Nicki Minaj posted a birthday selfie with Elon Musk, thanking him for “saving free speech” in her latest MAGA move.
Nicki Minaj wished Elon Musk a happy 55th birthday today via her platform of 28 million X followers, posting a selfie with the platform owner and thanking him for “saving free speech” on behalf of Gag City and Barbz.
The photo, posted today on
This is the latest chapter in Minaj’s public friendship with the world’s richest man, which has been going on since late 2025.
Musk, who acquired Twitter for $44 billion in October 2022, is known as a “free speech absolutist” and has declared that the platform needs to become a true digital town square.
He cut the number of content moderators, implemented amnesty for banned accounts, and repositioned X as a place where fewer voices could be silenced.
Free speech was a core rationale for the entire acquisition, which he viewed as a social necessity rather than a business transaction.
https://x.com/i/status/2071293368169058652
What follows tells a different story.
A 2025 study published in PLOS One by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, analyzed 4.7 million posts and found that hate speech on X increased by about 50% in the eight months after Musk took over compared with the previous period.
Racist, homophobic and transphobic slurs all increased during this period, with engagement on hateful posts rising by 70%.
The platform’s handling of Ye illustrates the chaos in real time: Musk reinstated the rapper after an anti-Semitic post, suspended him weeks later after Ye posted a post as ####### fused with the Star of David, and quietly reinstated the account months later.
Nikki’s public support for Musk has been steadily escalating since November 2025, when she retweeted a video of Musk titled “Speak Elon, we’re listening.”
By March 2026, she called him “our leader” in a post, much to the confusion of her own fan base.
In the most notable moment of last month’s SpaceX visit so far, Mina showed up at Starbase in Texas for the launch of Starship V3 and went live on the radio, telling the crowd, “Hats off to Elon. Thank you for everything you do for humanity.”
Musk welcomed her aboard the X, and the two exchanged greetings after a hydraulic pin issue caused the launch to fail.
The SpaceX appearance fits a broader pattern that has seen Minaj lose a Met Gala invite and draw growing criticism from longtime fans.
Since December 2025, she has appeared at Turning Point America’s America Festival, stood on stage with Trump at the White House, called herself his “number one fan,” and posted an AI-generated birthday tribute image in which she was with Trump and Musk.
According to Time magazine, she told the magazine that she had privately supported Trump for years but feared a backlash from what she described as the “Democratic Family” industry.
Musk’s birthday post comes on the same day that the tech billionaire turned 55 and just became the world’s first trillionaire following the SpaceX initial public offering earlier this month.
