Tucker Carlson Makes a Play for the Barbz

Nicki Minaj appears to be taking a break from Twitter. The rapper, who has more than 22 million followers on the platform and is known for spending nearly every day joking and bickering with them, has been uncharacteristically silent for the past week. The last entry in her feed is from September 15—a retweet of a fan’s post reading, in part, “When will people learn NICKI MINAJ is NOT going to be backed into any damn corner?”

It all started two days earlier, the evening of the Met Gala, when she tweeted that she wasn’t vaccinated against COVID-19 and wouldn’t attend the event. “If I get vaccinated it won’t [be] for the Met,” . “It’ll be once I feel I’ve done enough research.” In a confusing series of follow-up tweets, she recommended that people get a vaccine if her cousin in Trinidad had a friend who became impotent after getting a vaccine. “His testicles became swollen. His friend was weeks away from getting married, now the girl called off the wedding,” she elaborated. (Minaj later claimed that she skipped the Met Gala not because of her vaccine status, but because she had to care for her infant son—though many people have speculated that her absence was really related to her and her husband’s .)