CULTURE

Cardi B’s Impassioned Discussion of the Government Shutdown Has People Calling for #Cardi2020

Even Democratic senators were considering sharing her informational video.

Jan. 17, 2019

On Wednesday, amid announcements that several prominent Democratic politicians are already throwing their hats in the ring for the 2020 presidential election, Cardi B shared a civic-minded video on Instagram that had many people calling for her candidacy. In the clip, the rapper delivers a thoughtful and earnest monologue on the ongoing government shutdown, with the intent of educating her less knowledgeable followers and issuing a call to action.

“I just wanna remind y’all—because it’s been a little bit over three weeks, OK, it’s been a little bit over three weeks—Trump is now ordering and summonsing federal government workers to go back to work without getting paid,” she began. “Now, I don’t wanna hear y’all motherfuckers talking about, ‘Oh, but Obama shut down the government for 17 days’—yeah, bitch, for health care! So your grandma could check her blood pressure, and you bitches could go check y’all pussy at the gynecologist with no motherfucking problem.”

She continued, interspersed with bursts of worried, helpless laughter, “Now, I know a lot of y’all don’t care because y’all don’t work for the government or y’all probably don’t even have a job, but this shit is really fucking serious, bro, this shit is crazy. Like, our country is in a hellhole right now, all for a fucking wall. Everybody needs to take this seriously; I feel like we need to take some action. I don’t know what type of action, bitch, because this is not what I do. But bitch, I’m scared. This is crazy, and I really feel bad for these people that gotta go to fucking work to not get motherfucking paid.”

Soon after she posted the video, Cardi’s name started trending on Twitter, thanks to tweets from fans like Chris Evans, many of which also included the admittedly very catchy “#Cardi2020.” (Sadly, per U.S. law, the 26-year-old isn’t eligible to run for president until she’s 35, so #Cardi2028 is probably more accurate. Until then, however, she’s already legally able to serve as a member of the House of Representatives, and could make a senatorial run in the 2022 midterms, when she’s 30.)

Some Democratic politicians even showed their approval: After Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) tweeted, “(Trying to decide whether or not to retweet the Cardi B video),” Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) replied, “Omg, I had the same argument with myself 30 minutes ago!” Despite Schatz’s ensuing attempts to persuade Murphy to repost the video (with a disclaimer about its profanity) so he could then retweet that, and despite Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) even stepping in to ask when the retweets could be expected, all three eventually decided against sharing the video, despite Cardi’s common-sense and well-spoken content.

For her part, Cardi seemed surprised by the attention her post received. Later that evening, she took to Twitter to ask, “Why am I trending?”

The Bronx-born performer has never shied away from sharing her knowledge of and interest in politics. Besides sharing similarly impassioned videos like this one, she’s also spoken further about it in interviews. “I love political science. I love government. I’m obsessed with presidents. I’m obsessed to know how the system works,” she told GQ in April 2018, going on to expound upon her love of Franklin Delano and Eleanor Roosevelt. A few months later, while speaking to Rolling Stone, she discussed her feelings about a certain other president. “Donald Trump has made divisions in this country—he almost made a crazy civil war between the blacks and the whites,” she said. “He has proven himself to be a madman so many times, and proven himself to be disrespectful to women, and that still hasn’t gotten him impeached.”