Trump Used the White House Press Dinner to Joke That Gunfire at April’s Gala Made Nicki Minaj “Start Twerking.”
by Jerome London · Thought CatalogUpdated 42 minutes ago, July 25, 2026
The April gala Trump was joking about had ended with a gunman opening fire on the crowd. Three months later he turned that night into a punchline about the rapper who’s now one of his loudest celebrity backers.
The gunfire Trump referenced was real. April’s White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner was cut short after a gunman breached security and opened fire on the room.
“After hearing the gunshots, many people yelled, ‘Get down!’ which caused Nicki Minaj to start twerking,” Trump said Friday, July 24, at the rescheduled dinner at the Waldorf Astoria in Washington. “Can you believe it? She’s the only one that really understood what that meant.”
Minaj wasn’t in the room this time. The makeup event skipped its traditional red carpet and drew fewer celebrities than the one in April.
She’s spent Trump’s second term as one of his most visible supporters, a turn from the first administration when she criticized some of his immigration policies. On July 6 she posted a photo with him from the Oval Office, writing, “Whoa!!!! #WhiteHouseBarbie with her favorite President of all time!!!”
In January she called herself “probably the president’s No. 1 fan” at the Trump Accounts Summit. She told Time in May she’d backed him for years but stayed quiet over fears of industry backlash: “Many celebrities feel the way I do, but they don’t say it.”
Friday marked Trump’s first time at the dinner as president after boycotting it throughout his first term.
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