Politics
The bots powering Nicki Minaj’s MAGA war
Nicki Minaj spent the past year transforming herself from a polarizing rap superstar into a high-profile conservative provocateur, lobbing viral attacks at Democratic leaders, boosting MAGA talking points and earning public praise from President Donald Trump and his allies.
On social media, Minaj’s pugnacious persona and sharp-edged posts — including repeated broadsides against California Gov. Gavin Newsom — have made her a darling of the Trump administration and the conservative movement, drawing millions of views and steady amplification from far-right influencers.
But quietly, humming in the background of her varied social media blitzes, a sophisticated army of bots was unconditionally praising and amplifying Minaj’s content, according to a new report shared exclusively with Blue Light News.
The report, compiled by the disinformation detection company Cyabra, identifies a coordinated network of bots — more than 18,000 of them — that drove algorithms to spread Minaj’s posts on X.
The analysis, which looked at social media activity from Nov. 11 to Dec. 28, provides a window into how the rapper was able to capture millions of views online and position herself as a celebrity the White House found value in partnering with. Last month, Minaj joined the president at the Trump Accounts Summit — where Trump invited her on stage, showered her with praise and recorded a chummy TikTok video with her afterward.
“We don’t really see a lot of high volume, high impact orchestration of bad and fake actors within that intersection of the geopolitically driven and music culture,” said Dan Brahmy, the CEO and founder of Cyabra. “It is scarce in our field to see the combination of the bad and the fake online world with the entertainment world.”
The report found inauthentic accounts repeatedly amplified Minaj’s posts with praise that used “highly similar language,” particularly in response to posts where authentic accounts were criticizing Minaj.
“Supportive comments generated by fake profiles were predominantly brief, repetitive, and low in semantic complexity, consisting largely of praising keywords and positive hashtags rather than original or substantive engagement,” the report found.
Other inauthentic activity surrounding Minaj included “longer, more detailed comments designed to appear organic.”
“Nicki you are brave for living your truth, people might not always agree with what’s being played out, but as an artist and watching your growth as a person is inspiring,” read one comment from a purported Minaj fan, @LAX76283656, that was deemed fake by Cyabra.
“This pattern suggests a deliberate attempt to integrate into genuine conversations, increasing the credibility and visibility of the amplified content,” the report read.
Cyabra identified one day, Dec. 26, when fake profiles made up 56 percent of all comments on political posts made by Minaj.
Bot networks have become a familiar feature of modern politics since revelations of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, when coordinated inauthentic accounts were used to inflame divisions and manipulate online discourse. Such campaigns are now routinely detected around wars, elections and geopolitical flashpoints — but far less often around celebrities or the music industry.
That backdrop helps explain why Cyabra’s findings seem so peculiar. Rather than a short-lived spike tied to a single event or appearance, the company found sustained and coordinated amplification of Minaj’s posts across a range of political and cultural topics over time.
When Minaj posted about her support for Trump, her concern over the persecution of Christians in Nigeria and Newsom’s perceived alignment with the transgender community, the bots were there to back her up, Cyabra’s report shows. They also amplified her posts related to the music industry.
Representatives for Minaj did not respond to requests for comment.
Alex Bruesewitz, a media and political adviser to Trump who considers Minaj a “very close friend,” told Blue Light News he is confident there are no bots involved with the rapper’s social media presence.
“Nicki has never used bot activity to promote herself on social media, because she doesn’t need to,” Bruesewitz said. “She has one of the largest fan bases of any musician that’s alive today.”
The Cyabra report was commissioned by a person who was granted anonymity because they fear public retaliation.
Cyabra is about 85 percent confident the more than 18,000 profiles identified are fake. But if the company were to narrow that scope to profiles that exhibit even stronger signs of inauthenticity, the confidence level could easily rise into the 90s, Brahmy said.
“We always have to make sure that we play at a confidence level that’s strong enough for people to rely on it, and doesn’t really change the narrative,” he said.
And when accounts boosting Minaj posted content that researchers identified as “toxic,” the algorithm drove her posts even further. Companies like Cyabra determine toxicity by assessing not just the “positive” or “negative” words used in a post, but the apparent intent behind them, Brahmy said. Personal attacks, slurs, threats or comments that seem designed to deter a reasonable person from engaging in conversation are typically considered toxic.
“When the conversation is limited to toxic content, a substantially stronger amplification effect emerges,” the report found. “These accounts predominantly amplify content produced by Nicki Minaj and Turning Point USA, indicating a notable overlap between the two within this discourse. Several of the accounts involved had previously been identified as exhibiting fake campaign-like behavior in the context of Minaj’s online activity within and relating to the music industry.”
Turning Point USA didn’t respond to a request for comment.
The analysis also shows how foreign and domestic political narratives can be manipulated by bot networks without broad public awareness — and how influential figures in the hip-hop world are making inroads into the conservative political conversation in America.
Minaj’s online activity was not only amplified by inauthentic accounts — but also a string of authentic accounts, including those of popular conservative influencers Dom Lucre and Matt Wallace, Cyabra found. The way those accounts parroted Minaj’s talking points suggest strategic coordination behind the scenes, Brahmy said.
“Real human beings are behaving the exact same way, utilizing the exact same behavioral patterns, as you would expect from a well coordinated campaign,” Brahmy said. “They amplify each other. They are riding the same, similar wave of narrative.”
Lucre responded with a statement saying, “This is one of the most absurd conspiracy theories I have ever seen in my entire life brother.”
He then uploaded videos to his X and YouTube accounts reacting to Blue Light News’s questions about whether he was coordinating his posts about Minaj with others or being paid for posts related to the rapper.
“Nicki Minaj is now pulling so many liberals to the right that they now have to push out a theory that these aren’t real organic people, and that she’s now manipulating the system with bots,” Lucre said. “If Nicki Minaj was manipulating systems with bots on Instagram, TikTok, X, do you not think there would be a conclusive data that they would have to present this instead of asking influencers to say yes?”
Wallace did not respond to a request for comment.
Minaj’s foray into politics comes after Trump made inroads with Black and Hispanic voters in the 2024 election. He and his allies have been eager to propel a political realignment around a multiracial, working-class, right-populist coalition, but polls show that that 2024 coalition has frayed badly over the last year.
Minaj has moved toward embracing the MAGA movement since July of last year. Her rightward shift was cemented in December during her appearance with Erika Kirk, the widow of slain conservative activist Charlie Kirk, at Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest convention. In late 2025, before Trump embraced her at last month’s summit, her political views also drew praise from the likes of Vice President JD Vance and Ambassador to the United Nations Mike Waltz.
On social media, her barrage of GOP-friendly posts garner millions of views, including those taking aim at Newsom.
“Career politician at the brink of his moment realigns to become nothing more than a Nicki Minaj ANTI. OOF,” Minaj wrote in December, with a photo depicting Newsom behind bars in a jail cell. “So now he’s the guy running on ‘wanting to see trans kids’ AND willing to lower himself to becoming just another FEMALE RAPPER to get obliterated by NICKI MINAJ.”
“Let’s wait…I think Gavvy’s still transitioning,” she said in another post on the same day, which generated over 1 million views.
A spokesperson for Newsom — who is named multiple times in the report and was a frequent target of Minaj during Cyabra’s analysis period — sent a statement ridiculing Minaj when asked for comment on the report’s findings.
“Like most MAGA mouthpieces, we are not surprised Nicki Minaj needs bots to stay relevant,” Newsom spokesperson Izzy Gardon said.
Cyabra’s report identifies 18,784 fake profiles that were at the ready to boost Minaj’s content.
Those accounts represented 33 percent of the total profiles evaluated by Cyabra — a ratio of inauthentic activity similar to those seen during wars and presidential elections, Brahmy said. Inauthentic accounts typically represent between 7 and 10 percent of organic social media discourse, the company said.
Cyabra works with corporations to identify online bot activity and misinformation campaigns, with the goal of helping them protect their reputation and understand malicious actors online. It uses software to analyze social media activity — and provides its services to PR firms, legal practices, multinational corporations and governments.
Cyabra gleaned the bot activity by examining the accounts’ temporal synchronization, their linguistic and stylistic uniformity and the similar demographics shared by the fake identities. The company developed a machine learning algorithm to identify fake accounts.
Jen Golbeck, a computer science professor at the University of Maryland who studies artificial intelligence and social media, told Blue Light News the purpose of a “botnet” can go beyond manipulating the narrative in a single comment section. The bots’ interactions signal to social media algorithms that a post draws high-engagement, which drives the algorithm to spread the content further.
“You can really expand your reach beyond your follower base if you get high levels of interaction, and these interaction bots do that,” said Golbeck, who also writes the MAGAReport substack.
Joel Penney, a professor at Montclair State University who studies popular culture and politics, said Trump’s adoption of Minaj into his political project is likely part of a larger strategy to reach younger, more diverse audiences.
“They’ve made a lot of efforts to include celebrities who are supportive, including hip-hop figures; Nicki Minaj is probably the biggest name to kind of become a pretty public advocate,” Penney said. “They don’t have the power to wave a wand and make all their followers or fans of their music support their political advocacy. But it matters. It contributes to this kind of war for public opinion that we see play out on social media.”
AUSTIN — Democrats’ vision of a blue Texas is finally here.
James Talarico has been elected a U.S. senator and Gina Hinojosa as governor, the first Democrats to win either office in more than a generation. The four other statewide candidates are leading as ballots continue to be counted. Democrats further down the ballot are leading some red districts, changing the complexion of the state legislature, congressional delegation and courts.
“It’s something that I haven’t seen in decades, that none of us have seen in decades,” said former Texas House Speaker Joe Straus, a moderate Republican.
It’s an outcome that even the most bullish Democrats didn’t dare enunciate in the late days of the election. But as results have poured in Tuesday night, the party is outpacing its expectations across the country’s second most populous state amidst a national romp.
Both Hinojosa’s and Talarico’s victory margins came by running up vote counts in Texas’ deep-blue urban centers and while also leading in the largest Republican-led county in the country, Tarrant County. They reversed Republican gains across the Latino-heavy Rio Grande Valley region, an ancestrally Democratic area that had swung hard to the right in recent years. Democratic Rep. Vicente Gonzalez romped to a near-20 point victory in a seat Republicans drew to favor them during last year’s redrawing of the state’s House map, ousting a top Republican recruit who campaigned alongside Speaker Mike Johnson to begin election day.
It amounts to a set of remarkable results in a state that hasn’t elected a Democrat to the U.S. Senate since 1988 and to the governor’s mansion since 1990. In recent cycles, Democrats have tried and failed to flip the state in presidential and U.S. Senate contests but have been largely uncompetitive for state offices. But Tuesday’s blue wave slammed into Texas particularly hard, as it combined frustrations over the economy, immigration enforcement, data centers and corruption with a collapse of Trump’s 2024 coalition.
“We reminded voters that Republicans have been in charge in Texas for 30 years. That every problem we have, was caused by Republicans,” Michelle Lowe Solis, chair of the Bexar County Democratic Party. “They aren’t going to fix the problems, they caused them.”
As votes continue to be counted, Democrats appear poised to blunt the impact of Republicans’ attempted gerrymander, likely sweeping the Rio Grande Valley congressional seats while holding onto another San Antonio-area district drawn to favor Republicans. In state Supreme Court races, they lead in all four seats up for grabs, potentially turning a 9-0 conservative majority into a 5-4 split. Among the first 36 state house races called by the Associated Press, 34 have gone to Democrats and just two to Republicans.“Voters aren’t dumb,” said Rep. Linda Sanchez (D-Calif.), who chairs the Congressional Hispanic Caucus’ BOLD PAC. “Even though the Republicans have tried to cheat with the series of gerrymanders, that has, I think, only made voters in those areas more willing to participate.”
Talarico’s and Hinojosa’s victories will be felt nationally. Texas Democrats, who have long asked for national money and resources in a state where elections are costly, now have a test case of how to win. And it will bolster their arguments that their state, with 40 electoral votes, should be treated as a presidential battleground.
Ali Bianco and Jonathan Martin contributed reporting.
Just a few hours into election night, Republicans acknowledged what appeared to be a historic midterm defeat — a long-feared “blue wave” that had started washing across the nation.
The extent of the washout became clear soon after polls closed: Republicans lost a South Carolina Senate seat for the first time in nearly 30 years. Democrats nipped on the heels of House incumbents in deep red Florida districts. And the man in charge of the party’s House reelection effort was at grave risk of losing his own seat.
By 10 p.m., Democrats had already flipped three GOP House seats — itself enough to win a majority if Republicans can’t make gains elsewhere — and many in the party feared dozens more could follow as voters registered their dissatisfaction with President Donald Trump.
Voters in Texas, a ruby-red state for a generation, appeared at risk of handing multiple statewide races to Republicans and possible control of the legislature. Joe Straus, a former state House speaker, cast it as a historic rebuke of an unpopular president.
“President Trump hasn’t exactly done any Republicans favors across the country,” he said on a Blue Light News election night broadcast. “They haven’t done themselves favors, frankly, by following so closely along.”
Many of the political professionals charged with getting GOP candidates elected in this environment said the results could be potentially historic in nature.
“We are looking at tsunami territory,” said one national Republican operative who, like others, was granted anonymity to candidly describe the returns.
“This is the worst electoral defeat in my lifetime and likely in history,” said another GOP operative working on battleground races. “Trump said his name and record was on the ballot and people responded — resoundingly.”
At an ill-fated victory party for Senate candidate Michael Whatley in North Carolina, staff were already packing up the room less than two hours after polls closed. Returns showed Democrat Roy Cooper on track to win by as many as 20 points in a race that was supposed to have been tooth-and-nail.
Standing in the room, one North Carolina Republican openly pondered what many others in the party had long avoided saying openly — that it was finally time to think about life after Trump.
“Trump has done some excellent things, and I appreciate that. But it can’t be the party of Trump forever,” said Jonathan Fletcher, a former GOP county chair. “If the Republican Party is going to be serious about winning, we have to be serious about winning people in the middle.”
Nearly every state, district and county shows movement toward Democrats, from counties that Trump won three times to blue strongholds where Democrats are improving their margins. County-level data shows Democrats doing on average more than 5 points better than Kamala Harris did in the 2024 presidential race.
That suggests that districts Trump won by double digits just two years ago are in reach for Democrats.
The losses threatened to pile up even after Republican candidates, committees and super PACs spent massive sums in an effort to retain control of Congress — including more than $380 million from President Donald Trump’s political operation.
“I can’t believe how these House races aren’t close given the amount spent,” a senior Senate GOP operative said. Another senior Senate GOP official called it a “bloodbath.”
Many of the Republicans said the war in Iran, which sent voters’ gas prices soaring, and continued frustration with the economy drove frustration with a party that won on those same issues in 2024.
On top of that some quickly vented about substandard candidates — such as Darline Graham in the South Carolina Senate race and Ken Paxton in the Texas Senate contest.
“Not only were folks upset about the war, inflation and gas prices, but add to that the fact they think he was making them eat a shit sandwich in Darline, and they just had enough,” said Mick Mulvaney, a former Trump White House chief of staff and South Carolina congressman.
Trump said on Truth Social his own absence from the ballot for the drastic Republican underperformance — even after barnstorming the country begging Republicans to “vote like I’m on the ballot.”
“I wasn’t on the Ballot and if I was, we would have won IN A LANDSLIDE!” Trump posted shortly after 10:30 p.m.
Other Republicans were ready to blame Trump’s own decisions.
“Republicans got their asses kicked tonight because of the Iran war — plain and simple. Everything else is just noise and spin,” said a person close to the White House.
Meanwhile, power in Washington was already shifting. The likely next chair of the House Oversight Committee, who has been gearing up for massive probes into the Trump administration, issued a two-word statement Tuesday addressed to administration officials and the “Trump Crime Family.”
“Lawyer up,” Rep. Robert Garcia of California said.
Will Steakin, Erin Doherty, Lauren Fedor, Ashley Ahn and Lisa Kashinsky contributed to this report.
Joe Biden was unceremoniously ushered out of the White House two years ago.
On Tuesday, he got a small measure of revenge.
Prominent Biden administration alumni are winning in a handful of notable races, with Keisha Lance Bottoms — the one-time Atlanta mayor turned Biden’s senior adviser and director of the Office of Public Engagement — leading the pack by flipping Georgia’s governorship.
The victories, his former staffers say, are an important part of rehabilitating his legacy within a Democratic Party that all but banished him in 2024.
“It’s proof that President Biden assembled a talented team of public servants — who the public is calling on now to help turn this country around,” said Ron Klain, Biden’s former chief of staff. “These fantastic men and women will make life more affordable, health care more available, protect our rights, fight corruption, and make our country stronger.”
Biden was not a regular on the trail this year, and most Democrats kept their distance from the former president. But he did weigh in on a handful of primaries, helping put loyal lieutenants in front of voters who still held him in high regard.
While Bottoms was the highest profile victory, there’s a number of Biden alumni also poised to head to Washington. Gabe Amo, who won a 2023 special election in a blue Rhode Island seat, secured his first full term in Congress. And Dan Koh, who won Massachusetts’ 6th District to succeed Rep. Seth Moulton, was Biden’s deputy Cabinet secretary and deputy director of the White House Office of Intergovernmental Affairs.
He leaned into his Biden endorsement throughout the campaign and this week reposted a video of a phone call he and his family had with Joe and Jill Biden on primary night in September.
“Mr. President and Madame first lady, thank you so much for all of your support,” he told them. “It wouldn’t have been possible without both of you. … You changed my life by giving me a job of a lifetime. And you got my back the minute I decided to run.”
Biden’s Cabinet also had a strong night in other governor races. Xavier Becerra, Biden’s secretary of Health and Human Services, had a solid polling lead over Republican Steve Hilton in the race to be California’s next governor going into Tuesday. And, Deb Haaland, Biden’s Interior secretary, was projected to win the New Mexico governor race.
“In his farewell speech, President Biden warned that ‘an oligarchy is taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power, and influence that literally threatens our entire democracy,’” said Andrew Bates, the former president’s longtime spokesperson. “He urged his team and supporters to keep standing up for the values that we all care about, including decency, hard work, and a sense of national community. On the ballot and off, a whole lot of his alumni are fighting to carry on that legacy.”
- Democrats are on track to control Congress. What will they do with their power?
- Democrats are ready to run Congress — and investigate all things Trump
- Democrats sweep Texas
- The blue wave is cresting: GOP braces for midterm wipeout
- Biden’s revenge: His alumni are winning in the midterms
- Trump’s DC golf course plan revealed
- Poll: Republican voters want their party to talk more about the economy
- ‘We forgot what it’s like to be populist’: Republicans see Trump’s 2024 crumbling
- The affordability election that teaches Democrats nothing
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