Rapper Nicki Minaj appeared to confirm suspicions behind her very public support for President Donald Trump on Wednesday, revealing that the commander-in-chief gifted her with a free Trump Gold Card for a fast-track to U.S. residency.
“Finalizing that citizenship paperwork as we speak as per MY wonderful, gracious, charming President. Thanks to the petition. I wouldn’t have done it without you. Oh CitizenNIKA you are thee moment Gold Trump card free of charge,” Minaj wrote on X after joining President Trump at an event highlighting the newly launched “Trump Accounts” for U.S. newborns.
Minaj, who later joined Trump at the White House and greeted a group of MAGA autoworkers inside the Oval Office, also shared an image of herself holding the gold card emblazoned with Trump’s face and signature.
The disgraced hip-hop star’s Trump Gold Card will almost certainly fuel public scrutiny over her controversial decision to publicly support Trump more than two months ago. Critics of the rapper, who was born in Trinidad, have suggested that her MAGA transformation was a political ploy to gain citizenship and perhaps secure a presidential pardon for her husband, Kenneth Petty, who is a convicted sex offender, and brother, who was convicted of child rape and sentenced to 25 years in prison.
“Nicki Minaj has many, many issues that would lead one to believe that those issues are possibly the reason that she’s cozying up to MAGA right now,” said journalist Don Lemon, who recently publicly clashed with the rapper online. “Under Donald Trump’s rules, she should be picked up, detained, and deported.”
The rules, however, are apparently different if you’re Nicki Minaj–and that’s by design, says Democratic strategist Ameshia Cross.
“The Trump administration is using her, and she, in part, is using them as well. It’s a symbiotic relationship where they feel like they get a certain level of gain,” Cross tells theGrio. She said of the Trump administration, “They’ve always wanted to have somebody in pop culture. They typically have B, C-list, and down artists. So at this point, they’re trying to get somebody who has a bigger name and brand.”
And while many Black Americans have largely tuned out or canceled Nicki Minaj, Cross argued that the Trump administration likely sees value in touting the rapper’s support.
“They recognize that even though they’ve pushed this anti-DEI, anti-Blackness, anti-equity platform for the longest, that Black culture isn’t leaving, so I think that there is a push to try to get more Black people in the celebrity realm to actually be spokespeople,” she said.
Minaj’s “free” Trump Gold Card saves the rapper seven figures, since recipients of the card typically have to make a $1 million contribution after a background check, plus a $15,000 processing fee. The card, launched last month, promises to grant cardholders U.S. residency in “record time.”
“Nick Minaj bragging about being the number one fan of a wannabe dictator who has given the green light for his white nationalist ICE militia to terrorize communities, particularly immigrants like herself, is not the flex she thinks it is,” political commentator Reecie Colbert previously told theGrio. “I would say she should be shamed but it’s obvious that she has none.”
