UPDATED 9/16, 4:20 p.m. ET: President Biden’s Press Secretary Jen Psaki was, of course, asked about the internationally discussed Nicki Minaj situation, specifically whether the administration did in fact invite her to the White House. Psaki first assured the press that the situation is not being seen “as point of tension or disagreement.”
“We offered a call with Nicki Minaj and one of our doctors to answer questions she had about the safety and effectiveness of the vaccine. This is pretty standard and something we do all the time,” she said. Psaki went on to say the administration and Minaj are “not even at the point of discussing, I should say at this point, the mechanisms or the format [of a meeting] or anything along those lines. It was simply an offer to have a conversation and an early stage call [among staff only].”
This mirrors yesterday’s comment from a White House official who said, “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.”
See original story below.
Nicki Minaj has responded to a White House official who denied that the rapper was ever invited to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue after she expressed vaccine hesitancy on social media. The official said that the White House actually offered to connect Minaj with a doctor over the phone so that she could ask questions about the vaccine, NBC News reports.
“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,” the official told the outlet.
Nicki claimed that people from the White House contacted her to arrange a visit following the backlash she received for relaying an unsubstantiated story about her cousin’s friend’s testicles becoming swollen after taking the COVID-19 vaccine to her 22 million Twitter followers. Minaj went on to say that her cousin told her that his friend, who is from Trinidad, became impotent after getting the jab.
There is no evidence, as Dr. Anthony Fauci and Trinidad and Tobago’s Minister of Health Terrence Deyalsingh have pointed out, of the COVID-19 vaccine causing infertility (or enlarged testicles).