White House Steps Into 'Testiclesgate'
Administration willing to make doc available to Nicki Minaj
It's come to this.
The Biden White House is having to step into a matter of, shall we say, large but delicate proportions.
Call it “testiclesgate,” or the lingering claims by rapper and media personality Nicki Minaj that the vaccines against COVID-19 cause swollen testicles.
The administration has reached out to Minaj even as the health minister of her native Trinidad blasted her, well, ballsy claims as “false.”
In all seriousness, Minaj's baseless claims have public health officials — and even the Biden administration — worried.
This is because the entertainer spread the myth that the vaccines cause swollen testicles to her 22.6 million followers on Twitter and the story refuses to go away.
Minaj sparked an international furor when she alleged on Twitter that her cousin in Trinidad refuses to get a vaccine because his friend became impotent after being vaccinated.
“His testicles became swollen. His friend was weeks away from getting married, now the girl called off the wedding,” Minaj said on Monday.
While COVID-19 has been known to cause impotence in men, there is no medical data to support the claim that the vaccines cause swollen testicles.
But the concern at the highest levels of the administration is that this allegation from Minaj could stymie President Biden's efforts to accelerate vaccination of those Americans who remain persistently unvaccinated.
This is why the White House is so eager to reach out to Minaj.
“We offered a call with Nicki Minaj and one of our doctors to answer questions she had about the safety and effectiveness of the vaccine. This is pretty standard and something we do all the time,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said during her regular press briefing Thursday. “It was a very early stage call at a staff level, staff to staff, and we weren’t even at the point of discussing, we’re not even at the point of discussing, I should say, at this point, the mechanisms or the formats or anything along those lines. It was simply an offer to have a conversation and an early stage call.”
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