Nicki Minaj’s Maga conversion is doing nothing for her career – or is it? | Arwa Mahdawi

Starships are meant to fly, but Nicki Minaj’s musical career is now doing a Maga-propelled nosedive. For the past few months, the rapper and former gay icon has been horrifying many of her fans by cosying up to the Trump administration.

In November, for example, Minaj shared a post by Donald Trump about the treatment of Christians in Nigeria and agreed to collaborate with the administration on awareness around the issue. Then, in December, the rapper made a surprise appearance at Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest convention, where she heaped praise on the late Charlie Kirk (who once said Minaj was not a good role model for “18-year-old Black girls”) and the vice-president, JD Vance. She also accidentally called Vance an “assassin” while talking to Erika Kirk, Charlie’s widow, but was quickly forgiven for her word choice. “I love this woman,” Erika Kirk proclaimed after the weird gaffe.

Not everyone shares that love. Two online petitions to have Minaj deported now have more than 120,000 signatures. Minaj came to the US from Trinidad and Tobago as an undocumented child and has been outspoken about Trump’s hardline immigration policies. She even once rapped about them: “Island girl, Donald Trump want me go home,” she sang in 2016. Perhaps she is reckoning that now she has got a green card, and is being broadly pro-Trump, the president is not going to send her home, no matter how many petitions go viral.

I suppose I could jump on a high horse and talk about how awful it is that some apparent progressives are trying to weaponise Trump’s dystopian immigration policies against Minaj now that’s she’s gone all Maga. But, honestly, who has the energy for that? There is a lot more to be outraged about than people wanting to deport an annoying pop star.

What has happened to the rapper’s own moral outrage, though, I have to wonder. Minaj once seemed genuinely upset about Trump’s family separation policies. Has she really been Maga-fied or is something else going on? One conspiracy theory doing the rounds online is that Minaj might want the president to pardon her husband, Kenneth Petty (a registered sex offender), and brother (a child rapist). We all know Trump loves pardoning terrible people but he can’t erase state convictions, so this theory seems unlikely.

Or has Minaj figured out that, if you play your cards right, getting “cancelled” by progressives and joining Team Trump is a lucrative career move? She may have lost some fans, but give it a few months and she’ll be the new head of the FBI, president of Venezuela or queen of Greenland.

Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist

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