The interview happened at the Air Force One conference table, and it ended with a job offer — of sorts. White House Communications Director Steven Cheung sat Nicki Minaj down aboard the president's plane on Sunday, ahead of Trump's rally in Port Huron, Michigan, then posted the two-minute clip with his own verdict: "Ladies and gentlemen, I think we may have found the new White House Press Secretary!"
Minaj used the interview to make the case for Trump the worker. Asked whether anyone works harder, she answered: "Absolutely not! The man won three elections!" "He wakes up at four o'clock in the morning. He outworks people who are half his age." And where others in his position might coast, she said, Trump is instead paying it forward — campaigning for the Republicans who have to win this election so his programme survives him.
On the economy, she argued the country is in the hands of a businessman who rebuilt his own finances from nothing and is tough with foreign governments in America's interest. On the polls showing trouble for Republicans, she waved them away: "Let's ask Hillary Clinton how fake the fake polls are. We don't pay those polls any mind." Minaj also filmed herself aboard the plane for her own followers, posting the footage under the tag #AirForceOneBARBIE.
The setting matters. Minaj is appearing alongside Trump at McMorran Place in Port Huron for Senate candidate Mike Rogers and other Michigan Republicans — her first official campaign appearance with the president. She has said publicly that the midterms are critical because Trump needs a strong Congress behind programmes such as Trump Accounts, and the Rogers campaign has made the joint appearance a headline of the event.
And Cheung's joke lands because the job is genuinely open. The press secretary's chair has been empty since Katie Zacharia's tenure ended after roughly five days in mid-October — she had succeeded Karoline Leavitt, given one short briefing that drew criticism, faced questions about her credentials, and departed in what was reported as a firing, the shortest modern tenure in the role. Nobody is seriously tipping a rap superstar for the podium; but as a piece of campaign theatre, the White House could hardly have scripted it better.
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