Melania’s gilded infomercial leaves us in no doubt about the chilly enigma that is the first lady
Opinion
Washington: The riddle of the Slovenian Sphinx has been solved. The perennial question about what Melania Trump is really like, behind her exquisite mannequin’s mask, has been answered by her new infomercial, Melania. It turns out there is no riddle, no enigma, no mystery, no dark anguish.
Melania is not Rapunzel in the tower, pining to be saved from the ogre imprisoning her. She is comfortable in the frosty vertical solitude of the tower, swaddled in luxury.
Some theatres showing Melania were so empty that wags suggested that immigrants lacking legal status should hide out there. Reviews are brutal: The Independent said the first lady came across as “a preening, scowling void of pure nothingness in this ghastly bit of propaganda.” The Guardian dismissed the movie as “gilded trash,” and Variety asked, “Why would Amazon spend $US75 million [$107 million] on a movie this boring?” (I think we all know the answer to that.)
But the portrait of “The Portrait,” as Melania was nicknamed by Ivanka Trump, is revealing because it doesn’t reveal anything. We don’t even learn whether Melania’s feet ache after hours of wearing stilettos. (I picture her as having Barbie feet that cannot flatten.)
We knew everything we needed to know about her in the wake of January 6, 2021. In the memoir of Stephanie Grisham, Melania’s former aide and confidant, Grisham told a chilling story about the chilly first lady. When the rioters broke through the barricades outside the Capitol, Grisham sent Melania a text: “Do you want to tweet that peaceful protests are the right of every American, but there is no place for lawlessness and violence?” Melania texted back simply, “No.” She was busy getting ready for a photo shoot of a rug she had chosen for the White House.
Melania knows her deal with the author of The Art of the Deal. She seems to have no problem with his authoritarian ways. (She is something of an authoritarian herself when it comes to tailoring her inaugural outfits, supervising every scintilla of cloth.)
The president, who once dreamed of being a Hollywood macher, casts his cabinet based on who looks right for each part. He cast Melania as the alluring, supportive and often-silent wife. She accepts that role and isn’t, as her movie claims, reinventing the role of first lady. The East Wing, until Trump tore it down, was her drop-by.
Over the years, liberals have fantasised that she was a secret member of the #resistance; that she was a phantom at the White House because she couldn’t stand to be around her husband; that one day, the Slovenian immigrant would, as conjugal saboteur, renounce Trump’s harsh policies on immigration, castigating his betrayal of her with Stormy Daniels while Melania was pregnant, and denouncing his crude talk about women’s private parts and looks.
But stop waiting. She chose Brett Ratner, a director driven out of Hollywood after sexual assault and misconduct claims, to be her hagiographer. (Trump pressed the Paramount heads for a fourth installment of Ratner’s Rush Hour, and the Ellisons obeyed.) Ratner dwells salaciously on her 5-inch stilettos, long legs, comely ankles and cascade of frosted hair.
Melania is where she wants to be: in the bosom of a corrupt family that is prostituting the People’s House. Following up her shady ventures into NFTs and a meme coin, the first lady got a windfall from Jeff Bezos, who certainly wanted to curry favour with her husband. Bezos’ Amazon MGM studio made her movie, providing a whopping $US40 million for the film and another $U35 million for marketing. The Wall Street Journal reported that Melania’s cut of the $US40 million was at least $US28 million.
This is particularly gross, given that Amazon is engaged in mass layoffs and Bezos seems intent on starving his Washington Post of money and talent. The split screen of Bezos and his spendthrift wife, Lauren Sánchez, frolicking everywhere — including Paris Fashion Week — while the tech mogul defiles the crown jewel nurtured by Ben Bradlee and Kay Graham is sickening.
Speaking of sickening, in a 2002 email from the newly released Epstein files that The New York Times said is from a “Melania” and appears to be written to Ghislaine Maxwell, “Melania” praises a profile of Jeffrey Epstein in New York magazine and says of Maxwell, “You look great on the picture.” Maxwell calls “Melania” “Sweet pea,” and “Melania” signs her email “Love.”
The “documentary” features a candlelight dinner the night before Trump’s second inauguration, where all the tech moguls who lavished him with money and gold gifts are partying at the National Building Museum — including Bezos, with Sánchez, and Elon Musk, with his date on his lap.
In a voice-over, Melania talks about her “creative vision” coming to life in the room “filled with the elegance and sophistication of our donors. They’re truly the driving force behind the campaign and its philosophy and the reason our victory is possible.”
Thanks, Bezos, Musk, Tim Cook, Sam Altman and Mark Zuckerberg!
Melania had editorial control over the movie, which covers the 20 days before the 2025 inauguration. There’s a scene where Melania is proud to have persuaded her husband to proclaim in his Inaugural Address that he’s going to be “a unifier”. She seems oblivious to the fact that his rhetoric and policies are designed to enrage and divide.
She and her son, Barron Trump, do not want to get out of the limo during the inaugural parade, and she keens about political violence, again without acknowledging that her husband has been provoking violence since he and Melania rode down his golden escalator.
She has a warm chat about her immigrant roots with a designer who is an immigrant from Laos, ignoring that her husband has torn America apart by denigrating immigrants and unleashing a rabid force of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents on US cities. (Now Trump has restricted visas from 75 countries, including Laos.)
Melania, the movie star, lives up to the message on the infamous jacket she wore to a migrant child detention centre: “I really don’t care. Do U?” It turns out she does care — for herself.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
The Opinion newsletter is a weekly wrap of views that will challenge, champion and inform your own. Sign up here.
