Kaitlan Collins needed a single sentence to sum up Donald’s Trump’s latest bizarre obsession.
On a special Sunday edition of CNN’s The Source, Collins played a clip of the 80-year-old president at a Michigan rally talking about Nicki Minaj’s backside.
Republican Sen. Jon Husted, 59, is fighting for his Ohio seat against Democrat Sherrod Brown. Trump has consistently focused on Husted’s backside at rallies this month. This includes Ohio, Kentucky, and North Carolina, where Trump has turned the the former football player’s physique into campaign theater.
On Sunday, however, Trump, turned his attention to Minaj on Sunday, with Collins airing a clip of his comments to a panel of guests on The Source.
Collins followed the clip with insider knowledge on what one of his own allies made of the performance.
“In response to what you just heard there, one Trump ally told me tonight, quote, ‘The closing here has been a--, both literally and figuratively,’” Collins said, as the panel erupted in laughter next to her.
Collins said the ally had spoken to her privately, and she did not name them.
She said the person was “despondent over how the president is handling the end of the campaign.”
The Daily Beast has reached out to the White House for comment.
In the clip, Trump, 80, turned his attention to Minaj, who had flown in with him on Air Force One as one of his most prominent celebrity backers. Pointing her out during his speech, Trump said: “By the way, I’ve looked at one hell of a beautiful a-- before. Nicki Minaj! That’s hard to miss… Sorry, Nicki. I hope Nicki wasn’t insulted, but we love Nicki.”
Trump brought Minaj onstage with a joke about being upstaged. “You know, I don’t like being overshadowed,” he said. “And this woman overshadows me, and I’m angry about it. They’re going crazy over her.”
Minaj got the crowd chanting “We love Trump,” then turned to culture-war themes. “We don’t want our children to be bombarded with sex changes, right? We don’t want that for our children,” she said. “We want people to leave the children alone.”
She closed with a pledge of loyalty: “It is an honor to stand with you every single time. I will continue to support you forever and ever, and if you run again, I will support you again.” The Constitution’s 22nd Amendment bars Trump from seeking a third term.
Minaj, 43, criticized Trump’s border policies during his first term, revealing in 2018 that she had arrived in the U.S. from Trinidad and Tobago at age 5 without legal status.
She has since become one of his loudest celebrity backers, calling herself his “number one fan.”
She has urged young Americans to “vote red now,” even though she isn’t a U.S. citizen and can’t vote herself.
Trump was in Michigan to stump for Republican Mike Rogers, 63, a former congressman running for the State’s open Senate seat. In the latest Marist poll taken Oct. 15-18, he trails Democrat Abdul El-Sayed, 41, by a whisker, with El Sayed ahead 50-48 percent.
El-Sayed, 41, is a public health expert and progressive populist who has built his campaign around the cost of living. According to Time magazine, his platform includes Medicare for All, a ban on corporate PAC donations, higher wages, and higher taxes on billionaires and corporations. He opposes the Iran war, blaming it for high prices at the pump in Michigan.
Collins’ panel also weighed in on Trump’s rally remarks. “He’s melting down a bit in the final stretch,” said Alyssa Farah Griffin, a former Trump White House communications director.
“If you’re Jon Husted, if you’re Mike Rogers, this is not what you were hoping would be on the local TV,” she said.
