Rap megastar Nicki Minaj unloaded on California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Monday, ripping him for what she called a transparently condescending performance in front of a Black audience. The catalyst was a video of Newsom telling the audience, "I'm like you," before citing his 960 SAT score and claiming he "can't read" his own speeches.

Minaj did not let it slide.

"His way of bonding with black ppl is to tell them how stupid he is & that he can't read."

She wrote that in a Monday post on X, and she was just getting started.

The Full Indictment

Minaj zeroed in on something that most political commentators would have politely sidestepped: not just what Newsom said, but how he said it. She observed his speech and cadence while he addressed the audience and drew a conclusion that was blunt, specific, and difficult to dismiss.

"Do you wanna know the craziest part of this footage that will haunt him forever? He's literally slowing his speech down & talking in a sporadic cadence."

Then she drove the knife deeper:

"He's not just TELLING them that they're all probably stupid & probably can't read, he's LITERALLY SLOW-ING-DOWN-HIS-SPEECH to make them understand the words that are coming out of his mouth!!!! As if they're children!!!!"

For Minaj, this wasn't a gaffe. It was a window.

"That means he REALLY BELIEVES they're slow. He's not just saying it — he didn't misspeak!!!! He BELIEVES it!!!!"

She then turned to her audience with a question that doubled as an indictment of the entire routine: "Do ya love it?!?!! Do ya just love it, black ppl?!????"

The Bigger Picture Newsom Can't Escape

Minaj wasn't content to treat this as a single embarrassing clip. She framed it as confirmation of something she'd already suspected about the California governor.

"This means my first read on him was correct. He's been handed so many things & put in high positions he never earned or deserved."

This is the kind of critique that Democratic politicians spend enormous energy insulating themselves from, and it landed with particular force because it came from someone who commands a massive audience and owes nothing to the political establishment of either party.

The pattern Minaj identified is one conservatives have pointed to for years. Democratic politicians routinely adjust their presentation, their accents, their vocabulary, and their assumed frame of reference when speaking to Black audiences. The underlying premise is never stated out loud, but Minaj stated it: they believe they need to dumb it down. The condescension is baked into the performance. It's not a bug. It's the whole act.

What makes this moment different is the messenger. When a conservative commentator makes this observation, the media files it under "partisan attack" and moves on. When Nicki Minaj, with tens of millions of followers and cultural credibility that no politician can manufacture, says the same thing in sharper language, the deflection playbook stops working.

Minaj and the Realignment

This wasn't Minaj's first break from the expected script. She first expressed her support for President Donald Trump late last year and has since praised the president and his administration on issues including stopping the persecution and slaughter of Christians in Nigeria, Breitbart News reported.

She has described herself as Trump's "number one fan," adding, "and that's not going to change." When confronted with backlash, she noted that the "hate" directed at her "actually motivates me to support him more."

In recent weeks, her fans have collectively taken to social media to announce they are switching to the Republican Party. Whether that translates into durable electoral shifts remains to be seen, but the cultural signal is unmistakable. The left's grip on Black popular culture, long treated as a settled matter, is loosening in real time.

Why This Stings Differently

Gavin Newsom has spent years positioning himself as the Democratic Party's next great hope, the man who governed California so brilliantly that the rest of the country should want the same treatment. He speaks fluently about equity, inclusion, and systemic this and structural that.

And then a video surfaces of him standing before a Black audience, dumbing down his speech, telling them he scored a 960 on his SAT and can't read, apparently believing this would make him relatable rather than insulting.

A 960 SAT and functional illiteracy. That was his idea of common ground.

The Democratic coalition depends on Black voters showing up reliably and asking few uncomfortable questions about what they actually get in return. The exchange has always been transactional, dressed up in the language of solidarity. What Minaj did was strip away the costume and describe what was underneath: a politician who thinks so little of his audience that he performs stupidity as a bonding exercise.

Newsom can survive a news cycle. What he can't survive is a cultural figure with a bigger platform telling millions of people to trust what their eyes show them.