Turning Point USA President Erika Kirk brought the house down on Sunday when she introduced rapper Nicki Minaj on the stage at AmericaFest in Phoenix, Arizona.
Erika Kirk sat down with Minaj on the stage, saying that she wanted to honor Charlie’s tradition of always having a surprise for the AmFest crowd. She started off with Minaj reading out loud some of her “mean tweets” directed at Governor Gavin Newsom (D-CA) to thunderous applause.
Nicki Minaj makes a surprise appearance at AmFest 2025!!
She’s speaking her mind, defending President Trump and JD Vance, she’s proud to be American, and advocating for persecuted Christians in Nigeria.
Let’s go!!
🇺🇸🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/EVEdqFK3OY
— Andrew Kolvet (@AndrewKolvet) December 21, 2025
Some 24 hours earlier, the organization had teased a huge guest who would have people talking into next year, and many believed at first that President Donald Trump would be making an appearance. But when Donald Trump Jr. took a call from his father during his speech just prior to Erika’s big reveal, that appeared not to be the case.
Minaj, for her part, has been throwing her support behind a number of conservative causes — from protecting Christians from persecution worldwide to ending gender transition surgeries and hormones for minors — and has made it her particular mission to go after Governor Newsom.
“Dear Newscum, we don’t have a problem cleaning up the scum if we have to. Please tread lightly,” Minaj said her current message to “Gavvy-Pooh” would be.
When asked what her opinion of the current administration was, she said, “I have the utmost respect and admiration for our president. I don’t know if he even knows this, but he’s given so many people hope that there’s a chance to beat the bad guys and to win and to do it with your head held high and your integrity intact.”
Minaj went on to explain that for her, the “turning point” was that she’d realized she was tired of being pushed around: “I’m not going to back down any more. I’m not going to back down ever again.”
Kirk asked why it was such an extraordinary thing to see people speaking their minds in today’s world, and Minaj’s message was clear: “People are no longer using their minds, their brains. So right now just imagine, we’re not allowed to have a different opinion anymore. We’re not allowed to think out loud anymore. This is not what the world used to feel like.”
When Kirk pressed Minaj on the backlash she was seeing from within her own industry, Minaj responded with just three words: “I didn’t notice.”
.@MrsErikaKirk “I know that you are getting a lot of backlash from your own industry. What is your reaction to that?”@NICKIMINAJ: “I didn’t notice.” pic.twitter.com/7Ikn7KXkvj
— Daily Wire (@realDailyWire) December 21, 2025
“You can’t wake up and think about people who are just determined to stay mad,” she said. “In a world that doesn’t want us to think, we will continue to think!”
“What inspired you to speak up about the Christians who are being slaughtered in Nigeria?” Kirk asked.
“We take for granted that — there are people in this world who cannot worship God as they please, where they please, and we take it for granted because we have it,” Minaj said, reminding the audience that there were people all over the world who had to hide while they prayed and had fellowship together.
Kirk asked Minaj to talk a bit about her faith, and she laid out a lot of her personal history — including a recent return to her spiritual roots.
“When I was a toddler in Trinidad, my grandmother, if things got spicy in the house … she would make all the little kids go in her room and say a prayer,” Minaj said, adding that she started attending church in New York when she was a bit older. “I learned how to pray very early. I always had this faith — you know the kind of faith tat makes people say oh, that person is crazy, but I had that kind of faith instinctively.”
Minaj went on to say that she tried to apply things to her life, and the point was not that Christians were perfect but that they tried. “Sometimes you can be in an industry as well that pulls you away even more.”
She then said that going back to God recently had felt like going back to a long-lost best friend. “He said, ‘Where were you? I’ve been waiting on you.’ … As soon as you call on Him, He’s going to answer. On the first ring.”
When asked how she would address issues facing little boys and little girls — particularly as a parent — she said that she had to bring race into the mix: “Why have we gotten to a point where certain colors or certain kinds of people have to be afraid of loving themselves or loving how they look … I don’t want what was done to little black girls to be done to little white girls, to any girls!”
And for the boys: “Be boys, it’s okay. There’s nothing wrong with being a boy … Boys will be boys, and there’s nothing wrong with that.”
Her conclusion: “When the Truth comes out, the lies hide.”
After she first spoke out in support of persecuted Christians in places like Nigeria, the popular rapper accepted an invitation from U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Mike Waltz, where she addressed the body and spoke about the importance of defending religious freedom wherever it may be threatened.
She has since been spotted online leaning in to some of the memes featuring Vice President JD Vance — and making it clear that she’s amused by how much fun he’s having with the liberals who are attempting to mock him.
In more recent weeks, she has taken to using her social media presence to target Newsom — who is likely to be a top tier candidate for the Democratic Party going into the 2028 presidential primary. In addition to attacking his positions on transgender issues — namely that he wants to see “more transgender kids” and will continue to allow men to have access to female-only spaces.