Trump Called SBA Head Kelly Loeffler “Nicki Minaj” While Nicki Was Sitting in the Room
At a July 6 White House luncheon promoting Trump Accounts, President Trump praised Kelly Loeffler, the former Georgia senator who now runs the Small Business Administration. Atlanta News First reported that his remarks appeared to blend Loeffler with rapper Nicki Minaj, who had publicly promoted the program and was attending the event. Praising Loeffler’s husband, Trump said: “But Jeff is great, and he’s married to a person who’s doing a phenomenal job at the SBA. Small Business, Nicki Minaj.”
The Trump Accounts program seeds government-funded investment accounts for children, money that can later go toward college, a first home, or starting a business. Nicki Minaj had publicly promoted it, which is how the rapper’s name came up at a White House event about small business.
The July 6, 2026 event was a Rose Garden luncheon. Trump recognized Jeffrey Sprecher, the founder and CEO of Intercontinental Exchange, the company that owns the New York Stock Exchange. Sprecher is married to Kelly Loeffler, the former US senator from Georgia who now serves as Administrator of the Small Business Administration.
Atlanta News First reported that while praising Loeffler’s work at the SBA, Trump appeared to mix her up with Minaj, referring to the administrator as “Nicki Minaj” and “small business Nicki.” The outlet ran the moment under the headline “Nicki, Kelly… close enough?” and said Trump “mistakenly identified Kelly Loeffler as Nicki Minaj while praising the SBA administrator’s work.”
The Hollywood Reporter’s coverage centered on a separate moment from the same event, when Trump introduced Minaj to the crowd and praised her as “so respected and so hot and so great.”
In the same remarks, Trump said the SBA, “when you add it up, it’s bigger than any bank probably in the world.” The SBA is a federal agency, not a bank. It mainly guarantees loans that private lenders make to small businesses, along with disaster loans and counseling, and it does not hold deposits. Its loan portfolio is measured in the hundreds of billions. The world’s largest banks hold trillions, with JPMorgan Chase at roughly $4.4 trillion in assets and ICBC around $7.65 trillion.
Sprecher runs the exchange that owns the NYSE, Loeffler runs the SBA, and Minaj had been promoting the program that brought all three into the same event.
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