said she did not support him. She took particular issue with his immigration policies.
“[W]hat stuck with me was the children being taken away from their parents when they came into this country,” she told Rolling Stone. “That really bothered me because I was one of those immigrant children coming to America to flee poverty. And I couldn’t imagine a little child going through all of that, trying to get to another country because they didn’t have money in their country, or whether you’re fleeing from war … and then being taken away from the one person that makes you feel comfort.”
While she enjoyed watching him on The Apprentice, she said she couldn’t support him as a politician.
“That is what really raised my eyebrows,” she said. “That is what made me go, ‘Something about this doesn’t sit right in my spirit.’”
Evidently, her stance has changed.
She said she feels like Donald Trump has been bullied
Minaj also said that she began to feel more aligned with MAGA because of what she perceived as the mistreatment of Trump.
“Religious freedom is something that’s very important to me, but if I’m being honest, President Trump … when I saw how he was being treated, over and over and over, I just couldn’t handle it,” she said on The Katie Miller Podcast, which is hosted by United States Homeland Security Advisor Stephen Miller’s wife (via Billboard).
She said she could relate to this.
“I felt that a lot of that bullying and the smear campaigns and all of the lying, I felt that that had been done to me for so many years,” she said. “And I was watching it in real time happen to someone else, and I didn’t think he deserved it.”
