Nicki Minaj's swollen BallGate eclipses White House, Trinidadian health officials, Tucker Carlson

Nicki Minaj’s scrotal saga continues, dear readers. After doubling down on her right to posit that a COVID-19 vaccine may be responsible for her cousin’s friend’s swollen testicles over in Trinidad, the pop megastar’s determination to teach everyone a valuable lesson in the importance of due diligence now involves the highest echelons of the American government. (And, as others online have pointed out, totally has nothing to do with Minaj likely attempting to eclipse news that her husband now faces an impending prison sentence for failing to register as a sex offender.)

Yesterday, Minaj claimed in a tweet that she had been invited to visit the White House to discuss vaccine education. “I think it’s a step in the right direction,” she wrote, adding that she would attend “dressed in all pink like Legally Blonde so they know I mean business,” which... alright fine, that’s a pretty great reference.

If the idea of the Biden administration entertaining Nicki Minaj after her erroneous, patently absurd #BallGate (her hashtag, not ours) sounds a bit far-fetched, you’re not alone. Following her declaration of intent, the Biden administration itself was forced to make a public statement on the whole sad affair. “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,” a White House official explained to CBS News yesterday.

Not long after, Minaj took to Instagram Live to combat the clarification. “Do ya’ll think that I would go on the internet and lie about being invited to the fucking White House”

To be clear—no, we do not think Nicki Minaj went on the Internet to lie about being invited to the fucking White House. We do, however, think she is occasionally prone to exaggerating something she heard through the grapevine that is once- or twice-removed from the original source...

For what it’s worth, Trinidadians still living in the country are having none of this bullshit. At an honest-to-God official press conference yesterday, Trinidad and Tobago Minister of Health Terrence Deyalsingh groused that his team has “wasted so much time” going out of their way to debunk Minaj’s rumor-sharing.

“What was sad about this is that it wasted our time yesterday, trying to track down, because we take all these claims seriously,” Deyalsingh told reporters, later explaining, “As we stand now, there is absolutely no reported such side effect or adverse event of testicular swelling in Trinidad, or I dare say...none that we know of anywhere else in the world.”

And now here we are, Day What-the-Fuck-Ever of Nicki Minaj’s Cousin’s Friend’s #BallGate, having learned nothing new or illuminating about the state of the world. At least there’s some comfort in knowing the spuriously gigantic nuts can’t sink us much lower than this...

Hahahaha. Ha. Ha.

Just kidding. Tucker Carlson’s got something to say about it, too. What’s more, he opted to take to Minaj’s defense. Multiple evening episodes in a row. Which she loved.

First, Carlson went the “well, maybe” route to tacitly support Minaj’s hearsay on Monday. The following night, he altered his course towards Charybdis ever so slightly. He steered away from the “COVID-19 vaccines might turn your balls into beanbag chairs” argument and headed towards explaining that what the liberal elite is really mad at is Minaj’s assertion people should “pray on it,” “do their own research,” and not be “bullied” by these so-called medical experts.

At some point in our nation’s downward spiral, “American independence” became synonymous with “inflexible contrarianism,” so that any kind of authority—no matter how legitimate or well-earned—is worthy of dissent on principle. As such, this is where we are now: Chauvinistic zealots defending offhand hearsay about gigantic ball sacks as a means to simultaneously display their so-called patriotism while spitting in the eyes of those pleading for sanity and safety.

Maybe we should have heeded Nicki’s words when she told us all those years ago: “First thing’s first, I’ll eat your brains.”

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