Nicki Minaj has never been shy about stirring the pot, but her latest feud with Don Lemon has pushed that instinct into especially volatile territory. After hurling a homophobic slur at the former CNN anchor, she is now openly saying the insult was deliberate, a way to force the media to look at his coverage of an anti‑ICE church protest in Minnesota. The clash has turned into a case study in how outrage, identity politics, and immigration debates collide in the age of viral posts.
At the center is Minaj’s claim that the slur was a calculated move, not a slip, and that she is “glad” people are angry because it means they are paying attention. Lemon, who has built a second act as an independent journalist after leaving cable news, has fired back by calling her comments homophobic and telling her to “get a life.” Their back‑and‑forth is now bigger than two celebrities trading shots, raising questions about what counts as strategy and what is simply harm dressed up as media critique.
The Minnesota protest that lit the fuse
The whole saga started far from Hollywood, inside Cities Church in St. Paul, Minnesota, where demonstrators disrupted a service to protest the presence of a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement official who also serves as a pastor. According to Key Points, Don Lemon was on the ground covering the anti‑ICE action, which focused on Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations tied to the church and to the city of Paul. The protest was not abstract, it was connected to the death of Renee Good, who sources say was fatally shot by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent after an enforcement action, a detail that made the demonstration feel urgent rather than symbolic.
Reporting on the protest highlighted that Renee Good was killed when an ICE agent fired three times at close range as she appeared to be driving away from an enforcement scene, according to coverage that identified her full name and the role of Immigration and Customs Enforcement in the shooting. One account notes that Good was shot on the 7th of the month, tying the outrage in St. Paul directly to a specific enforcement incident involving ICE and the community. The protest at Cities Church, and Lemon’s decision to live‑stream and analyze it, became the backdrop for everything that followed, including a later call by one journalist for a music boycott after the “Queen of Rap” used a slur while weighing in on the church action and its ties to President Donald Trump’s immigration agenda, as detailed in a piece about Renee Good.
Don Lemon’s coverage and evolving role
For Don Lemon, the Minnesota protest was part of his ongoing reinvention as an independent journalist after his high‑profile exit from CNN. He had spent 17 years at the network before being fired, with CNN citing a pattern of controversial on‑air comments, including remarks about women and age that drew internal and public criticism. Since then, he has leaned into on‑the‑ground reporting and live social media coverage, which is how he ended up streaming from Cities Church in St. Paul as demonstrators confronted an ICE official and pastor over Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s role in the death of Renee Good, a shift in style that was noted in coverage of Lemon.
His reporting from Minnesota framed the protest as a direct challenge to Immigration and Customs Enforcement and to the church’s leadership, with demonstrators calling out ICE by name and linking the agency’s enforcement tactics to Good’s death. A detailed breakdown of the clash notes that Lemon’s coverage emphasized the tension between worshippers and activists inside Cities Church, and that he repeatedly referenced ICE and the city of Paul while explaining why protesters chose that sanctuary as their stage. That framing, captured in a summary of Lemon and Nicki Minaj blasting each other, is what Minaj later seized on, arguing that his focus was skewed and that he was vilifying protesters rather than interrogating Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Nicki Minaj jumps in, hard
Nicki Minaj did not ease into the conversation, she cannonballed straight into it. After Lemon’s coverage of the anti‑ICE protest circulated, Minaj took to X and Instagram to attack his reporting, accusing him of siding with Immigration and Customs Enforcement and disrespecting the community’s grief over Renee Good. One Instagram post described her as the subject of backlash “once again” after she used a homophobic slur while going after Don Lemon for his live‑stream of an ICE‑related protest, a moment captured in a social clip that framed Nicki Minaj as fully aware that she was lighting a match in a room full of cameras.
On X, Minaj’s language was even more explicit. She referred to Don Lemon with a homophobic insult and told him to “grow some brains,” according to reporting that described how she sharply criticized the independent journalist after he reported on the protest that disrupted the Minnesota church service. One account quotes her using a phrase that began with “DON ‘C—K SUCKIN” alongside an image of the horror character Chucky giving the middle finger, underscoring how aggressively she went after him in front of her tens of millions of followers. That post, which targeted Don, did not just criticize his journalism, it leaned on a slur that LGBTQ advocates have spent decades trying to push out of mainstream use.
Lemon fires back and calls it homophobic
Don Lemon did not let the insults sit unanswered. He responded in an Instagram video, calling Nicki Minaj’s post “unhinged” and “homophobic,” and directly addressing her use of the slur rather than just the criticism of his reporting. In that video, he reminded viewers that he is a gay Black man who has spent years covering civil rights and political movements, and he argued that Minaj’s language put queer fans and communities at risk by normalizing hate speech. Coverage of the exchange notes that Lemon told her to “get a life” and said that if you use that kind of language, “you are a homophobic bigot,” a blunt assessment that was highlighted in a piece about get a life.
Another report on the feud describes how Lemon used Instagram to push back on Minaj’s framing of his Minnesota coverage, insisting that his focus on the protest’s disruption and the church’s reaction did not mean he was siding with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. He pointed out that his reporting had detailed the death of Renee Good and the role of ICE in that shooting, and he accused Minaj of twisting his work to score points with her base. In that same coverage, the Department of Justice was noted as planning to investigate the anti‑ICE church protest and the broader enforcement context, a reminder that while Minaj and Lemon were trading insults, the federal government was looking at the underlying events that had sparked the demonstration, as summarized in a story about More.
Minaj’s “Trojan Horse” defense
Instead of backing down, Nicki Minaj has leaned into the controversy and tried to reframe it as a kind of media jujitsu. In a follow‑up explanation, she said her viral slur against Don Lemon was no accident but a “Trojan Horse,” arguing that she knew the insult would dominate headlines and that once people clicked, they would be forced to see her posts about Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Renee Good. She described the tactic as a way to hijack the news cycle, insisting that while the media obsessed over the homophobic word, she was actually trying to drag attention back to ICE and the protest at Cities Church in St. Paul, a framing she laid out in a post that referred to the insult as a Trojan Horse.
In another explanation, Minaj went further and said she “purposely” used the homophobic slur against Lemon to get media attention, adding that she was “glad they’re angry” because anger meant people were finally looking at the details of the ICE shooting and the protest. That account notes that she explicitly tied her strategy to the way outlets cover celebrity drama, saying they would never have cared about an anti‑ICE protest in Paul without a famous rapper using a banned word. The same reporting points out that she referenced Immigration and Customs Enforcement by name and repeatedly invoked ICE in her posts, trying to make the case that the slur was a tool, not the point, a claim summarized in a piece where Nicki Minaj claims she acted intentionally.
What the “Confesses” and “doubles down” narratives add
As the feud snowballed, coverage started to frame Minaj’s stance in two overlapping ways, as a confession and as a doubling down. One widely shared summary described how “Nicki Minaj Confesses: Used Homophobic Slur Against Don Lemon Just to Make Headlines,” presenting her explanation as an admission that the insult was a calculated ploy rather than a heat‑of‑the‑moment outburst. That account emphasized that she saw the slur as a way to “Make Headlines” and that she was comfortable saying so publicly, reinforcing the idea that she views outrage as a currency she can spend when she wants to redirect attention, a framing captured in a piece labeled Nicki Minaj Confesses.
At the same time, another detailed report described how Nicki Minaj “doubles down” on her feud with Don Lemon, noting that she followed the initial slur with more expletive‑filled posts and insisted that the media had “played right into her hands.” That coverage points out that the former CNN host slammed the rapper as “homophobic,” while Minaj argued that she had intentionally used the slur to bait outlets into amplifying her criticism of his protest coverage. It also notes that LGBTQ advocates and other commentators rejected her framing and simply called the comments hateful, undercutting her claim that this was some kind of clever strategy. The tension between those two narratives, confession and defiance, is laid out in a piece on Nicki Minaj doubling down.
Backlash, boycott calls, and a hip‑hop elder’s advice
The reaction to Minaj’s language was swift and layered. LGBTQ advocates, fans, and fellow journalists criticized her for using a homophobic slur, arguing that no amount of “Trojan Horse” spin could erase the harm of normalizing that word, especially when directed at a gay Black journalist. One journalist went so far as to urge a boycott of her music, referring to her as the “Queen of Rap” and tying the call to the protest over Renee Good’s death and to the broader politics of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and President Donald Trump’s immigration agenda. That boycott push, which explicitly linked the protest to the killing of Renee Good by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent, was detailed in a piece about a music boycott.
Inside hip‑hop, the response was more complicated. Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson, who has his own long history of trolling and controversy, publicly offered Minaj some advice, suggesting she should ease up on the feud even as he acknowledged that she had promised “more drama” after seeing the reaction to her Don Lemon post. A report on his comments notes that he referenced how Minaj’s attack on Lemon for live‑streaming the anti‑ICE demonstration at a church in “Minnes” had already caused an uproar, and that he hinted she risked overshadowing her music with constant online fights. That same coverage describes how Minaj, a mother of one, had argued that Lemon deserved to be “imprisoned” for his role in amplifying what she saw as anti‑protester narratives, a claim recounted in a piece where 50 Cent drops advice.
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