Los Angeles, Jan 29 (IANS) Rapper Nicki Minaj has spoken up on her controversial support for President Donald J. Trump with a short speech at a special session.

She told the assembled audience that Trump is being “bullied” and “smeared” and declaring herself “probably the president’s Number 1 fan”, reports ‘Variety’.

“Well, I don’t know what to say”, the rapper began, after clasping hands with the president at the Washington, D.C. event, “but I will say that I am probably the president’s Number 1 fan. And that’s not going to change”.

She added, “And the hate with what people have to say, it does not affect me, at all. It actually motivates me to support him more. And it’s gonna motivate all of us to support him more. We’re not going to let them get away with bullying him. The smear campaigns, it’s not going to work. He has a lot of force behind him, and God is protecting him. Amen?”.

As per ‘Variety’, with that, she whispered a question to someone off-stage of whether she should go, and made her exit.

Trump told her, “We did pretty well with your community”, apparently speaking of his Black supporters. He also joked about her wealth, saying about how $16 billion in contributions to “Trump Accounts” was a figure that would make even as rich a rapper as Minaj sit up and take notice.

The rapper has announced that she will contribute between $150,000 and $300,000 to fund her fans’ Trump Accounts, although how those contributions would be diverted specifically to fans has not been explained.

Trump Accounts is the name given to Section 530A individual retirement accounts, as part of recently passed tax and spending legislation in which the federal government has pledged to deposit $1,000 into investment accounts for all children born between 2025 and 2028, if parents sign their children up in the course of filing their income taxes.

Trump said, “Decades from now I believe Trump Accounts will be remembered as one of the most transformative policy innovations”.

--IANS

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