Trump told a packed arena in Port Huron, Michigan, on Sunday that Nicki Minaj’s [expletive] is “hard to miss,” and he said it with the rapper in the building as his guest.
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The comment came during a rally at McMorran Place Arena, where Trump was campaigning for former Rep. Mike Rogers, the Republican running for Michigan’s open U.S. Senate seat, nine days before the November 3 midterms. Nicki Minaj traveled to Michigan with Trump on Air Force One and posted from the plane calling herself the “Air Force One Barbie.”
Trump got to Minaj by way of Jon Husted. The Ohio senator played college football, and Trump has spent two weeks explaining why he looked Husted over while Husted spoke at an Ohio rally. He first brought it up at an October 12 rally in Youngstown and defended it again October 20 in Greenville. In Port Huron, he described that kind of attention as unusual for him, then drew a distinction that landed squarely on Minaj.
“By the way, I looked at one hell of a beautiful [expletive] before Nicki Minaj,” Trump said. “That’s hard to miss.”
He followed it with, “I hope Nicki wasn’t insulted, but we love Nicki,” and went right back to complaining about how the press covered his Husted remarks.
Later in the rally, Trump called Nicki Minaj to the stage. “I am so honored to be working with this president,” she told the crowd. She also picked up one of the campaign’s familiar themes, telling supporters, “We don’t want our children to be bombarded with sex changes.”
Before the rally, Minaj sat down on Air Force One with White House communications director Steven Cheung. She gave Trump her full endorsement, told conservatives Republicans are winning and should not let anything stand in their way, and brought up Hillary Clinton, pointing out that polls had Clinton ahead before she lost in 2016.
Her Port Huron appearance came one day after Barack Obama campaigned for Democrats in Detroit, where one of her songs was reportedly booed.
Nicki Minaj has grown louder in her support of Trump over the past year. In January, she joined him at the Treasury Department’s Trump Accounts summit, a program that sets up investment accounts for children, and called herself his “number one fan,” saying the hate she gets for it only makes her support him more. Trump said that day he would grow his nails out like hers and held her hand onstage. It is a long way from where she stood years ago, when she was openly critical of his hardline immigration policies.
