Why MAGA won’t rally for “Melania” documentary

After spending $40 million to acquire the rights to “MELANIA,” a film about President Donald Trump’s third wife and first lady of the United States, and another $35 million on the film’s marketing and release, Amazon’s project is projected to flop. Contrary to the president’s claims, there are no sold-out screenings or lines around the block. There are no viral clips, no TikTok reactions from red hat superfans and no manufactured outrage that turns into free publicity. The film is opening to near-empty theaters not because critics hate it, or because liberals are boycotting it, but because MAGA voters simply do not care.

Jeff Bezos, the owner of Amazon, appears to have believed that overpaying wildly for a lavish documentary about Melania Trump, promoting it aggressively and rolling out the black carpet at the Kennedy Center would curry favor with Trumpworld. (To be fair, after sitting on the dais at the president’s inauguration in January 2025 and donating a million dollars to the festivities, his company secured a billion-dollar cloud computing contract with the administration.) But MAGA is not moved by “cinematic viewing.” It only shows up for grievance theater. 

Melania’s defining characteristic is absence — and it’s done nothing to cultivate a sense of mystique for the first lady. So when a documentary arrives asking audiences to take her seriously as a subject — as a person with insight, depth or meaning — it runs into a problem that money cannot solve: There is no demand. The movie offers no liberal villain to boo. No immigrant, protester or bureaucrat to blame. Just a carefully curated exercise in nothingness, presented as importance.

Whatever MAGA imagines Melania to be — “classy” and “Jackie Kennedy-like” — it’s not relatable. Trump rallies work because they are loud, ugly, combative and fueled by a sense of shared resentment. Right-wing media succeeds when it feeds that anger. Melania offers none of it. She has never been a participant in the MAGA movement. She does not speak its language. She barely appears alongside her husband, and when she does, her body language often reads as reluctant at best, contemptuous at worst. That’s why, in over a decade, MAGA has never developed emotional attachment to Melania as a cultural figure.

Normally, I would say there is a special kind of failure reserved for political vanity projects that can’t even succeed as a joke, but the Trump years have exhausted irony. The idea of watching a carefully lit, heavily scored portrait of Melania in a movie theater feels less like satire and more like homework about decaying empires. 

The promotional tour for the film was the first clue it was going to be a box office dud. It started with Saturday’s screening at the White House, which took place as a major snowstorm hit much of the nation and as Minneapolis erupted in violence after the ICE shooting of Veterans Affairs nurse Alex Pretti. Instead of celebrities, the invited guests included corporate honchos like Apple CEO Tim Cook, Amazon Studios chief Mike Hopkins and Amazon CEO Andy Jassy. The first lady then went on a limited run across the Fox News network, bizarrely revealing that her vision of Making America Great Again — ”unity” — apparently means the country coming together to support her husband and his ambition to gobble up as much power as possible. 

In a softball appearance on “The Five” the first lady claimed her husband is a unifier. “He’s unifier not just here in United States, but around the world. He stopped many wars,” she explained. “Here in United States, it’s a lot of opposition, and that’s the problem, right? So the people not agreeing with everything that he does, and you know, they just need to come on the same page and see that he wants to make America only safer and better.”

The next day, on Fox Business News’ “Mornings with Maria Baritoromo,” Melania elaborated further when asked about the advice she offers her president, arguing that domestic opposition is the real issue and appeared to suggest that critics just need to agree with whatever her husband says. “Well, you know it is very hard no matter what he says, they don’t like to listen.”

“What’s going on in our country now,” the first lady said, “is a lot of pushback. And I hope it stops.”

Melania gives nothing and expects the world. Her solution to political division is simply submission to her husband. But MAGA voters know it’s not that simple. The MAGA creed depends on the idea that Trump is fighting corrupt elites on behalf of ordinary people. Watching his family collect a payday equivalent to decades of presidential salary from one of the richest men on Earth punctures that story. The involvement of director Brett Ratner, who has faced multiple accounts of sexual harassment and assault, doesn’t help. Even for MAGA, there is little thrill in watching the powerful protect the disgraced. 

Want more sharp takes on politics? Sign up for our free newsletter, Standing Room Only, written by Amanda Marcotte, now also a weekly show on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.

They know when they’re being sold something that isn’t for them, like this movie. MAGA has been conditioned to be deeply suspicious of anything that smells like elite approval. Right-wing media has spent years training its followers to believe that documentaries are propaganda — unless they come from explicitly partisan outlets. 

But there is little concern that Bezos is worried about a return on his investment. The spectacle perfectly captures the rot at the intersection of wealth, power and media. The Wall Street Journal reported that Melania Trump herself pocketed more than 70% of the $40 million rights fee, over $28 million, for participating in this hagiography. 

Ted Hope, a former Amazon film executive, told the New York Times that the movie has to be the “most expensive documentary ever made that didn’t involve music licensing.” He added, “How can it not be equated with currying favor or an outright bribe? How can that not be the case?”

Meanwhile, at the Washington Post, the newspaper Bezos purchased in 2013 with promises to safeguard its democratic mission, the newsroom has bled talent for months. Star political reporters Josh Dawsey, Ashley Parker and Michael Scherer all fled to other publications. Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Ann Telnaes resigned after the Post declined to publish a satirical cartoon critical of Bezos himself. More than a dozen columnists, like 39-year veteran Marc Fisher, were shown the door. “Democracy Dies in Darkness” became the paper’s motto in 2017, during Trump’s first term, when Bezos appeared to back aggressive accountability journalism. Now the paper’s owner is turning out the lights himself.

This is happening at the same institution that hemorrhaged more than 250,000 subscribers after the mogul blocked the editorial board from endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election. That decision alone, transparently timed to curry favor with a Trump administration Bezos anticipated would return to power, sparked a credibility crisis in addition to the mass cancellations. 

The message was unmistakable: Bezos would prioritize his business interests over journalistic integrity. The subsequent talent exodus confirmed what many had long suspected. This is not just cowardice, it’s collaboration.