Late night hosts have questions, ideas, and jokes about Nicki Minaj's cousin's friend's swollen testicles

"The Met Gala was last night, but not everyone decided to attend," Trevor Noah said on Tuesday's Daily Show. Among the no-shows was Nicki Minaj, "for a reason that has set the internet ablaze," he said, "and ooh, baby, is there a lot to digest here."

Minaj said she would not get vaccinated to go to the Met Gala, then shared a story about her Trinidadian cousin's friend getting a COVID shot — and the unbelievable aftermath. "This poor guy" Noah said, "He's minding his own business, with these swollen testicles in Trinidad, and then because his best friend happens to be cousins with Nicki Minaj, now the whole world knows that he's impotent, he got dumped, and he's got giant testicles."

And after Minaj tweeted the story to her 22 million followers, everyone weighed in, Noah said, from right-wing commentators "rushing to Nicki's defense" to "liberal pundits like MSNBC's Joy Reid," who — Minaj pointed out when she "roasted her" — was vaccine-hesitant herself just a year ago.

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Minaj isn't really "doing her own research," Noah said, but she does appear persuadable to getting vaccinated, and "if you take Nicki at her word, or anyone who wants more information for that matter, instead of crucifying them just to prove how righteous we are, let's show them the research." The vaccines are safe, really effective, and aren't know to inflate testicles, "but even if you do want to blame the vaccine, Trinidad doesn't even use the same vaccines as America," he noted. "They use the Chinese vaccine Sinopharm."

"Did that guy know you're not supposed to get the shot ... you're suppose to get the shot in your arm," Jimmy Fallon said on The Tonight Show. Meanwhile, "Fireball is releasing their own kegs," luckily, because "when I saw Fireball trending, I thought something else happened to Nicki Minaj's cousin's friend."

Seriously, this "poor guy's sitting at home on his couch, TV dinner resting on his nuts, and now he's famous," Jimmy Kimmel said on Kimmel Live. "But this actually gives us a chance to talk about something that actually is important. Nicki's cousin's friend got the COVID vaccine, and then his testicles swelled up. That doesn't mean his testicles swelled up because he got the COVID vaccine." In fact, he said, "for this friend of Nicki's cousin, I hate to say it, but if your testicles swell up that big, the question isn't did you get a vaccine recently, it's: What have you been doing to your balls?"

And finally, The Late Show rewrote one of Minaj's songs for the occasion.

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Peter Weber, The Week US

Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.