Trump Rates Nicki Minaj's Ass 'Hard To Miss'

President Trump spent Sunday campaigning for a Senate candidate in Port Huron, Michigan. When rapper Nicki Minaj, in a head-to-foot Gucci look fresh off Air Force One, took the stage, he told the crowd "By the way, I looked at one hell of a beautiful ass before. Nicki Minaj. That's hard to miss," per The Guardian.

Rear-View is doing inventory again. This week's target: a woman in head-to-toe Gucci who had just stepped off a military plane. The rally was for a Senate race the rest of the country can't find on a map. The speech ran forty-five minutes. The only line with a product was the ass.

The mechanism is a two-week habit. First the "piece of steel, I'm still recovering" comment about a senator, then the "beautiful guy" line, then this. The White House spin cycle on the butt is a machine with four gears: first "fake news," then "off the record, women yes, men no," and it is not even running hot.

Minaj's side of the deal is the actual story. She has been "with us a long time," per Trump, since the January pivot. That is the endorsement economy: federal airfare, a paragraph in a national speech, a Gucci runway moment. In exchange, forty thousand focus-group members who clap at whatever is said about a backside. Her own brand empire needs the relationship. The crowd needs the content. Everybody got what they paid for.

The country's only remaining rearview mirror is political now. Trade war in one side, ass in the other.

YOUR TURN: At what point does a campaign stop being a rally and become a casting call?