Trump made Nicki Minaj his largest punchline on the rescheduled WHCA dinner, joking she began twerking when gunshots rang out in April.

Nicki Minaj grew to become the punchline of the evening on the rescheduled White Home Correspondents’ Dinner and he or she wasn’t even within the room when it occurred.

Trump took the stage Friday on the Waldorf Astoria in Washington, D.C., three months after an alleged assassination try pressured the unique April dinner to close down earlier than it ever obtained going. Whereas recounting the chaos of that April 25 evening, when Secret Service rushed him out as gunfire erupted close to a safety checkpoint on the Washington Hilton, the president labored a Nicki Minaj twerking joke into his remarks that had the gang divided. “After listening to the gunshots, many individuals yelled, ‘Get down! Get down!’ which brought about Nicki Minaj to begin twerking,” Trump instructed the roughly 680-person crowd in line with CNN. “She’s the one one that basically understood what that meant.”

The joke had a layer most individuals caught: Nicki wasn’t even on the unique dinner.

She’d been set to attend the April occasion as a Fox Information visitor, however she was working late and caught in visitors when the taking pictures broke out exterior the ballroom.

AllHipHop beforehand reported that she posted a TikTok video from inside a automobile moments after information of the taking pictures broke, captioning it with only a U.S. flag emoji and prayer palms.

She didn’t attend the rescheduled July 24 dinner both, which skipped its conventional crimson carpet and drew far fewer celebrities than the April occasion.

Nonetheless, Trump making her the centerpiece of a joke about one of many scariest nights of his presidency says all the pieces about how tight their relationship has grow to be in 2026.

On the January Trump Accounts Summit, Minaj instructed the gang “I’m most likely the president’s No. 1 fan, and that’s not going to vary. The hate, or what folks must say, it doesn’t have an effect on me in any respect. It really motivates me to assist him extra.”

She stood on stage and held Trump’s hand in entrance of everybody.

Her most up-to-date White Home look got here July 6, when Trump known as her “so revered and so scorching and so nice and such a fantastic good friend of widespread sense” throughout a Rose Backyard luncheon.

Nicki Minaj posted pictures from the Oval Workplace and coined the hashtag #WhiteHouseBarbie.

The MAGA pivot began quietly in late 2025, when Minaj first praised Trump for elevating consciousness concerning the persecution of Christians in Nigeria.

From there it accelerated quick by Turning Level USA, the Trump Accounts Summit, SpaceX in Texas, and the Rose Backyard.

She’s additionally credited a sequence of swatting incidents at her Los Angeles house and what she described as Newsom fully ignoring her pleas for assist because the moments that pushed her into Trump’s orbit.

The backlash from followers and the business has not slowed her down in any respect.

The web was cut up on Trump’s joke as anticipated. Some known as it insensitive given the context of an actual taking pictures.

Others mentioned the timing landed and the gang was reacting regardless. What’s laborious to argue is that the joke wouldn’t land except your entire room already understood precisely who Nicki Minaj is to Trump’s world proper now, and so they clearly do.

Trump later condemned political violence and honored Secret Service agent Victor Gonzales, who was injured stopping the gunman throughout the April assault.

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