What Are Nicki Minaj and Trump Up to in Nigeria?

On Tuesday afternoon, the Trump administration produced yet another moment that felt more fever dream than reality.

Legendary (and more recently, embattled) rapper Nicki Minaj addressed the United Nations at a special event, titled, “Combatting Christian Violence and the Killing of Christians in Nigeria.” The event, led by Ambassador Mike Waltz, came just days after President Trump named Nigeria a “country of particular concern.” Alleging “Christian genocide,” the president has since threatened U.S. military intervention in Africa’s most populous—and most oil-rich—country.

“If the Nigerian Government continues to allow the killing of Christians, the U.S.A. will immediately stop all aid and assistance to Nigeria, and may very well go into that now disgraced country, ‘guns-a-blazing,’ to completely wipe out the Islamic Terrorists who are committing these horrible atrocities,” the president wrote earlier this month amid a series of posts on Nigeria. “I am hereby instructing our Department of War to prepare for possible action. If we attack, it will be fast, vicious, and sweet, just like the terrorist thugs attack our CHERISHED Christians! WARNING: THE NIGERIAN GOVERNMENT BETTER MOVE FAST!”

Minaj, who has been shifting rightward for some time now, publicly supported the president’s crusading rhetoric.

“Reading this made me feel a deep sense of gratitude. We live in a country where we can freely worship God. No group should ever be persecuted for practicing their religion. We don’t have to share the same beliefs in order for us to respect each other. Numerous countries all around the world are being affected by this horror & it’s dangerous to pretend we don’t notice,” the addled rap star wrote on X earlier this month. “Thank you to The President & his team for taking this seriously. God bless every persecuted Christian. Let’s remember to lift them up in prayer.” The post was met with disdain, confusion, and blind devotion from her “Barbz” fandom—which is still mostly made up of women of color and LGBTQ folk.

But before we talk message, why this messenger?

Minaj has had quite the fall from grace since Cardi B threw that shoe at her in 2018. Her accolade-laden career has been marred by spiteful, nasty feuds with other younger women rappers, that have often ended with her having public, alarming manic episodes on social media. Her husband, Kenneth Petty, is a registered sex offender, and in 2021, the woman he assaulted when she was just 16 alleged that Minaj “directly and indirectly intimidated, harassed and threatened [her] to recant her legitimate claim that Defendant Petty raped her.” In 2020, Minaj’s brother was sentenced to 25 years in prison for raping an 11-year-old. She publicly and financially supported him during his trial. And just last month, Minaj was on X accusing rival Cardi B of having fertility issues, calling her boyfriend gay, and claiming Cardi had surgery to look more like her.

At 42, Minaj has struggled to find her footing and age gracefully as an artist, and her legacy is actively suffering for it. So perhaps it’s no surprise she has a sudden affinity for MAGA—and is willing to be the PR face of a right-wing evangelical push for U.S. intervention in Nigeria.

“Today, faith is under attack in way too many places. In Nigeria, Christians are being targeted, driven from their homes, and killed,” Minaj stated. “Churches have been burned, families have been torn apart, and entire communities live in fear constantly, simply because of how they pray.... It demands urgent action.”

“America is a Christian country,” Alex Bruesewitz, the Trump adviser and content creator who reportedly booked Minaj, said at Tuesday’s panel, which was organized by the U.S. Mission to the United Nations. His comments echoed common malicious, revisionist Christian nationalist points. “It was founded as a Christian country and it will always be a Christian country, and we are not ashamed of that. We are proud of that. And President Trump is doing incredible work here in our country to defend religious liberties and I’m very proud of him. But I’m also grateful that he uses his platform and his powerful voice to raise awareness about the atrocities that are happening to Christians all across the globe.”

Minaj was joined by other speakers who focused more on Islam as a whole rather than specific extremist and militia groups, alleging the violence was solely religious to justify their own evangelical intentions.

“Is this about a caliphate? Why do they kill Christians? Or is it a religious, spiritual warfare that we’re seeing now waged on one side?” Fox News host Harris Faulkner asked the speakers.

“I believe it absolutely is. And we’ve talked about the [Islamic State] ideology or the al-Qaeda ideology, and that sense that anybody who stands in the face of a totalizing and violent extremist view shouldn’t be allowed to exist,” said Sean Nelson of the right-wing Alliance Defending Freedom. “Climate change doesn’t cause people to behead each other, right? These different excuses when the attackers themselves say … we will kill all Christians, the Christians who see that and experience that every day, they believe them, because they know what’s happening.”

There is no consensus that this is what’s happening. The Nigerian government has stated that “portraying Nigeria’s security challenges as a targeted campaign against a single religious group is a gross misrepresentation of reality. Terrorists attack all who reject their murderous ideology—Muslims, Christians, and those of no faith alike.” Just days before the panel, 25 mostly Muslim schoolgirls were abducted by gunmen in the northwestern Nigerian Region of Kebbi. Walz mentioned the horrific incident at the event, but conveniently left out that they were Muslim—because he wants to handle this on U.S. terms. Nigeria is having issues with Boko Haram, Fulani herdsmen, and other militant groups. But if they think it merits military intervention, they need to be the ones to decide that. This unilateral decision from Trump, a bunch of white Christians, and Minaj reeks of classic imperialistic tropes. Other Nigerian cultural leaders have called the Trump administration’s argument a blatant attempt to foment violence.

“[President Donald Trump] said he enjoys war. And it’s clear he’s dying to make war,” Nobel Prize-winning Nigerian author Wole Soyinka said this month. “He says he wants to help Nigeria. Of course, anybody, any leader, any nation, would gladly accept assistance from anywhere to get rid of this vicious fundamentalist group whose principle, whose understanding of their religion is just to butcher others who happen not to follow them.... At the same time, there has been partnership, partnership between Nigeria, other regimes for weaponry, equipment, training to deal with these well-organized and transnational killers under the name of Islam. They exist .. but to use language like invading the sovereignty of a nation, guns blazing, sweetly, viciously …”

“This is not a Christian genocide, because the facts don’t support it,” Good Governance Nigeria researcher Malik Samuel has also said. “If you look at the areas where this conflict is rife, even in the—even if you take Borno state alone, you look at northern Borno, many of these communities are Muslim-dominated. So most of the victims of Boko Haram violence are Muslims.”

But the facts don’t matter to the Trump administration. As Minaj’s role suggests, Trump wasn’t just suddenly compelled by the plight of Christians in Nigeria. These recent developments are the result of a long-standing evangelical campaign to shape Nigeria—and the greater African continent—in their image. Multiple white evangelical groups like Focus on the Family, the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, and the Fellowship Foundation have poured millions into a concerted effort to push U.S.-branded right-wing ideologies on African countries like Nigeria, Uganda, and others. Paula White-Cain, Trump’s own spiritual adviser, has been taking trips to Nigeria and other African countries in the name of Jesus for years.

This current campaign is compelled by those same forces.

We’ll have to wait and see just how far Trump’s threats of intervention go. It seems obvious that the attacks from Boko Haram and Fulani herdsmen should be handled in tandem with the Nigerian government in a way that preserves the sovereignty they’ve been historically robbed of, not this all out “guns-a-blazing” effort. But the current rhetoric, along with sanctions and the addition of Nigeria as a “country of particular concern,” could potentially make a flailing rapper the face of a military campaign that further destabilizes the country.

“The Barbz are really famous. In like real life lmfaooooooo wow,” Minaj later posted on X. “What a day.”