“The hate or what people have to say, it does not affect me at all,” Minaj said as Trump smiled behind her on Wednesday. “It actually motivates me to support him more.” It was, despite the online outcry, a natural attitudinal fit: Her career has been powered in part by her appetite for protracted public feuds with her fellow female rappers, Megan Thee Stallion and Cardi B among them, both of whom endorsed Kamala Harris during the 2024 campaign. “You look pretty good behind the seal, by the way,” Bruesewitz told Minaj during a fireside chat. “I must admit: Your competition, which really isn’t competition, didn’t really look good behind the seal when they were with Kamala Harris.”
Trump’s affiliation with hip-hop more broadly dates back to his time in New York’s nightclubs during the ’90s, a history evoked by his answers to recent questions about whether he would consider pardoning Sean “Diddy” Combs. After inspiring countless rap lyrics in the decades to follow, his 2024 campaign advisers figured they could lean into the outlaw credibility accrued by the criminal charges he faced and the attempt on his life. As Bruesewitz spent time in Los Angeles in recent years, building ties with entertainers, athletes, and influencers, he started talking with Amber Rose, the model and hip-hop personality who dated Kanye West before marrying Wiz Khalifa. (She and the Pittsburgh rapper divorced in 2016.) Rose, who announced her support for Trump shortly before speaking at the Republican National Convention during the campaign, started adding Bruesewitz to group chats with her rapper friends and introduced him to Minaj.
At the RNC, Rose also met Florida congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna. At 36, Luna, a former model, has described herself as “one of the OG politicos on Instagram”—it was Charlie Kirk, with his own emphasis on the importance of social media in politics, who first encouraged her to pursue this path—and since her election in 2023, has helped foster ties between Republicans and rappers including 50 Cent and Tory Lanez. “When they tried to take [Trump’s] mugshot,” Luna said last week, “that actually was the biggest backfire in American history.”
Rose eventually put Luna in touch with Minaj as well, and in July, months before any of Minaj’s recent Trump-affiliated appearances, she and the congresswoman were tweeting at each other about Minaj’s claim that an associate of a rival’s record label was threatening her.
“Please text my cell,” Luna wrote. “I will forward this to law enforcement immediately.”