Nicki Minaj said >> My God!
>> And she said,
I'm not going to take your vaccine
to go to no stupid Met Gala.
Look at the pigs!
You know Fauci's lying.
>> You know Fauci's lying.
Down with the CDC.
>> Down with the CDC.
This is the culmination,
I won't say culmination.
This is the continuation of
Ball Gate, the story that no one
could have imagined had legs
past the eight hours when it broke.
Those are Nicki Minaj
fans protesting outside of the CDC
headquarters in Atlanta
against the COVID-19 vaccine.
Of course, if you're just getting
up to speed if you were hoping
to ignore this story, sorry,
we're going to talk about it.
because Nicki Minaj on Sunday
tweeted to her 22 point 5
million followers.
My cousin in Trinidad won't get
the vaccine because his friend got
it and became impotent,
his testicles became swollen.
His friend was weeks
away from getting married ,and now
the girl called off the wedding so
just pray on it and
make sure you're comfortable with
your decision not bullied.
Okay, so just putting her cousin's
friends testicles on blast.
Since all this happened monologist
claims have been dismissed by
numerous medical professionals and
political leaders.
I do have to show you this video
because it's kind of one of
the funnier things I've seen.
This is the Health Minister of
Trinidad, speaking out about
the investigation they inevitably
had to run after this tweet and
in all the backlash
>> Claims are being made,
one of the reasons we could not
respond yesterday in real time to
Miss Minaj is that we have to check
and make sure that what she was
claiming was either true or false.
And unfortunately, we wasted so
much time yesterday running down
this false claim.
It is as far as we know,
at this point in time, there has
been no such reported either side
effect or adverse event.
And what was sad about this is that
it wasted our time yesterday trying
to track down.
Because we take all these claims
seriously whether it's on social
media or mainstream media.
As we stand now, there is
absolutely no reported such side
effect or adverse event of
testicular swelling in Trinidad or
IDSC Dr Heinz anywhere else?
>> None that we know of.
>> None that we know of anywhere
else in the world.
So that's a clean.
>> [LAUGH] I love how the Health
Minister of Trinidad maybe had
to go to this cousin's friend's
house and check in on his balls.
They are just very funny to me and
ridiculous.
But obviously, it sounds funny.
It's really it's insane and
last thing, Nicki Minaj claims that
she was invited to
the White House she tweeted.
The White House invited me and
I think it's a step in the right
direction.
Yes, I'm going and I'll be dressed
all in pink like Legally Blonde so
they'll know I mean business.
I'll have questions on behalf of
the people who have been made fun
of for simply being human.
I don't really know what
that means.
The White House and said,
no, they didn't invite Nicki Minaj
there to visit the White House.
But as they have with others, they
offered a call with Nicki Minaj to
basically say, hey, do you have
questions about the vaccine?
Let's talk about it,
let's talk about the safety and
the effectiveness of it.
But of course that didn't stop
the the barbs as they say
the Nicki Minaj fans from going out
and protesting outside the CDC.
When will this be over Nina Turner?
>> Now I hope.
[LAUGH] >> It's really
unfortunate, and
[COUGH] look, I'm not going to pour
on Nicki Minaj when she said it.
I will say that, [COUGH] all of us
bear responsibility for
the type of information that we put
out and especially if you have
a huge following.
So, I get that.
Also, it is important that people
know they should get medical
advice from medical professionals,
medical doctors.
We know that we need to return
immunity in the United States of
America, how we need to reach
herd immunity in the world.
Because the Reverend Dr. Martin
Luther King Jr.'s quote about what
affects one directly affects us all
indirectly is really real when it
comes to this pandemic and
also let me throw in climate chaos.
I want to say to folks,
get the vaccine.
You got to go and get the vaccine,
it is irresponsible not to do so.
Now it's not irresponsible to
question, it's not irresponsible to
talk to a medical professional and
get understanding,
I think that's fine.
But if you don't have a medical
understanding, going out there and
linking, whether it's balls and
testicles or any other body part
two, the vaccine is absolutely
irresponsible.
So, she put it out there.
A lot of folks are judging that,
I get it.
Ultimately, anybody and all people
should see their doctor and
talk to their doctors or
nurses about the vaccine.
We get a lot of vaccinations in
this country.
It was mandatory, at least when I
was in school, my mama could send
me to the public school without
that vaccination, several of
vaccinations as a matter of fact.
So the fact that people
are allowing some of these
conspiracy theories to drive them.
And if you get the vaccine,
the greater likelihood,
I mean, more people who don't have
the vaccine are dying and
being hospitalized.
That doesn't mean that if you get
it you won't, but
you are less likely to do so.
So let the doctors handle this.
This is really unfortunate that it
has come to this and
also that the Minister of Health in
Trinidad had to take their precious
time to answer this.
>> Yeah, so guys this is
unfortunately the power of media.
I mean, it could be used for
good but oftentimes this winds up
being something that does not help.
So she says that if we all let it
go at the same time, it wouldn't
reach some of her followers but
it probably would have been okay.
But now that we're talking about it
for a week straight, I guarantee
you, there is some percentage of
the population who now thinks,
well, it might lead to enlarged
testicles and it's going to give
them some hesitancy.
Because they only hear a lot of
folks just see the headlines or
they only tangentially hear a story
and they don't dive into all
the details.
So I mean, look,
this story obviously has legs,
if you will,
because it's funny, right?
We all get it, right?
So we I mean, the Government of
Trinidad spending all week tracking
down swollen balls, right?
Don't pretend that it's not
funny in that sense, and
that's why it has that strike
attracted a lot of attention.
But now all the grifters are into,
so these guys who were protesting
for the CDC called Black Hammer.
I don't know their Nicki Minaj
fans at all.
So they're yeah, we're a barbs.
Are you because in your promotional
material they printed out barbers
versus the CDC.
Pretty sure it's not barbers.
So and these guys are grouped as
trying to get attention
in a thousand different ways.
And if they were actually anti
colonial as they claim great, we're
anti colonial that's interesting.
And if they were a far left group
even further left than us,
no problem.
We'd have mine, we talked about it.
But now they're glooming on to like
right wing stuff and
conspiracy theories.
And as soon as people are paying
attention because of Nicki Minaj,
all of a sudden,
they're pretending to be your fans.
So every grifter in the world is
now attached themselves
to these in large balls.
[LAUGH] And so and every time that
all of them talk about it, they
convinced another percentage of the
population to not get the vaccine.
And I'll add one last danger
to this.
Because now, as Nina pointed out,
we've been saying on the show,
your kids have to get vaccines for
polio, chickenpox,
etc to go to school.
I was having an interview in
the conversation with some
conservatives earlier in the week,
when I told him that, the woman in
the interview flipped out and
said no way.
So now this is probably going to
lead to a resurgence of chickenpox,
polio and those other diseases
because lunatic right wingers
are going to be like,
we are getting those vaccines,
I don't want those either.
For Christ's sake man,
that's the damage that's done by
right wing propaganda.
>> Can I just throw that out?
A lot of medications, vaccines
are not a lot of medications have
side effects.
I mean, this foolery that folks
are acting like this the first
time that there's been requisite
side effects, some side effects I'm
about the ball side effects.
But you can take an aspirin,
you can get the flu shot that we've
been taming the flu for
a very long time.
Viruses exists,
they exist like humanity exists.
They were here before we got here,
they're going to
be here even after we are gone.
The job is trying to tame these
viruses so that we can live in some
type of stasis.
So side effects exists, blood
pressure medicine, any kind of
medication that you take may or may
not have a certain side effect to
a certain group of people, period.
I don't know why we can brand new
on this, and this is dangerous.
>> Yeah, I mean, yeah,
Rose McGowan jumped in.
I don't need to go into
what she said.
But I think Cenk is absolutely
right that like
now the grifters have come out.
And I connect this, obviously to
the politics of Medicare for all
and Nina Turner to your run, right?
And to the fact that,
if we had medicare-for-all, and
if it wasn't so easy to convince
people that healthcare
professionals are the enemy or
that somehow the CDC is the enemy,
right?
If we actually trusted our health
care professionals, if we could
easily visit a doctor, if we had
a community doctor available to us,
then wow, it'd be so
much harder to convince people of
ridiculous conspiracy theories
about about pharmaceuticals, right,
or vaccines, right?
Obviously if we broke up big
pharma, how much more trust would
there be in these life saving,
whether it's medication that could
suddenly be affordable, or vaccines
that are free and saving lives?