Nicki Minaj, who revealed in 2018 that she was brought to the United States as an “illegal immigrant” from Trinidad and Tobago when she was 5 years old, flashed a Trump gold card Wednesday after an event formally launching the president’s IRA-style savings accounts for children. Her citizenship paperwork, she said on social media, was being finalized.
“Residency? Residency? The cope is coping. … Finalizing that citizenship paperwork as we speak as per MY wonderful, gracious, charming President,” the “Bang Bang” rapper, 43, wrote Wednesday on X, including a photo of the Chucky character flipping his middle finger. “Thanks to the petition. … I wouldn’t have done it without you. Oh CitizenNIKA you are thee moment. Gold Trump card free of charge.”
That post mentioning the card, which delivers citizenship in the United States for those who pay $1 million, may have referred to multiple petitions arguing that the rapper — real name Onika Tanya Maraj-Petty — should be deported to Trinidad and Tobago, where she was born before being raised in Queens, N.Y. A previous post contained a photo of the gold card and the single word “Welp …”
“I came to this country as an illegal immigrant @ 5 years old,” the rapper wrote on Facebook in 2018, posting a photo from the first Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” period of immigration enforcement when migrant children were being separated from their migrant parents at the country’s southern border.
The photo showed children on padded floor mats with silver Mylar thermal blankets, walled in by chain-link fencing. “I can’t imagine the horror of being in a strange place & having my parents stripped away from me at the age of 5. This is so scary to me. Please stop this. Can you try to imagine the terror & panic these kids feel right now?”
In 2020, she said in a Rolling Stone interview that she thought Trump was “funny as hell” on “Celebrity Apprentice” but was bothered by the images of children taken from their parents.
President Trump talks with rapper Nicki Minaj in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday at an event launching the Trump Accounts savings and investment program for children.
(Jose Luis Magana / Associated Press)
“I was one of those immigrant children coming to America to flee poverty,” Minaj told the outlet. “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. That is what really raised my eyebrows.”
At the time, she said she would not “jump on the Donald Trump bandwagon.”
But Minaj has since come around to support the president in his second term, even calling herself his “No. 1 fan” in remarks Wednesday. “And that’s not going to change,” she said.
“The hate or what people have to say, it does not affect me at all. It actually motivates me to support him more, and it’s going to motivate all of us to support him more,” Minaj said. “We’re not going to let them get away with bullying him and the smear campaigns. It’s not going to work, OK? He has a lot of force behind him, and God is protecting him.”
The president introduced her as “the greatest and most successful female rapper in history,” a title that’s accurate going by record sales and overall presence on the Billboard Hot 100. (Of course, Missy Elliott and Ms. Lauryn Hill might want to have a conversation.)
“I didn’t know Nicki, and I’ve been hearing over the years she’s a big Trump supporter, Trump fan,” POTUS continued. “And she took a little heat on occasion because her community isn’t necessarily a Trump fan.”
Trump said Minaj was among those stepping up, along with people including Dell Computers Chief Executive Michael S. Dell, and donating “hundreds of thousands of dollars” of her money to the new accounts. In addition to her generosity, POTUS was definitely a fan of Minaj’s long, painted, pointy pink manicure. He chuckled as he told the audience, “I’m going to let my nails grow, because I love those nails. I’m going to let those nails grow.”
In December, before Christmas, the rapper also appeared onstage with conservative activist Erika Kirk, widow of Charlie Kirk, who was slain in September at Utah Valley University. Minaj took the opportunity at the Phoenix conference of Kirk’s organization, Turning Point USA, to praise Trump and mock California Gov. Gavin Newsom.
Minaj, a Christian, praised Trump at the time for standing up for Christians being persecuted in Nigeria and elsewhere.
“I have the utmost respect and admiration for our president,” Minaj said. “I don’t know if he even knows this but he has given so many people hope that there is a chance to beat the bad guys and to win and to do it with your head held high.”
She also declared onstage that there was “nothing wrong with being a boy.”
“How about that?” she continued. “How powerful is that? How profound is that? Boys will be boys, and there is nothing wrong with that.”
Then Minaj read aloud some of her social media posts mocking Newsom, calling him “Newscum” and “Gavie-poo” and criticizing his advocacy on behalf of “trans kids.”
It’s not as if the “Starships” rapper hid the ball about being harsh when she said in 2023 that she was willing to “be cussing out” certain people at certain times.
“When I hear the word mean, I think about the core of who the person is,” she told Vogue. “I always tell people that the difference between being mean and being a bitch is that bitch passes. Bitch comes and goes. Mean is who you are. I could be the biggest bitch, at the height of my bitch-ness, but if the person I may be cussing out at that time needs something from me, I’m going to give it to them. I have to be able to look in the mirror and be OK with myself.”
Trump accounts for children, a new type of IRA for U.S. citizens who are younger than 18 on Dec. 31 of the year an account is opened, are part of the “Big Beautiful Bill” of tax breaks and spending cuts that was signed into law last summer.
For children born during the second Trump administration, calendar years 2025 through 2028, the accounts will be seeded with $1,000 from the U.S. Treasury when a parent submits a form to the IRS to open the account. Additional pre-tax contributions of up to $5,000 a year are allowed but not required, and a parent is the custodian of the account until the child turns 18. Withdrawals for education, housing or business will be taxed as ordinary income.
Minaj is married to Kenneth Petty — who served four years in prison after being convicted of attempted rape in New York in 1995 — and the couple has one son. Nicknamed “Papa Bear,” the tot was born in 2020, about five years too soon to qualify for that $1,000.