If all modern politics is a form of performance, this week offered a masterclass in farce, one taught by Nicki Minaj and featuring Gavin Newsom. What started as a clumsy, half-defensive, off-the-cuff statement about trans kids has metastasized into something far stranger: one of the most beloved rappers of the 21st century declaring herself locked in mortal online combat with the governor of California. This largely one-sided feud culminated, fittingly, with the rumored presidential hopeful tweeting an edit that uses a 12-second clip from Megan Thee Stallion’s diss track about Nicki Minaj to call the current president a sex offender. Two birds with one stone, and whatnot.

The inciting incident was Newsom’s appearance on The Ezra Klein Show. In an attempt to justify the discrepancy between his stance on trans athletes and his stance on trans people at large, he uttered the (apparently damning) phrase “I want to see trans kids,” before adding that he has a trans godson and has signed more pro-trans legislation than any other governor. Despite the statement hardly being the pinnacle of leftist ideology, hedged as it is by Newsom’s own questionable views on the logistics of trans rights in day-to-day life, it didn’t take long for the comment to land exactly where it always does: on right-wing social media accounts hoping to farm outrage bait. Enter Nicki Minaj, now in her increasingly comfortable role as celebrity culture-war foot soldier.

“Imagine being the guy running on wanting to see trans kids,” Minaj wrote on X. This is obviously something of a repackaging of Newsom’s original sentiment, considering his words were clearly not intended as some sort of platform-defining policy statement, but it doesn’t matter; the clip was clipped, the damage was done, and Nicki Minaj wanted to see him pay for it tenfold: “Haha. Not even a trans ADULT would run on that. Normal adults wake up & think they want to see HEALTHY, SAFE, HAPPY kids.” The underlying implication of the message is self-evident: trans kids are inherently unhealthy, unsafe, or unhappy, and acknowledging their existence is in itself somehow sinister. It is, unsurprisingly, yet more recycled conservative panic rhetoric—now in pop-star packaging. To butcher the words of another lunatic, I suppose there are dogwhistles everywhere for those with the ears to listen.

From there, Minaj spiraled, her rhetoric becoming more Trumpian with each tweet. Evidently, she picked up the president’s love for shoehorned nicknames: across a series of posts, she dubbed Newsom “GavOUT,” “The Gav Nots,” “new scum,” even “TRANSKIDS NEWSOME GRUESOME Haha.” In all, it’s a mess. Tom Cruise comparisons were made. Chucky memes were deployed. Wrestling images were photoshopped. Newsom’s hair was complimented—actually, a lot about Newsom’s appearance was complimented, with Minaj at one point describing him as “the cute boy who got everything handed to him b/c of how cute & sexy & hot & smoking he was.” (Just one or two adjectives would’ve gotten the point across, Nicki. But four? That’s not a burn, it’s a declaration of thirst. Get a room!) Later, she warned, “Oh gavvy Pooh the ppl behind you clearly don’t care about you. I can go a lot deeper” before threatening Newsom with the Freudian slip to end all Freudian slips: “Arch your back.” (Not “watch”; “arch.” Again: is this foreplay or something?)

Minaj then pivoted away from straightforwardly insulting (and/or hitting on?) Newsom, deciding her efforts would be best spent transvestigating him instead. “Let’s wait…I think Gavvy’s still transitioning,” she tweeted. Elsewhere, she sneered that Newsom was “willing to lower himself to becoming just another FEMALE RAPPER to get obliterated by NICKI MINAJ” and insinuated that his hair is not actually hair but a wig: “I hate Gavin’s new salt&pepper shake front. I mean Lace front. RIP it off.” (…So is his hair beautiful or not, Nicki?)

Newsom, for his part, declined to engage in whatever this was supposed to be. His lone response—the aforementioned video montage of Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein soundtracked by Megan Thee Stallion’s “Hiss,” captioned with a zipped-mouth emoji—was both surgical and devastating. No name-calling, no extended meditation on Minaj’s attractiveness (thank God). Just a reminder of who the rapper has chosen to align herself with, paired with a song written as a diss track against Minaj herself—a song whose most infamous lyric references Megan’s Law, the sex offender registry legislation that has long hovered uncomfortably around Minaj’s personal life. It was shade as negative space: say nothing, let the implications do the work.

Minaj reacted exactly as expected, framing herself as the persecuted hero of her own saga. “See Barbz? I told you he was wicked,” she wrote. “Pls protect me from that wicked & evil man.” This is a familiar posture. As Minaj’s politics have hardened into full-blown MAGA cosplay—retweeting Trump, praising JD Vance, hashtagging posts with #freechristians—so has her sense of grievance. She positions herself as a truth-teller under siege while punching down at trans kids, a population currently facing legislative attacks, medical bans, and escalating violence nationwide. As always, there is little the alt-right love more than self-victimization.

Nicki Minaj has found a home in the MAGA attention economy, where outrage is currency and cruelty is content. There’s something particularly tragic about her downward spiral: the comparisons to Kanye West abound (and for good reason), but unlike West, Minaj’s career was built on the backs of queer people. That makes her recent heel-turn towards the Trump administration and its anti-trans hysteria sting all the harder: she’s trading in the loyalty of her longtime fanbase for retweets from administration officials who don’t believe those fans ought to have the right to exist. And, worst of all, there’s nothing to be done about any of it. We just have to sit and watch as one of rap’s most formidable talents shadowboxes a governor who barely notices, all while reinforcing some of the ugliest narratives in American politics. Trans kids are not collateral damage here; they are the target, used as rhetorical kindling to keep Minaj’s relevance burning in right-wing spaces that would (and surely will) happily discard her the moment she stops being useful. I’m sorry, Barbz, but I think it’s long past time to hang up our hats.