\n<\/p>\n
Melania Trump took the stage at Washington\u2019s recently renamed Trump-Kennedy Center on Thursday night and singled out one member of the audience.<\/p>\n
\u201cI would like to thank my husband, America\u2019s director, Donald Trump,\u201d the typically tight-lipped first lady said, prompting cheers from the crowd of presidential allies.<\/p>\n
Melania Trump appeared in the Kennedy Center\u2019s main performance hall \u2014 which some Republican lawmakers have tried to rename the First Lady Melania Trump Opera House \u2014 not to celebrate her husband, but to introduce her new documentary, Melania<\/em>.<\/p>\n The fly-on-the-wall film, which debuted in theatres worldwide on Friday, is a departure for an intensely private former fashion model who has largely rejected the trappings of the White House.<\/p>\n Since Donald Trump returned to the Oval Office last January, his wife has been selective in her public appearances. She has spent more time at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, and Trump Tower in New York than in Washington.<\/p>\n The Trumps arrive for the premiere on Thursday<\/span> \u00a9 Jose Luis Magana\/AP<\/span><\/p>\n But with her new film, the enigmatic first lady, who as a co-producer exerted editorial control over its contents, has emerged as a lightning rod for criticism at a tense political moment. There are protests across the US over the White House\u2019s heavy-handed immigration enforcement tactics and persistent concerns over an affordability crisis.<\/p>\n \u201cShe is trying to shape public opinion, whatever that will be, positive or negative, by taking a calculated but consequential risk and opening herself up for public scrutiny and examination,\u201d said Michael LaRosa, who was a press secretary to former first lady Jill Biden and now a partner at the lobbying firm Ballard Partners. <\/p>\n Amazon MGM Studios, which paid about $40mn for rights to the documentary, according to people familiar with the matter, said the documentary offered \u201cunprecedented access\u201d to the 20 days leading up to Donald Trump\u2019s inauguration last year.<\/p>\n Speaking to reporters on a black carpet rolled out for Thursday\u2019s premiere, the president said there was a \u201cgreat glamour\u201d to the film, adding: \u201cWe need a little glamour.\u201d<\/p>\n Activists dressed in French court costume protest the Trumps at the Kennedy Center on Thursday<\/span> \u00a9 Gent Shkullaku\/ZUMA Press Wire\/dpa<\/span><\/p>\n But that glamour has opened the first lady, who attended Thursday\u2019s premiere in a Dolce & Gabbana black skirt suit and Christian Louboutin heels, to attacks from critics who said the film was poorly timed and another example of the Trumps using the presidency to enrich themselves. <\/p>\n Roughly two-thirds of the $40mn paid by Amazon went directly to the first lady, according to people familiar with the deal. <\/p>\n An after-party for the premiere was held at Executive Branch, a members\u2019 club that charges up to a $500,000 membership fee and was co-founded by Donald Trump Jr, the president\u2019s eldest son. Owners include Zach and Alex Witkoff, the sons of Steve Witkoff, the president\u2019s special envoy.<\/p>\n \u201cWith the state of the country right now, I just think it is a really bad time to have anything that is glamorising the White House in this way when people are protesting around the country,\u201d said Kate Andersen Brower, a presidential historian and the author of several books about the White House, including First Women<\/em>.<\/p>\n Attendees wait for the start of \u2018Melania\u2019 <\/span> \u00a9 Samuel Corum\/Getty Images<\/span><\/p>\n Last weekend\u2019s private screening at the White House, with attendees including Amazon chief Andy Jassy, Apple boss Tim Cook and Queen Rania of Jordan, went ahead hours after federal immigration agents shot and killed Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old intensive-care nurse in Minneapolis, sparking protests across the country.<\/p>\n The first lady, who was born in Slovenia and moved to the US in the 1990s on a tourist visa, posted a picture from the screening to social media, saying she had been \u201cdeeply humbled to have been surrounded by an inspiring room of friends, family, and cultural iconoclasts\u201d.<\/p>\n She later commented on Pretti\u2019s killing in an appearance on Fox News, saying: \u201cI am against the violence, so please, if you protest, protest in peace, and we need to unify in these times.\u201d <\/p>\n But the glitzy White House party and marketing blitz, in which Amazon allocated $35mn to promote the film, added insult to injury to current and former Amazon employees who were already wary of company founder Jeff Bezos\u2019s efforts to curry favour with the Trump administration.<\/p>\n Trump waves to his supporters at the Kennedy Center<\/span> \u00a9 Allison Robbert\/AP<\/span><\/p>\n Ted Hope, former co-head of films at Amazon Studios, said the company\u2019s actions appeared \u201ctone deaf\u201d in the political climate.<\/p>\n Bezos was given a prominent seat at Trump\u2019s inauguration last January. He visited Mar-a-Lago in December 2024 to dine with the president and his wife. Shortly after that a $40mn distribution deal \u2014 nearly triple the sum offered by rival studio Disney \u2014 was signed.<\/p>\n Bezos was not involved in the dealmaking process, said one person familiar with the matter, who noted that the project was briefly mentioned over dinner but negotiations were held between the first lady\u2019s agent, Marc Beckman, and Amazon MGM Studios.<\/p>\n Amazon declined to comment on the terms of the deal. <\/p>\n Industry insiders are sceptical Amazon will generate a return on its investment. Estimated ticket sales for the documentary\u2019s opening weekend appear lacklustre relative to the project\u2019s overall cost, with forecaster EntTelligence estimating $8mn in purchases. <\/p>\n AMC Theatres and Cineworld, the world\u2019s two largest cinema groups, did not respond to a request to comment on advance sales for Melania<\/em>. <\/p>\n Despite the president\u2019s insistence that tickets were \u201cselling out fast\u201d, ticketing websites still showed plenty of seats available on the morning of the documentary\u2019s debut. The 25-screen AMC Empire 25 off Times Square, one of the chain\u2019s flagship venues, had sold about 40 tickets for five scheduled screenings as of Friday morning.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s no lack of data to recognise that the space-time continuum would have to bend to make this pay off,\u201d said Hope. \u201cIt so paled in terms of any of the other offers and obviously served another purpose.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n The first lady has long confronted tepid approval ratings. By the end of her husband\u2019s first term in January 2021 she was the least popular first lady ever polled, according to CNN\/SSRS.<\/p>\n Recommended<\/p>\n The latest YouGov figures show 31 per cent of US adults hold a positive view of the first lady, while 47 per cent say they dislike her. By comparison, 33 per cent of adults have a positive view of the president, while 55 per cent say they dislike him.<\/p>\n Still, the first lady\u2019s supporters insist the documentary will be warmly received by the public.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople asked her, for years and years, to tell more about her story. They wanted to learn from this very, very private, enigmatic person, more about her family, her business and her philanthropy,\u201d Beckman, who also co-produced the film, told Fox Business.<\/p>\n Additional reporting by Stephanie Stacey and Nikou Asgari in London<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Melania Trump took the stage at Washington\u2019s recently renamed Trump-Kennedy Center on Thursday night and singled out one member of the audience. \u201cI would like to thank my husband, America\u2019s director, Donald Trump,\u201d the typically tight-lipped first lady said, prompting cheers from the crowd of presidential allies. Melania Trump appeared in the Kennedy Center\u2019s main<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":43332,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[6948,1171,22676,238,444,940],"class_list":{"0":"post-43331","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-criticism","9":"tag-film","10":"tag-flyonthewall","11":"tag-lightning","12":"tag-melania","13":"tag-rod"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43331","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=43331"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43331\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/43332"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=43331"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=43331"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=43331"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}