Cardi B and her on-again-off-again boo Offset were caught in the midst of rally of Trump supporters on the streets of Beverly Hills in Los Angeles on Saturday, and the confluence of the two groups ended with cops pulling Offset out of his car and detaining him, on the complaint of someone on the street.
Videos posted by Cardi B on her Instagram story before Offset’s altercation with the police, show scores of white people walking and driving through Beverly Hills while toting Trump flags, American flags, and even some fake guns.
“I don’t like this shit, look how they walking around with fake guns and covering their face,” Cardi says, while panning to the street full of MAGA devotees. “We gon’ get jumped, I really feel like we gon’ get jumped.”
Though it isn’t clear if Cardi and Offset were in the same vehicle, what actually ended up happening seemed to be a jumping of Offset via police, after one of the people on the street called in a report accusing the rapper of waving guns at them.
“Beverly Hills Police received information from a passerby of a subject who pointed a weapon from a vehicle at him; in the area of South Santa Monica Blvd and N. Beverly Drive,” reads the official police statement of the incident according to Vanity Fair. “The passerby provided a license plate to the vehicle, and the vehicle was stopped by patrol units a short distance away.”
Offset, who was livestreaming to Instagram at the time, is seen in video clips being surrounded by Beverly Hills Police officers who are demanding he put his hands up and leave his car.
The Migos rapper objects to their requests, saying “You got guns out, I’m not finna move my hands from my steering wheel.”
He then points out to the cops that they just witnessed a MAGA marcher beating up his car with a flag. None of this seems to detract the arresting officers from their goal of apprehending a Black man, and one of them (wearing a black-and-blue flag mask) soon reaches directly into the rapper’s car to pop open the lock on Offset’s door, take him out of the vehicle, and handcuff him:
Despite the brouhaha, police say the unnamed “victim” who called in the accusation ultimately did not want to press charges for the alleged weapon pointing and Offset was briefly detained then released. It remains to be seen if he will sue the Beverly Hills Police, which he threatened to do during his arrest.
Meanwhile Marcelo Almanzar, another passenger in the car who TMZ reports as being Cardi B’s cousin, was arrested after the altercation on a charge of having a concealed weapon.
It’s telling that in the midst of a whole gang of right-wing supporters flooding the streets of Beverly Hills, the only people hassled and apprehended by police for bearing arms were those who were not white.