It’s after seven on a Friday night and Nicki Minaj may be the most based person on the planet right now. The music star was recently been embroiled in controversy after she shared the tale of her cousin’s friend in Trinidad supposedly getting swollen testicles from the COVID-19 vaccine.

Here’s that original statement.

My cousin in Trinidad won’t get the vaccine cuz his friend got it & became impotent. His testicles became swollen. His friend was weeks away from getting married, now the girl called off the wedding. So just pray on it & make sure you’re comfortable with ur decision, not bullied

— Nicki Minaj (@NICKIMINAJ) September 13, 2021

True or not, that ended up with her being temporarily suspended from Twitter after she and Joy Reid traded barbs for a day. In the aftermath, Minaj and her family members (specifically those in Trinidad) have been bombarded by reporters looking to prove her story wrong, you know, because the narrative must be protected at all costs.

An alleged screenshot of one of the reporter’s behavior has been released.

Messages from a reporter to Nicki Minaj's friend. This is stalking and harassment, not journalism. pic.twitter.com/neXYO9A38J

— Christina Pushaw (@ChristinaPushaw) September 17, 2021

But instead of just taking the abuse, Minaj decided to release their names and phone numbers, and that has The Daily Beast very upset.

Nicki Minaj posted the phone numbers of two reporters to her Instagram Story, inviting spam calls and threats. https://t.co/hecw5rmBVs

— The Daily Beast (@thedailybeast) September 17, 2021

Nicki Minaj sicced her fans, the Barbz, on reporters Friday and threatened them herself. The rapper posted the phone numbers of two reporters to her Instagram Story, inviting spam calls and threats. The journalists had been trying to contact her cousin’s friend with the swollen balls, the man she cited in now-infamous tweets as one of the main reasons for her decision not to get vaccinated against COVID-19.

As a general rule, I’m very anti-doxxing. Obviously, I’m an anonymous writer and wouldn’t appreciate someone taking my personal information and blasting it out. But, let’s note that The Daily Beast has a history of doxxing people who are part of right-leaning media so it’s a bit rich to see them act indignant here.

Further, the journalist in question (who was either from The Guardian or The Daily Mail) really crossed some lines here. No journalist or writer, whether their real name is known or not, should be purposely attacked and doxxed just for daring to share their opinions. Yet, if you start harassing people, all bets are probably off, and that text sure reads like a threat to me.

Regardless, why is this even a story? Why are major news outlets wasting resources trying to disprove a story about swollen testicles? Are they really that obsessed with defending the vaccines when they don’t even need defending? What Minaj said is probably not true if I had to place a bet, but it’s also largely irrelevant. In fact, far more attention has been brought to her claim by the response than had the media just ignored her texts.

The rush to punish wrong-think is not American, no matter what one may personally believe about a subject. It’s time for this insanity to stop. If someone says something anti-vaccine, so what? Disagree and move on. But the defense has turned into an almost religious activity for some, and it’s just creepy.