Three years after supporting Joe Biden’s victorious 2020 campaign, the straight-talking rap superstar Cardi B has ditched her backing of the president after public service cuts in her home town of New York.
The Grammy winner, whose legal name is Belcalis Almánzar, said in an Instagram live stream she was done with Biden. Her tirade highlighted what she portrayed as contradiction between US domestic and foreign policies, saying the White House was helping Ukraine fight Russia and Israel fight Hamas while the New York City mayor, Eric Adams, announced a 5% municipal budget cut last week.
Adams said the cuts would affect schools, libraries, the New York police department and the sanitation service, among others.
As Cardi B said: “In New York, there is a $120m budget cut that’s going to affect schools, public libraries and the police department.
“And a $5m budget cut in sanitation … We are gonna be drowning in … rats.”
Adams warned last week that more cuts would be necessary without additional funding from Washington to manage New York’s increase of migrants.
“Migrant costs are going up, tax revenue growth is slowing and [Covid-19] stimulus funding is drying up,” Adams said in a statement.
“No city should be left to handle a national humanitarian crisis largely on its own, and without the significant and timely support we need from Washington, today’s budget will be only the beginning.”
But the Biden administration has not agreed to meet Adams’s funding plea amid growing domestic anger over the multi-billion-dollar funding of the Ukrainian defense against Russia’s invasion and Israel’s conflict with Hamas in Gaza.
An NBC poll released on Sunday showed that Biden’s approval rating has declined to 40%, the lowest level of his presidency. And the survey showed that strong majorities of all voters disapprove of his handling of foreign policy.
The steepest declines of support came among voters aged 18 to 34 – 70% said they did not approve of Biden’s handling of the war in Gaza.
Cardi B, who memorably helped promote Biden’s candidacy as he successfully ran for the White House in 2020, vowed that she would no longer endorse political candidates in the future.
“I’m endorsing no presidents no more,” Cardi B warned. “Joe Biden is talking about, ‘Yeah, we can fund two wars,’ … talking about, ‘Yeah, we got it, we’re the greatest nation.’ No … we’re not. We don’t got it, and we’re going through some shit right now. So say it!”
She added: “We are really, really, really fucked right now. No, we cannot fund these … wars.”
Cardi B asked whether the US was going broke and then answered: “Yes, it is. We ain’t got McDonald’s money.”
In a final rebuke to Biden’s economic and foreign policy management, she said: “Feed that … to somebody else, twinkle, but don’t feed it to me.” She then promised “to get to the bottom of it”.
