Unless you’re living under a rock the size of Taylor Swift’s carbon footprint, you know that on Thursday, former president Donald Trump was found guilty on 34 counts of falsifying business records connected to the cover-up of his sexual affair with porn star Stormy Daniels, thus making him a convicted felon.
However, as of Friday morning, the number one trending topic on X is the rapper Eminem, who dropped his latest single, “Houdini,” at midnight on Friday. It’s unclear whether Eminem is aware that pop star Dua Lipa released a lead single with the same title just last November, but that’s neither here nor there.
In old school-Eminem fashion, the rapper made a couple of offensive jokes and name-dropped several celebrities in his lyrics, in particularly joining in the Drake tradition of cruelly calling out Megan Thee Stallion. (Em also takes a shot at Dr. Dre, but that’s nothing new for him.)
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“If I was to ask for Megan Thee Stallion if she would collab with me, would I really have a shot at a feat?” Eminem says, a barely veiled pun reference to the “Cash Shit” rapper being shot by her ex-friend Tory Lanez during a 2020 dispute. Lanez was found guilty guilty of shooting hip-hop star Megan (real name Megan Pete) in her feet following an argument on July 12, 2020, in December of 2022.
Even given the salaciousness of the “Lose Yourself” rapper’s remarks, Eminem’s X trend victory over Trump is nevertheless curious, given that the Trump verdict is historic, and trending online in every possible sense of the word—suggesting that it’s at least possible there is some manipulation happening behind the scenes.
Elon Musk, the billionaire owner of X (formerly Twitter), is demonstrably riled up about Trump’s conviction, writing on the platform that “great damage was done today to the public’s faith in the American legal system.”
“If a former President can be criminally convicted over such a trivial matter—motivated by politics, rather than justice—then anyone is at risk of a similar fate,” Musk added.
Perhaps “regular people” on X really do care more about Eminem’s new single than they do about the first criminal conviction of a former U.S. president. With Trump Town USA, one of the largest pro-Trump online merch depots in the country, rolling out new “I’m voting for the felon!” T-shirts and the Trump campaign reporting Friday that they received $34.8 million dollars in donations following his conviction, should Democrats be worried?
