Tag Archives: Melania Trump

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Peak Cringe: A Melania Trump Documentary Is Coming

In today’s political culture, supplicants don’t bother with subtle appeals for favors; they just pay up.

Talk about obsequiousness. 

On Sunday, Amazon announced that its Prime Video streaming service would release a “behind the scenes” documentary about Melania Trump’s life that will be shown in theaters and stream on Amazon Prime later this year. To top it off, Melania Trump will be the film’s executive producer, ensuring it will be a hagiography. 

Adding insult to injury, Amazon has agreed to pay $40 million to Trump for the documentary, according to Puck News, and it will be directed by Hollywood director and producer Brett Ratner,   accused in 2017  by six women, including actress Olivia Munn, of sexual misconduct, according the Los Angeles Times. 

Amazon, founded by Jeff Bezos, who is also the owner of the Washington Post, said it was “excited to share this truly unique story.” 

In May 2025, the New Yorker ran a story noting that just before Christmas, Bezos and Lauren Sánchez, his fiancé, dined with Donald Trump and Melania at Mar-a-Lago. During the meal, according to the Wall Street Journal, Melania told Bezos and Sánchez about a documentary project she was developing based on her own life. Two weeks later, Amazon licensed the film for forty million dollars, nearly three times more than the company had ever spent on a documentary. As much as twenty-eight million dollars of the licensing fee will go directly to the First Lady.

Talk about trying to curry favor with Donald Trump, a famously self-absorbed impulsive, vindictive politician. As Semafor Business said, “An open-air bazaar has replaced a black market of influence-peddling. It’s unsettling to reporters who are used to having to dig around for evidence of pay-to-play.”

If a First Lady documentary is worth doing, others have a considerably stronger claim.

Betty Ford, President Gerald Ford’s wife,  Ford was noted for raising breast cancer awareness following her 1974 mastectomy and was a passionate supporter of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA). She also was involved in HIV/AIDS causes and served as the first chair of the board of directors of the Betty Ford Center, which provides treatment services for people with substance use disorders.  

Nancy Reagan, wife of President Ronald Reagan, was an accomplished former actress and a passionate advocate for decreasing drug and alcohol abuse, initiating a campaign to “just say no” to drugs.

Eleanor Roosevelt, wife of President Franklin Roosevelt, was, in her time,  one of the world’s most widely admired and powerful women. During her husband’s presidency she was aggressive advocate of liberal causes, defending the rights of defense of the rights of Blacks and the poor and wrote a widely read daily syndicated newspaper column. After his presidency, she was appointed a delegate to the United Nations,  where she served as chairman of the Commission on Human Rights (1946–51) and played a key role in the drafting and adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

There’s even an interesting story to tell about President Woodrow Wilson’s second wife, Edith Wilson. For all intents and purposes she conspired to serve as the “acting president”  for an astonishing 17 months after her  husband suffered a paralyzing stroke in the fall of 1919

First Lady Dolley Madison, the wife of President James Madison, is often credited with saving the portrait of George Washington and other White House treasures when the British attacked the Capitol in 1814. Hillary Clinton, wife of President Bill Clinton, went on to serve as U.S. Secretary of State, a New York Senator and a Democratic candidate for the presidency. Rosalynn Carter, wife of President Jimmy Carter,  was committed to the improvement of mental health care and after her husbands term in office became a strong participant in efforts that, as she said, would result in “good for others” including Habitat for Humanity.

Can you think of one thing that distinguishes Melania Trump, the “I really Don’t Care. Do You?” First Lady, and her life enough to justify a boot-licking Amazon documentary?

I didn’t think so.

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Would #NeverTrump Stalwarts Now Support Sweet Cakes?

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Liberals like those who condemned the owners of Sweet Cakes by Melissa are now giving a shrug to NeverTrumpers who are discriminating against Trump supporters by refusing to associate with them or patronize their businesses.

The liberals’ unlikely hero in all this today is Phoebe Pearl, a member of the famous dance troupe the Rockettes.

“Finding out that it has been decided for us that Rockettes will be performing at the Presidential inauguration makes me feel embarrassed and disappointed,” Pearl said in an Instagram post today. “…please know that after we found out this news, we have been performing with tears in our eyes and heavy hearts #notmypresident”.

Online comment sections lit up with endorsements of Pearl’s post.

“Proud that you stand up for your views/ beliefs especially to all those trumpies who are always on attack mode ready to become the vicious evil fake definitely not Christians judgmental psychos,” was posted by truthisabitch.

 Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby praised the Rockettes in an article titled, Freedom of Association Isn’t Just for the Rockettes.

“The right to discriminate — to choose with whom we will and won’t associate — is vital to human liberty,” he wrote today. “No one should be forced to play a role in a celebration they want nothing to do with, or to hire themselves out to clients they would prefer not to serve. A liberal baker who declines to create a lavish cake decorated with the words “Congratulations, President Trump” is entitled to as much deference as a black baker who declines to decorate a cake with the Confederate flag…”

Pearl’s post follows actions by other NeverTrumpers asserting their intentions to discriminate against Trump supporters.

HeatStreet, a conservative leaning news website, reported in early December that some Wash., DC homeowners were removing their Airbnb listings so they wouldn’t be put in the position of renting to “…the residents of flyover country.”

“I have a visceral reaction to the thought of having a Trump supporter in my house,” said one Airbnb host. “No amount of money could make me change my mind. It’s about moral principles.”

Television chef Anthony Bourdain said he wouldn’t patronize a restaurant at the newly opened Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C. “I will never eat in his restaurant,” Bourdain said. “I have utter contempt for him, utter and complete contempt”.

Designer Sophie Theallet gained some notoriety when she flamboyantly announced on Twitter that she would not dress or associate with Donald Trump’s wife Melania when she becomes first lady. She also called on other designers to follow her lead, saying “Integrity is our only true currency.”

Is all this a liberal double standard?

In 2013, Aaron and Melissa Klein, the owners of Sweet Cakes bakery in Gresham, OR refused to bake a cake for a same-sex wedding of a lesbian couple because of the Klein’s Christian beliefs against same-sex marriage.

In early 2015, then State Labor Commissioner Brad Avakian made a preliminary finding that the Kleins discriminated against the lesbian couple on the basis of their sexual orientation.

In July 2015, Avakian ordered the Kleins to pay $135,000 in damages to the couple for emotional and mental suffering they experienced because the Kleins had refused to sell them a wedding cake.

Liberals enthusiastically endorsed Avakian’s decision.

“The Kleins are religious zealots, and not very bright,” wrote one supporter of the decision. “They should stick to baking cakes, and leaving their religion in the back room and/or at home and at church. When one opens their doors to a commercial enterprise, they don’t get to tell people to —- off based on purposeful discrimination.”

“A sign saying “no lesbians are allowed to purchase wedding cakes in my store,” is every bit as discriminatory as a person verbally saying “no lesbians are allowed to purchase wedding cakes in my store” and the business in question should be held accountable,” Mat dos Santos, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Oregon, wrote in an opinion column in The Oregonian.

The federal government, while asserting that you can’t discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, and national origin, doesn’t prohibit discrimination based on a person’s political bent. So the NeverTrumpers aren’t breaking the law when they support the ability of businesses to ban politically offensive customers, but how is that position morally different from the position the Kleins took?

Do the liberal NeverTrumpers denying services to Trump supporters now want to reverse Avakian’s decision or should they be held to the same standards as the Kleins?

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The Donald, Melania, Ted and Heidi show

It’s all theater, folks.

An anti-Trump Political Action Committee that has raised only about $20,000 runs an ad on social media targeted at Mormon voters in Utah….and all hell breaks loose.

Ahh, the power of social media and the political value of feigned indignation.

melaniatrumpad

The ad (above) featured Donald Trump’s wife, Melania, posing in the nude for GQ Magazine in 2000. It was posted by the Make America Awesome PAC, founded in 2015 by Liz Mair, a Republican-leaning political strategist. Its contributions have come from a small group, including Donald Gayhardt CEO of payday lender Tiger Financial Management/Speedy Cash, Virginia Postrel, a Libertarian political and cultural writer, and Donald Sherwood, a former Republican Congressman representing Pennsylvania’s 10th congressional district.

What made it all fascinating is how Trump and Cruz took advantage of the situation by publicly exchanging schoolyard taunts.

Knowing how to maximize attention, Trump Tweeted:

“Lyin’ Ted Cruz just used a picture of Melania from a G.Q. shoot in his ad. Be careful, Lyin’ Ted, or I will spill the beans on your wife!”

and

“Wow @SenTedCruz, that is some low level ad you did using a picture of Melania in a G.Q. shoot. Be careful or I will spill the beans on your wife.”

(One theory is that Trump was referring to a 2005 incident when a depressed Heidi Cruz was observed sitting next to an expressway with her head in her hands. But admit it, ladies. You’d want to sit on a curb and cry if you were married to Ted, too, wouldn’t you?)

Cruz responded with this Tweet:

“Pic of your wife not from us. Donald, if you try to attack Heidi, you’re more of a coward than I thought. #classless”

Then Trump Tweeted:

“Lyin’ Ted Cruz denied that he had anything to do with the G.Q. model photo post of Melania. That’s why we call him Lyin’ Ted!”

Not to be left out, Liz Mair followed up with a Tweet of her own:

“Hi Donald, I know you’re really upset about that ad, but it was Make America Awesome’s, not Ted Cruz’s.”

And then late Wednesday night, Trump kept the dispute alive and visible with another incendiary Tweet and photo:

trumpheidimelaniatweet

My goodness. How crass can you be?

The fact is, however, the initial ad would have quickly sunk into oblivion if Trump and Cruz had not exploited it to their perceived advantage.

Pundits have been fulminating about this controversy, focusing on the coarseness of the Mair ad and the candidates’ trigger-finger responses. The major media attacked Mair’s ad for “slut-shaming” Melania Trump and called out Donald Trump for throwing a Trumpertantrum.

But the pundits have completely missed the point.

Its all theater, folks, and we’re all suckers for being drawn into the attention-grabbing drama that either candidate could have stopped at any time. The candidates are the actors preparing themselves for the greatest acting job in the world.

As Ronald Reagan said, “For years, I’ve heard the question: “How could an actor be president?” I’ve sometimes wondered how you could be president and not be an actor.”