This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.
And Finally Artist News
White House says it only offered to call Nicki Minaj about vaccines
By Andy Malt | Published on Friday 17 September 2021
Earlier this week, Nicki Minaj announced that she was going to the White House to continue her exhaustive research into the side effects of COVID-19 vaccines. Now it turns out that the White House has actually just offered to give her a call to tell her why she’s wrong about them.
Minaj, of course, made headlines this week after she revealed that she has not yet received a vaccine because she doesn’t feel that she has done “enough research” into them. That research is seemingly ongoing. Though the main pieces of research she’s presented so far are a Twitter poll, and a claim that her cousin’s friend in Trinidad’s testicles swelled up and he became impotent after he was vaccinated.
Her seemingly baseless claim regarding the potential impact of the COVID vaccine on testicles was condemned by chief medical scientists in the UK and US, while Trinidad & Tobago’s health minister said that it had hindered his campaign to convince people in the country to get vaccinated.
Minaj then claimed that she had been invited to the White House to discuss the matter further, and that she would go there to represent concerned citizens such as herself.
“The White House has invited me and I think it’s a step in the right direction”, she tweeted. “Yes, I’m going. I’ll be dressed in all pink like ‘Legally Blonde’ so they know I mean business. I’ll ask questions on behalf of the people who have been made fun of for simply being human”.
However, despite being a top researcher into all things vaccines and coronaviruses, she seems to have read her White House email incorrectly. A spokesperson for the White House told the New York Times yesterday: “As we have with others, we offered a call with Nicki Minaj and one of our doctors to answer questions she has about the safety and effectiveness of the vaccine”.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki also confirmed to reporters that “a very early stage call” had been offered in order to offer “accurate information” about the safety of the vaccines. “This is pretty standard and something we do all the time”, she added.
“We … recognise that people have questions out there”, she went on. “They have questions they want to have answered by their doctors. We have doctors who can answer questions, and this is something, again, in our outreach to celebrities”.
On Wednesday, Minaj revealed in an Instagram Live video that she had received a temporary suspension from Twitter for spreading COVID-19 misinformation. Or, as she framed it, “innocently ask[ing] a question about something going in your body”.
As a result, she said she “will never use Twitter again”. She has not written anything on Twitter since Wednesday night. And maybe that’s for the best.
