After publicly supporting Donald Trump and the Republican Party in recent months, Nicki Minaj is opening up about why she became vocal in her support for the President.

During an interview with Time, Minaj says a major reason that she was turned off to Democrats was that after her home was “swatted” several times after trolls would call the police and trigger outsized responses, she requested time to sit down with Governor Gavin Newsom, who allegedly didn’t reply.

“He just completely ignored me, with all the money I spent in taxes,” she says.

In 2025, Republican congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna offered assistance to Minaj, and it solidified the interest she had in the Republican party. She even considered taking her support public.

“I was shocked,” Minaj says of the response to her swatting. “I’d never seen anyone in politics treat me that way. That’s what made me say that I don’t care to keep this a secret anymore.”

Minaj says she initially declined to speak out as she didn’t want to split her fanbase.

“I felt that way already about him, just that I didn’t dare act like that publicly,” Minaj says. “It’s been ingrained in everyone’s brain in the music business that we are supposed to be a Democratic family. I just knew they would not like me supporting Trump.”

Minaj also says rap rival Jay-Z was involved in her ideological shifts.

“I think Jay-Z ended up costing Obama a lot, whether he knows it or not,” she says. “Lots of rappers don’t like Jay-Z and were afraid to say it.”

Jay-Z and President Obama have shown a public-facing friendship through the years, from Obama inducting Jay-Z into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2021 to Jay-Z campaigning for Obama.

Minaj also says that a 2024 speech Obama gave supporting Kamala Harris, which encouraged Black men to vote for a woman president, pushed her further away from the Democratic Party.

“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 says. “They felt like they weren’t being listened to.”

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