The rapper reveals in a new interview what encouraged her to speak out about her political pivot. Nicki Minaj joins U.S. President Donald Trump on stage as he delivers remarks during the Treasury Department's Trump Accounts Summit at Andrew W. Mellon Auditorium on January 28, 2026 in Washington, DC. Win McNamee/Getty Images Nicki Minaj hasn’t been shy about her support for Donald Trump and the Make America Great Again movement in the last year, but it took a lot for her to come out publicly and back the president, as she was initially afraid of the backlash from her peers in the music industry. Minaj, who has branded herself as the president’s “No. 1 fan,” went deep about her Trump support and political activism in an interview with TIME published on Wednesday (May 13). “I felt that way already about him, just that I didn’t dare act like that publicly,” she said. “It’s been ingrained in everyone’s brain in the music business that we are supposed to be a Democratic family.…