Nicki Minaj stood beside Donald Trump at his Michigan rally on Sunday and announced that she wanted people to “leave the children alone.” The irony would be laughable if it weren’t so disturbing.

Minaj joined Trump in Port Huron after travelling aboard Air Force One and urged Michigan voters to support Republican candidates Mike Rogers and John James. She praised Trump for giving Americans a “brighter future” before turning her attention to transgender children.

“We want our children to grow up in a place where we can be proud of,” Minaj told the crowd. “We don’t want our children to be bombarded with sex changes, right?” She then added: “We want people to leave the children alone. Leave them out of it.” Minaj finished by promising Trump that she would support him “forever and ever.”

So to recap, an artist who has openly acknowledged the enormous support she received from LGBTQ+ fans since her mixtape days stood on a political stage and portrayed transgender healthcare as something children need protecting from.

She framed gender-affirming care as something being inflicted on children, a characterisation that misrepresents how the care actually works. Major organizations including the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Medical Association, the American Psychological Association and the Endocrine Society support access to gender-affirming care, and guidelines do not recommend medical intervention for prepubertal children. At the same time, treatment for minors is medically and politically contested and legally restricted in many states. Minaj flattened all of that into a rally line about children being “bombarded with sex changes.”

But the hypocrisy doesn’t end there. Minaj’s husband, Kenneth Petty, is a registered sex offender following a 1995 conviction for attempted rape. In 2022, a federal judge sentenced him to probation and one year of home detention after he failed to register as a sex offender when he moved to California.

No one should be blamed for the crimes of their spouse. That part is fair. But when you use a political stage to claim you are protecting children from transgender healthcare, people will notice the contradiction between that rhetoric and the criminal record of the husband she has repeatedly defended publicly. That contradiction is not incidental. It is downright uncomfortable. And Minaj’s sudden concern for children becomes even harder to take seriously when you remember her behaviour last year.

During her 2025 feud with Cardi B, Minaj publicly called Cardi’s seven-year-old daughter Kulture a “roach” and a “monkey.” She later apologised to the child, acknowledging that Kulture was innocent and did not deserve to be dragged into the dispute.

So which is it, Nicki? Are children off-limits, or are they fair game when you’re losing a feud?

The truth is that Minaj’s “leave the children alone” routine has nothing to do with protecting children. It is a culture-war talking point dressed up as moral concern. Transgender children are not political props. They are not a threat. They are children who deserve the same protection and dignity as any other child.

If Minaj genuinely cared about protecting children, she might start by not attacking a seven-year-old on social media. She might reconsider standing beside a man who has been accused by multiple women of sexual misconduct. She might examine why she is so comfortable using vulnerable children as a rhetorical weapon while ignoring the actual harm done to children every day.

Screenshots of Nicki Minaj’s past tweets using racist language to insult Cardi B’s young daughter during a public online feud

For longtime Nicki fans, the transformation has been painful to witness. Generations of queer listeners embraced this artist’s music, and now she stands at a Trump rally repeating rhetoric that treats transgender healthcare as something being inflicted on children. She stood there as a political surrogate, only for Trump later in the same rally to reduce her publicly to a body part.

And then, as if the whole spectacle weren’t strange enough, Trump later publicly praised Minaj’s backside, telling the crowd he had seen “one hell of a beautiful ass” and asking her to stand up.

This is the movement Minaj has pledged to support “forever and ever.” This is a movement that uses her as a token while its leader reduces her to a body part. It claims to protect children while its leader brags about sexual assault. And it demands loyalty while offering nothing but proximity to power.

Minaj went to Michigan to tell America to “leave the children alone.” Perhaps she should start by applying that principle consistently, and by asking herself why she is so eager to defend a man who has spent decades demonstrating contempt for the very values she claims to hold.

Someone who has shown, time and time again, that her concern is selective at best should not use the children Minaj claims to protect as political ammunition.


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