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[00:00]
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C
This is the Opinions, a show that brings you a mix of voices from New York Times Opinion. You've heard the news. Here's what to make of it.
[00:48]
D
I'm Nadja Spiegelman, an editor at New York Times Opinion. Over the weekend, I watched Melania in a nearly empty Manhattan theater. All of my friends refused to see it with me. Luckily, I now get the chance to discuss it with two distinguished columnists, Maureen Daud and Carlos Lozada. Thank you both so much for being here.
[01:10]
E
Thank you, Nadja.
[01:11]
B
Great to be here. Nadja, let's do some movie reviews.
[01:14]
D
Yes. I mean, let's start by talking about how for journalists in left leaning cities, you're both in D.C. there's a lot of joking around about what the experience of going to the movie theater to see this film is like. For example, audio producer Derek Arthur and I had only one other, a young woman who told us after that she had come because she'd seen ads for this film in the subway and been curious about what it was about. What was your experience of going to see the film in theaters?
[01:45]
E
It was so funny because I went in downtown Washington and there were only a few people there. They were all journalists. So finally one of the journalists, this guy, stands up in the back of the theater and goes, are there any civilians here wanted to interview someone? And one journalist tapped me on the shoulder, Betsy Klein of cnn. And she's like, can I talk to you about the movie after? And I went, no. And she looked shocked. And I said, no, because I'm a journalist, Betsy, you know, so it was, you know, it was just very incestuous with just a few journalists. Although I did bring my Trump voting Republican s, which was very revealing because that way I knew that there was a group of older white women who were gonna love this movie.
[02:43]
D
And Carlos, what was your Moviegoing experience.
[02:46]
B
So I went to see Melania twice, actually, over the weekend, because that's how committed I am to the New York Times. The first time was the same showing as Maureen. Basically. I think we found the earliest possible showing on Friday in D.C. and, you know, it was people from all walks of life. You know, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Atlantic, cnn. You know, so literally, like, I. I'm standing in the. In the concession line, and there's a journalist in front of me and a journalist behind me. The second time I saw it was on Sunday, and it was not in D.C. i went out to see it in one of the malls in the D.C. suburbs of Maryland, figuring, you know, it would be a different kind of crowd. And it was very much civilians this time. Right. It was an older crowd, much more female, no one carrying notebooks. And people seemed to be enjoying themselves. And there were certainly more people than had been there that first time that I saw it. So there's certainly an audience for the movie.
[03:49]
D
I'm curious what you thought about Melania before going into the film and what you thought about her after walking out of the film. Was there anything that changed through seeing this film?
[04:01]
E
Well, it's interesting because I went on Trump's first presidential exploratory trip to make a speech in Miami to Cuban Americans. It was 1999. And Melania, who was then Melania Nous, was there, and she was his girlfriend, and I liked her. I thought she was cool. And there was much more of a sense that she was in on the joke. She was laughing about how they had outfitted her Calvin Klein to look like a politician's girlfriend, and that she'd never worn skirts that long. But she wasn't gonna give up her stilettos. I mean, there was a more sly sense, and that was totally absent in this film.
[04:49]
D
That's so interesting. I mean, I think we all have this fantasy that there's something about Melania that could be a secret because she's such a cipher, that could, like, be a secret resistance, sort of an immigrant who's a bomb waiting to a resistant.
[05:05]
E
Yeah, I think liberals have always fantasized about that, but I always thought that was silly. Remember, they thought maybe she would go to, like, the women's resistance marches and go in disguise and a pink pussy hat, and, you know, that was just wishful thinking on the part of liberals. She is very. Whatever her relationship with Trump is, whatever their deal is, she is very comfortable in this vertical solitude of the gilded world that he has set her in.
[05:41]
D
Vertical solitude of a gilded world is like all adjectives that really describe this film.
[05:48]
E
Yeah, this is like a bad episode of the Gilded Age, totally without Christine Baranski, unfortunately.
[05:56]
D
Before we go further, for anyone who's managed to somehow avoid what this movie is, Carlos, can you give us a synopsis? What is this movie?
[06:04]
B
So it covers the final 20 days before President Trump's inauguration last year. Right. So like early January of 2025. And it mainly focuses on Melania's preparation for the official events that surround the inauguration. The. The swearing in ceremony itself, the. The inaugural balls. So, you know, she meets with her designer, with event planners, with security personnel. You know, they throw in a few kind of heavily scripted meetings with like, Brigitte Macron of France and Queen Rania of Jordan. And she's flying a lot. She's flying back and forth between Mar A Lago and Washington and New York. So a lot of this movie is Melania in cars, in planes, always in heels. And really the bookends are kind of perfect because it starts with her traveling to meet Pierre, her clothing designer, and then it ends with her in a photo shoot at the White House where Pierre is, like, hovering around her, adjusting her. Her clothes. At one point, she says in the movie that she wants to change the role of First Lady. So it's not just about official duties, but the whole movie is about her official duties. It was weird to me that they picked those 20 days like, I don't know, like a more natural period would have been from election night, say, to inauguration day. There's never an explanation for why this period mattered. So that's it. That's it. It's literally 20 days into the life of Melania, but a very curated life. Right? You never see her really talking to, say, Baron. You never see her. Her son. You never see her talking to a friend. You know, it's. It's a kind of a lonely existence, but yet one that she seems to enjoy.
[07:52]
D
Yeah, you touch on so many important points that I think we're gonna have to go circle back to one by one to tease out even further. I agree. There's a voiceover at the beginning where she's like, everybody's been wondering. So here it is, the 20 days leading up to the inauguration, and it's like, that is not what everybody has been wondering about. It's so curious that they choose this as a narrative structure and to continue giving some of the context sort of around the film. Marine, can you fill us in just a little bit on the role that Amazon plays in the making of this movie.
[08:28]
E
Right. Well, Amazon gave 40 million to make the movie and another 35 million to promote it. And out of that, Melania pockets 28 million. And so obviously that is just a way for Jeff Bezos to curry favor. And there's this hilarious scene in the movie where they're having a night before the inaugural dinner at the National Building Museum, and she has this pay on to how great their donors are. And they pan past Bezos and Lauren Sanchez and all the other lords of the cloud who have bought American government in this blatant way.
[09:13]
D
I mean, it's so heavy handed.
[09:15]
E
Yeah, so heavy handed, but, yeah, there's.
[09:17]
B
No subtlety in that. Yeah, no.
[09:20]
E
And again, so in some ways, Melania and Trump are well matched because neither of them have met an emolument that they didn't like.
[09:30]
D
I mean, for that reason, for the reason that it's like intentionally sponsored and bought and for many others, a lot of people are referring to this film as a piece of propaganda, but one of the definitions of propaganda is that it has an intention to promote a worldview or belief. So what does this film promoting?
[09:51]
E
You know, it's interesting because Donald Trump is the master of creating a different false reality. And he's done that with the election for his fans, you know, that he claims was stolen from him. He's done it with January 6th. And so this is Melania's version of that. In her world, Donald Trump is a unifier and promotes dignity and compassion. And, you know, it's mostly her getting in and out of cars while in the split screen of the real world, we're seeing ICE agents shoot people in the face in their cars. So it's, it's absurd propaganda the way his is.
[10:37]
D
Yeah. Carlos, what do you think? What is the film trying to promote from a propaganda perspective?
[10:42]
B
Yeah, I mean, I. First thing I'll say is that we, we often speak of propaganda sort of in a pejorative sense. I find propaganda to be utterly fascinating and incredibly useful to understand politicians, whether it's political memoirs, you know, or movies like these, where the subject of the film, you know, had a lot of control in how she's presented. Propaganda tells you two things. It tells you how people wish to be perceived and it tells you what they think of us, what they think of the audience, you know, what's going to appeal to us. And so in that sense, it's a great mirror too. I mean, I think that in a sense, they try to sort of soften this administration a little. Bit to, you know, glamorize it, humanize it, to sort of give you just a very different sense of what it's about. Melania speaks in These almost like ChatGPT generated voiceovers, you know, that are just very.
[11:40]
D
I was also thinking ChatGPT, she really. It's that, like, really flattened AI voice.
[11:46]
B
But also, like, the words that she chooses. Right? Like, she says stuff like, you know, every day I live with purpose and devotion, orchestrating the complexities of my life while nurturing my family's needs. Right. Like, I don't know what that means. Right. I don't know what that. That doesn't tell you anything. Right. Or, like, there's a moment when they're at this congressional luncheon after the inauguration, and she just says, you know, as First Lady, I constantly think about how our lawmakers can build dignity, create equal opportunity, and foster compassion through the unity of all Americans. Right. Like, these are just generic, empty political words. Right. That don't mean anything, you know? But when she mentions unity, like, I wanna follow up on Maureen's point. There's a great moment in this movie where Donald Trump is rehearsing for his inaugural address, and Melania's sitting in on it. And one thing he's saying is that I want my legacy to be that of a peacemaker. And Melania pipes up in that moment and says, peacemaker and unifier. Right. And Trump didn't like that. He turns to the. To the camera and says, don't put that in the movie. Right. You know, don't keep that in the movie. And she says, no, please keep it. So it's almost. It's not that he doesn't want to say he's a unifier because he ends up saying it in the address. It's that he doesn't want it to be seen that she's telling him what to say.
[13:13]
D
Yeah.
[13:13]
B
And I thought that was, like. That was a really interesting little moment in the movie, but, like, I don't know on what planet. Donald Trump is a unifier. He's many things, but for her, it's just important. Not that he be it. It's important that he say it. In that sense, they're very well matched because they both feel that sort of the power of repetition, simply saying something will make it seem truer than it is.
[13:37]
D
But also, Carlos, this moment that you point out, where that moment is preceded by Melania sort of mischievously beckoning at the camera to come into a room that wasn't previously planned to be filmed in, where Trump is rehearsing his inauguration speech really stands out because it's one of the only minutes of footage in this film that doesn't feel perfectly pre planned and pre scripted. And also one of the few moments where you actually see Melania interacting with people who are not her staff, who are like preparing her clothes, her invitations. I'm really curious about, because we're talking about it as propaganda. Melania herself produced this film. These are all very intentional choices that are made. And Marine, you mentioned earlier loneliness. I mean, you see Melania in this really lonely world. I think for the first several minutes of the film, the only things that she says is just thank you to various staff members and hello.
[14:33]
E
Yeah, and her personal Instagram was that way too. Just, I don't think she seems lonely, she seems alone, you know, to prefer not to have these.
[14:43]
B
That's a good distinction.
[14:44]
E
If anyone else would have had their friends in a document, you know, a documentary, they would have had some friends to show they had friends. But, you know, you asked before what I thought differently of her after the movie and I wanted to tell you. So my late friend Andre Leon Talley, who was a Vogue editor, styled Melania for her Vogue cover when she married Trump. And he traveled to Paris with her and went to Couturier's and he told me a few things about her, which was that she was very polite to the Couturiers and he saw her in the altogether and he said she was the best moisturized woman he had ever seen. And as we can see in the movie, because Brett Ratner has a bit of a foot fetish, she walks on 5 inch stilettos better than any woman in history. And, and that she was a great mom. And all of those things you also can tell in the movie, I think. And so what Andre told me long ago about her has not changed.
[15:53]
D
It's true that there's so much of her feet, there's so many stiletto shots.
[15:59]
E
Well, the first shot is like the.
[16:02]
B
First thing you see of her.
[16:03]
E
You can picture her having feet like Barbie that don't go flat. Totally.
[16:07]
D
And you almost. I think there's only one shot where her shoes come off at the very end of her whole day of inauguration where she's been walking around.
[16:15]
E
But then she doesn't say, wow, it's hard to do this, or this is how I do this. You know, you don't get any insight into this amazing feat of being on these skyscraper heels because normally at that age women are downgrading to flats or 2 inch heels.
[16:34]
D
But yeah, Marin, you also are someone who wears a lot of heels. What is the meaning and experience of wearing heels like this?
[16:41]
E
Yeah, I wore heels through, like, eight presidential campaigns. And it's hard, and at some point it hurts too much to keep doing it. But she has a steely resolve about it. I would have loved to hear her secrets on that. But even on small, superficial things like that, we didn't get any insights. Yeah, my dad was a police detective in D.C. was in charge of Senate security for 20 years, and he wouldn't get my sister a job at the Capitol because he said walking on those marble floors was so painful, you would get varicose veins. And my sister and I were wincing on her long walks on those marble floors because it had to hurt. But only glancing reference to that.
[17:28]
D
Oh, I hadn't even thought about how painful it must be to walk in 6 inch stilettos on marble floors.
[17:33]
E
I mean, also, all credit to Nancy Pelosi, who also did it right.
[17:39]
B
It was almost distracting how often the focus was on the feet.
[17:43]
E
Well, she may also be rebuking all of the women in Trump's world who have mar a lago face, who have done too much work, because obviously there's a lot of work that's been done, but she's managed to remain exquisite looking.
[17:59]
D
Yeah, she does look really beautiful. I think you say this in your peace, Marine, that Ivanka's nickname for Melania.
[18:07]
E
Nickname was.
[18:08]
D
Yeah.
[18:09]
E
She called Melania the Portrait, and Melania called her the Princess and the Port. You could have really called this documentary the Portrait because that's what it's like. It's like a static kind of portrait of a beautiful woman.
[18:24]
D
Let's talk about the other choices in the film. There's so. I mean, there's a lot of choices this film makes. One of them is with the music that it chooses. And the music does a lot of work. Cause it's mostly shots.
[18:36]
E
Yes. Shots of her legs, car parades, and.
[18:38]
D
Walking down hallways with a lot of scoring. Carlos, what do you make of the scoring?
[18:44]
B
There's a moment when she's being driven to the airport in New York or something. She's going back to Florida, I think, and she's asked sort of like, you know, hey, who's your favorite recording artist? What's your favorite song? And she's like, oh, I love Michael Jackson. Billie Jean. Right. And so they start playing Billie Jean and they start doing almost this, like, you know, carpool karaoke with Melania in the car. And she's sort of, like, bopping along to Billie Jean seems to really like it knows all the words to the song, and yet you don't hear her. You barely hear her singing because the other person in the car is singing, and they just don't make her audible at all. So you see that she's mouthing along to Billie Jean. Right. But you don't really hear Melania's voice.
[19:26]
E
But Carlos, Carlos, didn't you think it. I thought it was so funny that. So she brings Brett Ratner out of exile. I mean, he was exiled from Hollywood for sexual transgressions, and she brings him out of exile to be the director of this movie. And then he asks who her favorite artist is, and it's Michael Jackson, so. And in the midst of the Epstein files of tales of pedophilia, you know, it's just kind of, are we not gonna have one minute without a predator being mentioned here or directing the movie? So it was kind of creepy, I thought. You know, one funny. This isn't about music, but for me, my favorite line of everything, I don't know if it started with Sophie Gilbert or on Twitter or whatever, was the idea that her inaugural Dr. It's impossible to look at it now without thinking. It looks like the redacted Epstein Fox the black.
[20:27]
D
I hadn't heard that.
[20:28]
E
Crossing things out.
[20:30]
B
That was Sophie Gilbert, I think, in her piece in the Atlantic about it.
[20:33]
E
Yeah, I thought that was a great line.
[20:36]
D
Oh, it's so funny, Maureen, you were talking about Brett Ratner earlier, and you can say a lot of things about him, but one thing about him is that he knows how to tell a story. He does know. He does understand narrative. And one really notable thing about this film is how boring it is. The only setup for narrative tension is whether that the hem of her dress will be perfect by the time inauguration happens. And even that setup, which is the setup of so many reality wedding shows of like, will the invitations be printed on time? Gives us no narrative tension. We're certain that they will. Everything goes right. Nothing ever goes wrong. What do you make of that choice of creating a film that has absolutely no narrative tension?
[21:22]
E
Yeah, it's only revealing for what it doesn't reveal. I mean, I just think he got his orders straight, which is she wanted to look gorgeous in every frame and not reveal anything. And that's what happened.
[21:36]
B
I will point out a couple of moments of. Of not sort of narrative tension, but at least like a little bit of. A little bit of a moment when the veil drops slightly. Right. And that is during the discussion that Donald and Melania Trump are having with the sort of events coordinator and the Secret Service director about security surrounding the inauguration. And you see how Melania is skeptical of the security arrangements. And obviously it was in the aftermath of the assassination attempt on her husband. Right. And so, you know, she. She says that, oh, like, is there a place where we're supposed to get out of the car, you know, and walk? I don't want to do that. Baron doesn't want to do that. You know, how could that be safe? And she says, especially with the last year. Right. And then the Secret Service guys are like, let's talk about this off camera. Right. So that was a little moment that, to me, was interesting. It was a little tiny glimpse into what she's thinking, right. What's going on in her head. She was afraid of leaving the car. She was afraid of leaving the car. And clearly Baron was as well. And so that was. I appreciated that moment in the movie. Cause it felt slightly real.
[23:00]
D
Yeah. Merlania's worries about security. And that, I think, brings us into talking about the larger political context into which this film lands. Maureen, you had started by talking a bit about sort of that juxtaposition between being afraid to get out of the car and what's happening to people around the country being pulled out of their cars by ICE officers. Can you talk a little bit more about that?
[23:21]
E
Well, I mean, America, my dad was born in Ireland. America is a nation of immigrants. And we're at this horrible moment where immigrants are facing kind of these ICE thugs. And I say that, you know, my dad was a policeman, so I understand the difficulties. And my dad had this. You get to that moment where you have to decide, are you gonna shoot someone or how are you gonna handle this situation? It's a split second decision. But even so, you know, their behavior, they're so untrained and so reckless, and it makes all police look bad. And so we're at this moment where immigrants are getting dragged out of Home Depots and their own homes. And here is Melania, the only immigrant Trump likes in her satin lined cage. And it's an incredibly unpleasant juxtaposition. Like, yes, he would bring her parents here as chain migration, you know, but all other immigrants are suspect, unless, I guess, they're from white European countries. You know, his attitude toward immigrants is gross.
[24:40]
D
Gross seems unfortunately, even like an understatement. Although there is an interesting shot in the film where he and Melania are posing with the entire Mar A Lago staff, many of whom I would assume are also themselves immigrants. It's impossible to tell Melania's story without some version of an immigrant journey. There's a person in the documentary who is from Laos, and she talks about it being the culmination of the American dream for her to be doing the interior decoration of the White House, given that she had come to America at a young age. And it's so curious to be still peddling this idea of the immigrant American dream in the context of what Trump is doing vis a vis immigration. Carlo, how does all this strike you?
[25:28]
B
Yeah, well, I hate beginning sentences with aza, you know, so I won't say as an immigrant, but I'm a naturalized American citizen born in Peru, and I was kind of waiting to see if she would say something about this. Right. Because that moment that you mentioned with the decorator for the White House is very early on in the movie. And later on, you know, she says, again, it's one of these sort of chatgpt, sort of generic political speak things you're supposed to say, right? Where Melania says, I have the line here. Walking into the capital's rotunda, I felt the weight of history intertwined with my own journey as an immigrant. A reminder of why I respect this nation so deeply. Everyone should do what they can to protect our individual rights, never take them for granted, because in the end, no matter where we come from, we are bound by the same humanity. Right. That's lovely. That's great. It's also entirely decontextualized from the campaign her husband had just waged to win the election. Right? A campaign that was based on the promise of mass deportations against those people who are poisoning the blood of the country, as Trump put it often. Now, in her book, her memoir, which came out also titled Melania, you know, in a fit of originality, she talks about how she urged Trump to end the family separation policy at the southern border during the first term. This book came out in 2024. Right. But here there's absolutely no sense at all that she spoke to him about any of this. Right. Or that she's aware or cares that the rhetoric that she's giving in this movie doesn't match up at all against what he's actually doing. Instead, she calls him a unifier. Now, I wouldn't expect this movie to be a full throated critique of the Trump administration. Like, that's, that's absurd, right? Like we can't, you know, you have to sort of let things slide when it's the first lady. Right? But it's also kind of fascinating that some of those generic statements she has are, are so contrary to sort of some basic things that this administration is doing.
[27:38]
D
In what way does this film manage to humanize Melania, if at all? Does it humanize her at all, Maureen? And in what way?
[27:49]
E
No, I would say my experience of it was the reverse because having met her at the beginning when she and Trump were just dating, you know, I have had a sense of her all this time that she was slyer and again, as I said in on the Joke a little bit more and would be really fascinating to talk to. And now I don't feel that way.
[28:14]
D
Yeah, I mean, but the film somehow made $7 million in its first weekend, which is the best opening weekend for a documentary in years.
[28:24]
E
So I do think a lot of normal people like Melania and think she's, you know, stunning and want to see the behind the scenes thing. But it doesn't really matter how much the movie makes. The point is she got a $28 million bribe from Bezos, who does a lot of business with the government with his blue origin, you know, spaceships and all his companies and its growth.
[28:59]
D
Oh, yeah. And it's a simple. Even if it is able to make $7 million in its first weekend, it is never going to recoup the 75 million that Amazon spent on the rights and promotion of this film. There's no way to even think about it.
[29:12]
E
That isn't the point.
[29:14]
D
Yeah, it's not the point. It's certainly not the point.
[29:17]
B
But yeah, I mean, I'm hearing from people who like this movie, right? Like, I wrote a column this week somewhat critical of the movie, and one of my earliest emails is a guy named Phil telling me Carlos saw the movie and loved it. I did have a question. Who are you and why would I care about anything you have to say? Sincerely, Phil. Right. So, like, you know, you know, I'm reminded of a statement that Michael Jordan, the basketball God, the goat, made years ago when he was being pressured to support a political candidate, a Democrat in North Carolina in his home state. And he famously said, look, Republicans buy sneakers too. Right? And so, you know, Republicans go to the movies too. Melania is an iconic figure for a lot of people in America. And I think there's gonna be an audience that's gonna go see this movie and really enjoy it. And I saw some of them on Sunday.
[30:13]
D
And Maureen, can you tell us a bit more about your sister's reaction to the film? What was it like to see it with Her.
[30:18]
E
Well, I know she's a big Melania fan because we've talked about it a lot and she. And in fact, I was kind of fascinated, too, because I've always wanted to be one of these women, I don't know how they do it, who look perfect at all moments. My sister is like, I say you.
[30:36]
D
Look perfect right now. Melania would be perfect.
[30:41]
E
My sister is actually like that. So I'm kind of watching in fascination, like, you know, I have a lot of vintage clothes and they kind of fall apart while I'm wearing them. And she is perfect, down to the last scintilla of everything, to her red souled lubitance. And, you know, I think my sister loved it and really enjoyed it and admires her. And I'm sure she's gonna go back and see it again.
[31:11]
D
I wanna end by asking you, since we've been talking about propaganda, how does Melania rate as a work of propaganda compared to other famous works like Triumph of the Will, which arguably is also very much about aesthetics? How does Melania rate? How many stars?
[31:29]
E
Well, I was watching the Leni Rifenstahl documentary after I saw Melania, and it was so funny. Cause she's getting quizzed by interviewers over the years, like, couldn't you see what was coming with Hitler? You were glorifying him. And she's like, well, it was 1932. He was very charismatic as it was a much more interesting documentary in terms of this incredible thing that she was doing and she was being semi honest about what she was doing. So, yeah, as I say, the only thing you're learning from this is that she's on board with the corruption of taking money like the Trump family. And she looks great in high heels.
[32:23]
D
Corrupt and looking great doing it.
[32:26]
E
Yes. That should have been the title of the movie subheading.
[32:32]
D
Carlos, what do you think? How does this rate as a work of propaganda?
[32:35]
B
Yeah, how does this stack up? I mean, you mentioned Triumph of the Will. If I remember correctly, that movie also began with a plane ride and a motorcade. You know, so a lot of, you know, Hitler being transported and taken around different places. I don't know that I'd put Ratner in the Leni Riefenstahl category. I'd be surprised if decades from now, we're still poring over the Melania movie as a key way to understand this time. A movie like Triumph of the Will. Right, which was about, like one big rally in Nuremberg for Hitler in the 30s, you know, it's an intensely militaristic Nationalistic movie. Everything is about the leader projecting strength. Right? This is about a leader adjacent character projecting softness, reasonableness. You know, it's a very different, but yet kind of insidious in its own way sort of story precisely because of the contradictions and the hypocrisy that Maureen highlighted.
[33:34]
E
Well, Hitler hated makeup. He did not want women to wear makeup, so he would not have liked this movie.
[33:41]
B
There's your headline. Hitler would have hated this movie. Okay? I mean, everything in a movie like this is, you know, precooked and planned and, you know, created to create a certain effect. But, like, you know, she goes to St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York to mark the anniversary of her mother's death. You know, that's a human moment, and so very little in this movie is relatable. But lighting a candle for a loved one who has gone is a relatable moment.
[34:09]
E
Even in the scene where she goes to St. Patrick's it is, you know, a lovely moment. But then she comes out and she doesn't. There are a bunch of people out there, and she doesn't look at them or talk to them. I mean, it's as though they don't exist. The hoi polloi.
[34:27]
D
Yeah. Yeah. We spend so much of the film watching her design this big hat that she's gonna wear at the inauguration. And then there's this little shot where.
[34:36]
E
We see the part looks like the hammer.
[34:38]
D
It totally looks like the Hamburglar hat. But there's also this little shot where we see that one of the purposes of this hat is that it can completely hide her face from cameras, from people, whenever she needs to hide. And I left this film.
[34:51]
B
You can barely see her eyes.
[34:52]
D
Yeah, you can barely see her eyes. And I left this film feeling like here is someone who wants to remain the portrait, who wants to remain purely a surface that we never get to see behind.
[35:03]
B
The surface is all there is, right? This movie ends with an extended photo shoot, right, of Melania. People hovering around her, you know, getting her clothes just right. And then the last thing you see is her name flashing on the screen. And then that crackling sound of, like, the old fashioned flashbulb. And then, boom, the name is gone and it's over. Right? Like there is nothing else. There's nothing else.
[35:26]
E
It also ends with Brett Ratner being rehabilitated thanks to Melania and Jeff Bezos having more influence in the government thanks to Melania. Jeff Bezos, who's destroying the Washington Post.
[35:41]
D
It's true. That is one of the things that comes from this film. But I think that yes, this like this flashbulb ending. Here's the posed, completely pre planned portrait of her. And that is what you have just seen. That's what this film is. And that's the perfect note for us to end this on. Cause it really is just what this sums up to is a portrait, a very, very posed portrait. Carlos, Maureen, thank you so much for being here today.
[36:11]
E
Thank you, Nadja.
[36:12]
B
A real pleasure. Nadja, let's go see more movies.
[36:15]
E
Yeah, let's do it again.
[36:46]
C
If you like this show, follow it on YouTube, Spotify or Apple. The opinions is produced by Derek Arthur, Vishaka Darba and Gillian Weinberger. It's edited by Kari Pitkin and Allison Bruzick. Mixing by Efim Shapiro and Sonia Herrero. Original music by Isaac Jones, sonia Herrero, Pat McCusker, Carol Sabaro, Efim Shapiro and Amin Sahota. The fact check team is Kate Sinclair, Mary Marge Locker and Michelle Harris. The head of operations is Shannon Busta. Audience support by Christina Samulewski. The director of Opinion shows is Annie Rose Strasser.

Summary8 min read

Podcast Summary: The Opinions – “Maureen Dowd and Carlos Lozada on the Empty Propaganda of ‘Melania’”

Date: February 5, 2026
Host: Nadja Spiegelman (Editor, NYT Opinion)
Guests: Maureen Dowd (Columnist), Carlos Lozada (Columnist)

Episode Overview

In this episode, Nadja Spiegelman sits down with New York Times columnists Maureen Dowd and Carlos Lozada to dissect Melania, a controversial new documentary (funded by Amazon and produced by Melania Trump) chronicling her final 20 days before Donald Trump’s second inauguration in 2025. The panel explores the film's style, substance—or lack thereof—and discusses its implications as a work of propaganda, the nature of Melania’s public persona, and the political and cultural context into which it lands.

Theater Experiences & First Impressions

Sparse, Journalist-heavy Audiences

[01:44] Maureen describes attending a screening in D.C. nearly empty save for other journalists, joking: “So finally one of the journalists, this guy, stands up in the back of the theater and goes, are there any civilians here, wanted to interview someone?”
She adds she brought her Trump-voting Republican sister “because that way I knew that there was a group of older white women who were gonna love this movie.”

Carlos’s Double Viewing

[02:46] Carlos saw the film twice: first surrounded by “Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Atlantic, CNN” types; second, among “civilians” in suburban Maryland, mostly older women: “People seemed to be enjoying themselves…So there's certainly an audience for the movie.”

Melania: Perceptions Before & After

Maureen’s Early Encounters

[04:01] Recalling Trump’s 1999 Miami trip, Maureen once viewed Melania as sly and “in on the joke” (“She was laughing about how they had outfitted her Calvin Klein to look like a politician's girlfriend…she wasn’t gonna give up her stilettos.”).
This slyness and sense of fun were “totally absent in this film.”

Myth of the ‘Secret Resistance’

[05:05] Nadja observes, “We all have this fantasy…that could, like, be a secret resistance…”
Maureen retorts, “Liberals have always fantasized about that, but I always thought that was silly…She is very comfortable in this vertical solitude of the gilded world that he has set her in.”

The Movie Itself: Content, Form, and Narrative

Narrow Focus, Curated Access

Carlos’s Synopsis

[06:04] The film covers only the 20 days leading up to Trump’s (second) inauguration—primarily Melania’s preparation for official events. “You never see her really talking to, say, Barron. You never see her talking to a friend…it’s a kind of a lonely existence, but yet one that she seems to enjoy.”

Role of Amazon & Motives

Commercial & Political Ties

[08:28] Maureen details: “Amazon gave $40 million to make the movie and another $35 million to promote it. Out of that, Melania pockets $28 million…a way for Jeff Bezos to curry favor.”
Memorable moment: “[There’s a] scene in the movie where…she has this paean to how great their donors are…they pan past Bezos and Lauren Sanchez and all the other lords of the cloud who have bought American government in this blatant way.”

Is it Propaganda? And What Kind?

Emptiness of Messaging

No Subtlety, No Depth

[09:50] Maureen: “[Melania’s] world, Donald Trump is a unifier and promotes dignity and compassion…while in the split screen…ICE agents shoot people in the face in their cars. It’s absurd propaganda the way his is.”
[10:42] Carlos: “Propaganda tells you two things. It tells you how people wish to be perceived and it tells you what they think of us, what they think of the audience…Melania speaks in these almost like ChatGPT-generated voiceovers…”
He cites one: “Every day I live with purpose and devotion, orchestrating the complexities of my life while nurturing my family's needs.”
“That doesn’t tell you anything…these are just generic, empty political words.”

Observation on the Trump–Melania Approach

[13:13] Carlos: “It’s not that [Trump] doesn’t want to say he's a unifier…it’s that he doesn’t want it to be seen that she’s telling him what to say…they both feel that sort of the power of repetition, simply saying something will make it seem truer than it is.”

Lack of Authenticity

Nadja: “It’s one of the only minutes of footage in this film that doesn’t feel perfectly preplanned and pre-scripted.” (13:36)

The Portrait

[18:08] Maureen recalls Ivanka’s nickname for Melania: “the Portrait”—“it’s like a static kind of portrait of a beautiful woman.”

Style over Substance: Visuals, Music, and Narrative Flatness

Heels & Feet, Surface Obsessions

[14:44, 15:53] Maureen relays Andre Leon Talley once called Melania “the best moisturized woman he had ever seen…she walks on 5 inch stilettos better than any woman in history.”
Nadja and Carlos discuss the constant focus on Melania’s feet and heels: [16:02] “You can picture her having feet like Barbie that don’t go flat. Totally.”
Maureen: “Even on small, superficial things like that, we didn’t get any insights. Yeah, my dad was a police detective…he wouldn’t get my sister a job at the Capitol because he said walking on those marble floors was so painful, you would get varicose veins.”

Narrative Tension (or Lack Thereof)

[21:21] Nadja observes, “The only setup for narrative tension is whether…the hem of her dress will be perfect by the time inauguration happens…gives us no narrative tension. We’re certain that they will. Everything goes right. Nothing ever goes wrong.”
Maureen: “It’s only revealing for what it doesn’t reveal. I mean, I just think he [Ratner] got his orders straight, which is she wanted to look gorgeous in every frame and not reveal anything. And that’s what happened.” (21:35)

Odd/Creepy Cultural References

[19:26] Maureen quips about the film's director: “She brings Brett Ratner out of exile… And he asks who her favorite artist is, and it’s Michael Jackson…are we not gonna have one minute without a predator being mentioned here or directing the movie?”

Fleeting Human Moments, Missed Opportunities

[35:40] Carlos: “She goes to St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York to mark the anniversary of her mother's death…lighting a candle for a loved one who has gone is a relatable moment.”
[34:08] Maureen, however, notes: “Even in the scene where she goes…she comes out and…she doesn’t look at [the people outside] or talk to them. I mean, it’s as though they don’t exist.”

Political and Social Context

Immigration: Disconnected Rhetoric vs. Reality

[23:20, 25:27] Maureen: “…here is Melania, the only immigrant Trump likes, in her satin lined cage. And it’s an incredibly unpleasant juxtaposition.”
Carlos: “As a naturalized American citizen…I was kind of waiting to see if she would say something about this…Later on she says…‘Walking into the Capitol’s rotunda, I felt the weight of history intertwined with my own journey as an immigrant’…It’s also entirely decontextualized from the campaign her husband had just waged…based on…mass deportations against those people who are poisoning the blood of the country, as Trump put it often.”

Reception & the Broader Audience

Why Do People Like This?

[28:23] Nadja: “The film somehow made $7 million in its first weekend, which is the best opening weekend for a documentary in years.”
Carlos, re: critics: “One of my earliest emails is a guy named Phil telling me Carlos saw the movie and loved it. I did have a question. Who are you, and why would I care about anything you have to say? Sincerely, Phil…Republicans go to the movies too. Melania is an iconic figure for a lot of people in America.”

Personal Reactions

[30:18] Maureen: “I think my sister loved it and really enjoyed it and admires her. And I'm sure she's gonna go back and see it again.”

Final Reflections: How Does It Rank as Propaganda?

Mediocrity and Surface

[31:10] Nadja asks how Melania rates “as a work of propaganda compared to other famous works like Triumph of the Will.”
Maureen: “…the only thing you’re learning is that she’s onboard with the corruption of taking money like the Trump family. And she looks great in high heels.”
“Corrupt and looking great doing it.” (32:23–32:25)
Carlos: “I don’t know that I’d put Ratner in the Leni Riefenstahl category. I’d be surprised if decades from now, we’re still pouring over the Melania movie as a key way to understand this time…Triumph of the Will…was about…the leader projecting strength. Right? This is about a leader-adjacent character projecting softness, reasonableness…yet kind of insidious in its own way…” (32:34–33:33)

Most Accurate Summary

[35:02] Nadja: “Here is someone who wants to remain the portrait, who wants to remain purely a surface that we never get to see behind.”
Carlos: “The surface is all there is, right? This movie ends with an extended photo shoot…And then the last thing you see is her name flashing on the screen…there is nothing else.”

Memorable Quotes

On the emptiness of Melania's narrative:
“Melania speaks in These almost like ChatGPT-generated voiceovers… I don't know what that means. Right. I don't know what that. That doesn't tell you anything.” (Carlos, 11:40)
On propaganda:
“Propaganda tells you how people wish to be perceived and…what they think of the audience.” (Carlos, 10:42)
On Amazon’s investment:
“Jeff Bezos… all the other lords of the cloud who have bought American government in this blatant way.” (Maureen, 08:28)
On the movie’s message:
“It’s absurd propaganda the way his is.” (Maureen, 09:50)
On Melania’s persona:
“It's like a static kind of portrait of a beautiful woman.” (Maureen, 18:08)
On moral contradictions:
“Here is Melania, the only immigrant Trump likes, in her satin lined cage.” (Maureen, 23:20)
On the film’s legacy:
“The surface is all there is…there is nothing else.” (Carlos, 35:02)
On the essential critique:
“Corrupt and looking great doing it.” (Maureen, 32:25)

Timestamps for Key Segments

[01:44]–[02:46]: Journalists fill empty theaters; audience composition
[04:01]–[05:47]: Melania’s earlier, sly persona vs. the film’s presentation
[06:04]–[07:52]: Movie synopsis: 20 days, high curation, no real access
[08:28]: Amazon’s funding and the politics of access
[09:50]–[13:36]: Propaganda; empty platitudes, reinforcement by repetition
[15:53]–[18:08]: Extreme focus on shoes/appearance, Andre Leon Talley anecdote, “the Portrait”
[19:26]–[21:35]: Michael Jackson, Brett Ratner, narrative flatness
[23:20]–[25:27]: Immigration contradictions, “the only immigrant Trump likes”
[28:23]–[31:10]: Audience appeal, box office numbers, reactions
[31:10]–[35:26]: Propaganda as portrait, historic comparison to “Triumph of the Will”
[35:26]–[35:40]: Final assessments, focus on surface and power dynamics

Concluding Tone

A mixture of wry cynicism, cultural satire, and critique laced with vivid observation—reflecting both the inanity and insidiousness of image-driven political storytelling.

Summary in a Line:
Melania is meticulously styled, stupefyingly empty, and serves as both a portrait of surface and a document of hollow self-justification—propaganda that “looks great doing it,” but says almost nothing at all.

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Transcript103 lines

[00:00]
A
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[00:24]
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Not guaranteed paid client ad views may not be representative.
[00:26]
A
See App Store and Google Play Store reviews.
[00:28]
B
Learn more@betterment.com pursuebetter partnership.
[00:32]
C
This is the Opinions, a show that brings you a mix of voices from New York Times Opinion. You've heard the news. Here's what to make of it.
[00:48]
D
I'm Nadja Spiegelman, an editor at New York Times Opinion. Over the weekend, I watched Melania in a nearly empty Manhattan theater. All of my friends refused to see it with me. Luckily, I now get the chance to discuss it with two distinguished columnists, Maureen Daud and Carlos Lozada. Thank you both so much for being here.
[01:10]
E
Thank you, Nadja.
[01:11]
B
Great to be here. Nadja, let's do some movie reviews.
[01:14]
D
Yes. I mean, let's start by talking about how for journalists in left leaning cities, you're both in D.C. there's a lot of joking around about what the experience of going to the movie theater to see this film is like. For example, audio producer Derek Arthur and I had only one other, a young woman who told us after that she had come because she'd seen ads for this film in the subway and been curious about what it was about. What was your experience of going to see the film in theaters?
[01:45]
E
It was so funny because I went in downtown Washington and there were only a few people there. They were all journalists. So finally one of the journalists, this guy, stands up in the back of the theater and goes, are there any civilians here wanted to interview someone? And one journalist tapped me on the shoulder, Betsy Klein of cnn. And she's like, can I talk to you about the movie after? And I went, no. And she looked shocked. And I said, no, because I'm a journalist, Betsy, you know, so it was, you know, it was just very incestuous with just a few journalists. Although I did bring my Trump voting Republican s, which was very revealing because that way I knew that there was a group of older white women who were gonna love this movie.
[02:43]
D
And Carlos, what was your Moviegoing experience.
[02:46]
B
So I went to see Melania twice, actually, over the weekend, because that's how committed I am to the New York Times. The first time was the same showing as Maureen. Basically. I think we found the earliest possible showing on Friday in D.C. and, you know, it was people from all walks of life. You know, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Atlantic, cnn. You know, so literally, like, I. I'm standing in the. In the concession line, and there's a journalist in front of me and a journalist behind me. The second time I saw it was on Sunday, and it was not in D.C. i went out to see it in one of the malls in the D.C. suburbs of Maryland, figuring, you know, it would be a different kind of crowd. And it was very much civilians this time. Right. It was an older crowd, much more female, no one carrying notebooks. And people seemed to be enjoying themselves. And there were certainly more people than had been there that first time that I saw it. So there's certainly an audience for the movie.
[03:49]
D
I'm curious what you thought about Melania before going into the film and what you thought about her after walking out of the film. Was there anything that changed through seeing this film?
[04:01]
E
Well, it's interesting because I went on Trump's first presidential exploratory trip to make a speech in Miami to Cuban Americans. It was 1999. And Melania, who was then Melania Nous, was there, and she was his girlfriend, and I liked her. I thought she was cool. And there was much more of a sense that she was in on the joke. She was laughing about how they had outfitted her Calvin Klein to look like a politician's girlfriend, and that she'd never worn skirts that long. But she wasn't gonna give up her stilettos. I mean, there was a more sly sense, and that was totally absent in this film.
[04:49]
D
That's so interesting. I mean, I think we all have this fantasy that there's something about Melania that could be a secret because she's such a cipher, that could, like, be a secret resistance, sort of an immigrant who's a bomb waiting to a resistant.
[05:05]
E
Yeah, I think liberals have always fantasized about that, but I always thought that was silly. Remember, they thought maybe she would go to, like, the women's resistance marches and go in disguise and a pink pussy hat, and, you know, that was just wishful thinking on the part of liberals. She is very. Whatever her relationship with Trump is, whatever their deal is, she is very comfortable in this vertical solitude of the gilded world that he has set her in.
[05:41]
D
Vertical solitude of a gilded world is like all adjectives that really describe this film.
[05:48]
E
Yeah, this is like a bad episode of the Gilded Age, totally without Christine Baranski, unfortunately.
[05:56]
D
Before we go further, for anyone who's managed to somehow avoid what this movie is, Carlos, can you give us a synopsis? What is this movie?
[06:04]
B
So it covers the final 20 days before President Trump's inauguration last year. Right. So like early January of 2025. And it mainly focuses on Melania's preparation for the official events that surround the inauguration. The. The swearing in ceremony itself, the. The inaugural balls. So, you know, she meets with her designer, with event planners, with security personnel. You know, they throw in a few kind of heavily scripted meetings with like, Brigitte Macron of France and Queen Rania of Jordan. And she's flying a lot. She's flying back and forth between Mar A Lago and Washington and New York. So a lot of this movie is Melania in cars, in planes, always in heels. And really the bookends are kind of perfect because it starts with her traveling to meet Pierre, her clothing designer, and then it ends with her in a photo shoot at the White House where Pierre is, like, hovering around her, adjusting her. Her clothes. At one point, she says in the movie that she wants to change the role of First Lady. So it's not just about official duties, but the whole movie is about her official duties. It was weird to me that they picked those 20 days like, I don't know, like a more natural period would have been from election night, say, to inauguration day. There's never an explanation for why this period mattered. So that's it. That's it. It's literally 20 days into the life of Melania, but a very curated life. Right? You never see her really talking to, say, Baron. You never see her. Her son. You never see her talking to a friend. You know, it's. It's a kind of a lonely existence, but yet one that she seems to enjoy.
[07:52]
D
Yeah, you touch on so many important points that I think we're gonna have to go circle back to one by one to tease out even further. I agree. There's a voiceover at the beginning where she's like, everybody's been wondering. So here it is, the 20 days leading up to the inauguration, and it's like, that is not what everybody has been wondering about. It's so curious that they choose this as a narrative structure and to continue giving some of the context sort of around the film. Marine, can you fill us in just a little bit on the role that Amazon plays in the making of this movie.
[08:28]
E
Right. Well, Amazon gave 40 million to make the movie and another 35 million to promote it. And out of that, Melania pockets 28 million. And so obviously that is just a way for Jeff Bezos to curry favor. And there's this hilarious scene in the movie where they're having a night before the inaugural dinner at the National Building Museum, and she has this pay on to how great their donors are. And they pan past Bezos and Lauren Sanchez and all the other lords of the cloud who have bought American government in this blatant way.
[09:13]
D
I mean, it's so heavy handed.
[09:15]
E
Yeah, so heavy handed, but, yeah, there's.
[09:17]
B
No subtlety in that. Yeah, no.
[09:20]
E
And again, so in some ways, Melania and Trump are well matched because neither of them have met an emolument that they didn't like.
[09:30]
D
I mean, for that reason, for the reason that it's like intentionally sponsored and bought and for many others, a lot of people are referring to this film as a piece of propaganda, but one of the definitions of propaganda is that it has an intention to promote a worldview or belief. So what does this film promoting?
[09:51]
E
You know, it's interesting because Donald Trump is the master of creating a different false reality. And he's done that with the election for his fans, you know, that he claims was stolen from him. He's done it with January 6th. And so this is Melania's version of that. In her world, Donald Trump is a unifier and promotes dignity and compassion. And, you know, it's mostly her getting in and out of cars while in the split screen of the real world, we're seeing ICE agents shoot people in the face in their cars. So it's, it's absurd propaganda the way his is.
[10:37]
D
Yeah. Carlos, what do you think? What is the film trying to promote from a propaganda perspective?
[10:42]
B
Yeah, I mean, I. First thing I'll say is that we, we often speak of propaganda sort of in a pejorative sense. I find propaganda to be utterly fascinating and incredibly useful to understand politicians, whether it's political memoirs, you know, or movies like these, where the subject of the film, you know, had a lot of control in how she's presented. Propaganda tells you two things. It tells you how people wish to be perceived and it tells you what they think of us, what they think of the audience, you know, what's going to appeal to us. And so in that sense, it's a great mirror too. I mean, I think that in a sense, they try to sort of soften this administration a little. Bit to, you know, glamorize it, humanize it, to sort of give you just a very different sense of what it's about. Melania speaks in These almost like ChatGPT generated voiceovers, you know, that are just very.
[11:40]
D
I was also thinking ChatGPT, she really. It's that, like, really flattened AI voice.
[11:46]
B
But also, like, the words that she chooses. Right? Like, she says stuff like, you know, every day I live with purpose and devotion, orchestrating the complexities of my life while nurturing my family's needs. Right. Like, I don't know what that means. Right. I don't know what that. That doesn't tell you anything. Right. Or, like, there's a moment when they're at this congressional luncheon after the inauguration, and she just says, you know, as First Lady, I constantly think about how our lawmakers can build dignity, create equal opportunity, and foster compassion through the unity of all Americans. Right. Like, these are just generic, empty political words. Right. That don't mean anything, you know? But when she mentions unity, like, I wanna follow up on Maureen's point. There's a great moment in this movie where Donald Trump is rehearsing for his inaugural address, and Melania's sitting in on it. And one thing he's saying is that I want my legacy to be that of a peacemaker. And Melania pipes up in that moment and says, peacemaker and unifier. Right. And Trump didn't like that. He turns to the. To the camera and says, don't put that in the movie. Right. You know, don't keep that in the movie. And she says, no, please keep it. So it's almost. It's not that he doesn't want to say he's a unifier because he ends up saying it in the address. It's that he doesn't want it to be seen that she's telling him what to say.
[13:13]
D
Yeah.
[13:13]
B
And I thought that was, like. That was a really interesting little moment in the movie, but, like, I don't know on what planet. Donald Trump is a unifier. He's many things, but for her, it's just important. Not that he be it. It's important that he say it. In that sense, they're very well matched because they both feel that sort of the power of repetition, simply saying something will make it seem truer than it is.
[13:37]
D
But also, Carlos, this moment that you point out, where that moment is preceded by Melania sort of mischievously beckoning at the camera to come into a room that wasn't previously planned to be filmed in, where Trump is rehearsing his inauguration speech really stands out because it's one of the only minutes of footage in this film that doesn't feel perfectly pre planned and pre scripted. And also one of the few moments where you actually see Melania interacting with people who are not her staff, who are like preparing her clothes, her invitations. I'm really curious about, because we're talking about it as propaganda. Melania herself produced this film. These are all very intentional choices that are made. And Marine, you mentioned earlier loneliness. I mean, you see Melania in this really lonely world. I think for the first several minutes of the film, the only things that she says is just thank you to various staff members and hello.
[14:33]
E
Yeah, and her personal Instagram was that way too. Just, I don't think she seems lonely, she seems alone, you know, to prefer not to have these.
[14:43]
B
That's a good distinction.
[14:44]
E
If anyone else would have had their friends in a document, you know, a documentary, they would have had some friends to show they had friends. But, you know, you asked before what I thought differently of her after the movie and I wanted to tell you. So my late friend Andre Leon Talley, who was a Vogue editor, styled Melania for her Vogue cover when she married Trump. And he traveled to Paris with her and went to Couturier's and he told me a few things about her, which was that she was very polite to the Couturiers and he saw her in the altogether and he said she was the best moisturized woman he had ever seen. And as we can see in the movie, because Brett Ratner has a bit of a foot fetish, she walks on 5 inch stilettos better than any woman in history. And, and that she was a great mom. And all of those things you also can tell in the movie, I think. And so what Andre told me long ago about her has not changed.
[15:53]
D
It's true that there's so much of her feet, there's so many stiletto shots.
[15:59]
E
Well, the first shot is like the.
[16:02]
B
First thing you see of her.
[16:03]
E
You can picture her having feet like Barbie that don't go flat. Totally.
[16:07]
D
And you almost. I think there's only one shot where her shoes come off at the very end of her whole day of inauguration where she's been walking around.
[16:15]
E
But then she doesn't say, wow, it's hard to do this, or this is how I do this. You know, you don't get any insight into this amazing feat of being on these skyscraper heels because normally at that age women are downgrading to flats or 2 inch heels.
[16:34]
D
But yeah, Marin, you also are someone who wears a lot of heels. What is the meaning and experience of wearing heels like this?
[16:41]
E
Yeah, I wore heels through, like, eight presidential campaigns. And it's hard, and at some point it hurts too much to keep doing it. But she has a steely resolve about it. I would have loved to hear her secrets on that. But even on small, superficial things like that, we didn't get any insights. Yeah, my dad was a police detective in D.C. was in charge of Senate security for 20 years, and he wouldn't get my sister a job at the Capitol because he said walking on those marble floors was so painful, you would get varicose veins. And my sister and I were wincing on her long walks on those marble floors because it had to hurt. But only glancing reference to that.
[17:28]
D
Oh, I hadn't even thought about how painful it must be to walk in 6 inch stilettos on marble floors.
[17:33]
E
I mean, also, all credit to Nancy Pelosi, who also did it right.
[17:39]
B
It was almost distracting how often the focus was on the feet.
[17:43]
E
Well, she may also be rebuking all of the women in Trump's world who have mar a lago face, who have done too much work, because obviously there's a lot of work that's been done, but she's managed to remain exquisite looking.
[17:59]
D
Yeah, she does look really beautiful. I think you say this in your peace, Marine, that Ivanka's nickname for Melania.
[18:07]
E
Nickname was.
[18:08]
D
Yeah.
[18:09]
E
She called Melania the Portrait, and Melania called her the Princess and the Port. You could have really called this documentary the Portrait because that's what it's like. It's like a static kind of portrait of a beautiful woman.
[18:24]
D
Let's talk about the other choices in the film. There's so. I mean, there's a lot of choices this film makes. One of them is with the music that it chooses. And the music does a lot of work. Cause it's mostly shots.
[18:36]
E
Yes. Shots of her legs, car parades, and.
[18:38]
D
Walking down hallways with a lot of scoring. Carlos, what do you make of the scoring?
[18:44]
B
There's a moment when she's being driven to the airport in New York or something. She's going back to Florida, I think, and she's asked sort of like, you know, hey, who's your favorite recording artist? What's your favorite song? And she's like, oh, I love Michael Jackson. Billie Jean. Right. And so they start playing Billie Jean and they start doing almost this, like, you know, carpool karaoke with Melania in the car. And she's sort of, like, bopping along to Billie Jean seems to really like it knows all the words to the song, and yet you don't hear her. You barely hear her singing because the other person in the car is singing, and they just don't make her audible at all. So you see that she's mouthing along to Billie Jean. Right. But you don't really hear Melania's voice.
[19:26]
E
But Carlos, Carlos, didn't you think it. I thought it was so funny that. So she brings Brett Ratner out of exile. I mean, he was exiled from Hollywood for sexual transgressions, and she brings him out of exile to be the director of this movie. And then he asks who her favorite artist is, and it's Michael Jackson, so. And in the midst of the Epstein files of tales of pedophilia, you know, it's just kind of, are we not gonna have one minute without a predator being mentioned here or directing the movie? So it was kind of creepy, I thought. You know, one funny. This isn't about music, but for me, my favorite line of everything, I don't know if it started with Sophie Gilbert or on Twitter or whatever, was the idea that her inaugural Dr. It's impossible to look at it now without thinking. It looks like the redacted Epstein Fox the black.
[20:27]
D
I hadn't heard that.
[20:28]
E
Crossing things out.
[20:30]
B
That was Sophie Gilbert, I think, in her piece in the Atlantic about it.
[20:33]
E
Yeah, I thought that was a great line.
[20:36]
D
Oh, it's so funny, Maureen, you were talking about Brett Ratner earlier, and you can say a lot of things about him, but one thing about him is that he knows how to tell a story. He does know. He does understand narrative. And one really notable thing about this film is how boring it is. The only setup for narrative tension is whether that the hem of her dress will be perfect by the time inauguration happens. And even that setup, which is the setup of so many reality wedding shows of like, will the invitations be printed on time? Gives us no narrative tension. We're certain that they will. Everything goes right. Nothing ever goes wrong. What do you make of that choice of creating a film that has absolutely no narrative tension?
[21:22]
E
Yeah, it's only revealing for what it doesn't reveal. I mean, I just think he got his orders straight, which is she wanted to look gorgeous in every frame and not reveal anything. And that's what happened.
[21:36]
B
I will point out a couple of moments of. Of not sort of narrative tension, but at least like a little bit of. A little bit of a moment when the veil drops slightly. Right. And that is during the discussion that Donald and Melania Trump are having with the sort of events coordinator and the Secret Service director about security surrounding the inauguration. And you see how Melania is skeptical of the security arrangements. And obviously it was in the aftermath of the assassination attempt on her husband. Right. And so, you know, she. She says that, oh, like, is there a place where we're supposed to get out of the car, you know, and walk? I don't want to do that. Baron doesn't want to do that. You know, how could that be safe? And she says, especially with the last year. Right. And then the Secret Service guys are like, let's talk about this off camera. Right. So that was a little moment that, to me, was interesting. It was a little tiny glimpse into what she's thinking, right. What's going on in her head. She was afraid of leaving the car. She was afraid of leaving the car. And clearly Baron was as well. And so that was. I appreciated that moment in the movie. Cause it felt slightly real.
[23:00]
D
Yeah. Merlania's worries about security. And that, I think, brings us into talking about the larger political context into which this film lands. Maureen, you had started by talking a bit about sort of that juxtaposition between being afraid to get out of the car and what's happening to people around the country being pulled out of their cars by ICE officers. Can you talk a little bit more about that?
[23:21]
E
Well, I mean, America, my dad was born in Ireland. America is a nation of immigrants. And we're at this horrible moment where immigrants are facing kind of these ICE thugs. And I say that, you know, my dad was a policeman, so I understand the difficulties. And my dad had this. You get to that moment where you have to decide, are you gonna shoot someone or how are you gonna handle this situation? It's a split second decision. But even so, you know, their behavior, they're so untrained and so reckless, and it makes all police look bad. And so we're at this moment where immigrants are getting dragged out of Home Depots and their own homes. And here is Melania, the only immigrant Trump likes in her satin lined cage. And it's an incredibly unpleasant juxtaposition. Like, yes, he would bring her parents here as chain migration, you know, but all other immigrants are suspect, unless, I guess, they're from white European countries. You know, his attitude toward immigrants is gross.
[24:40]
D
Gross seems unfortunately, even like an understatement. Although there is an interesting shot in the film where he and Melania are posing with the entire Mar A Lago staff, many of whom I would assume are also themselves immigrants. It's impossible to tell Melania's story without some version of an immigrant journey. There's a person in the documentary who is from Laos, and she talks about it being the culmination of the American dream for her to be doing the interior decoration of the White House, given that she had come to America at a young age. And it's so curious to be still peddling this idea of the immigrant American dream in the context of what Trump is doing vis a vis immigration. Carlo, how does all this strike you?
[25:28]
B
Yeah, well, I hate beginning sentences with aza, you know, so I won't say as an immigrant, but I'm a naturalized American citizen born in Peru, and I was kind of waiting to see if she would say something about this. Right. Because that moment that you mentioned with the decorator for the White House is very early on in the movie. And later on, you know, she says, again, it's one of these sort of chatgpt, sort of generic political speak things you're supposed to say, right? Where Melania says, I have the line here. Walking into the capital's rotunda, I felt the weight of history intertwined with my own journey as an immigrant. A reminder of why I respect this nation so deeply. Everyone should do what they can to protect our individual rights, never take them for granted, because in the end, no matter where we come from, we are bound by the same humanity. Right. That's lovely. That's great. It's also entirely decontextualized from the campaign her husband had just waged to win the election. Right? A campaign that was based on the promise of mass deportations against those people who are poisoning the blood of the country, as Trump put it often. Now, in her book, her memoir, which came out also titled Melania, you know, in a fit of originality, she talks about how she urged Trump to end the family separation policy at the southern border during the first term. This book came out in 2024. Right. But here there's absolutely no sense at all that she spoke to him about any of this. Right. Or that she's aware or cares that the rhetoric that she's giving in this movie doesn't match up at all against what he's actually doing. Instead, she calls him a unifier. Now, I wouldn't expect this movie to be a full throated critique of the Trump administration. Like, that's, that's absurd, right? Like we can't, you know, you have to sort of let things slide when it's the first lady. Right? But it's also kind of fascinating that some of those generic statements she has are, are so contrary to sort of some basic things that this administration is doing.
[27:38]
D
In what way does this film manage to humanize Melania, if at all? Does it humanize her at all, Maureen? And in what way?
[27:49]
E
No, I would say my experience of it was the reverse because having met her at the beginning when she and Trump were just dating, you know, I have had a sense of her all this time that she was slyer and again, as I said in on the Joke a little bit more and would be really fascinating to talk to. And now I don't feel that way.
[28:14]
D
Yeah, I mean, but the film somehow made $7 million in its first weekend, which is the best opening weekend for a documentary in years.
[28:24]
E
So I do think a lot of normal people like Melania and think she's, you know, stunning and want to see the behind the scenes thing. But it doesn't really matter how much the movie makes. The point is she got a $28 million bribe from Bezos, who does a lot of business with the government with his blue origin, you know, spaceships and all his companies and its growth.
[28:59]
D
Oh, yeah. And it's a simple. Even if it is able to make $7 million in its first weekend, it is never going to recoup the 75 million that Amazon spent on the rights and promotion of this film. There's no way to even think about it.
[29:12]
E
That isn't the point.
[29:14]
D
Yeah, it's not the point. It's certainly not the point.
[29:17]
B
But yeah, I mean, I'm hearing from people who like this movie, right? Like, I wrote a column this week somewhat critical of the movie, and one of my earliest emails is a guy named Phil telling me Carlos saw the movie and loved it. I did have a question. Who are you and why would I care about anything you have to say? Sincerely, Phil. Right. So, like, you know, you know, I'm reminded of a statement that Michael Jordan, the basketball God, the goat, made years ago when he was being pressured to support a political candidate, a Democrat in North Carolina in his home state. And he famously said, look, Republicans buy sneakers too. Right? And so, you know, Republicans go to the movies too. Melania is an iconic figure for a lot of people in America. And I think there's gonna be an audience that's gonna go see this movie and really enjoy it. And I saw some of them on Sunday.
[30:13]
D
And Maureen, can you tell us a bit more about your sister's reaction to the film? What was it like to see it with Her.
[30:18]
E
Well, I know she's a big Melania fan because we've talked about it a lot and she. And in fact, I was kind of fascinated, too, because I've always wanted to be one of these women, I don't know how they do it, who look perfect at all moments. My sister is like, I say you.
[30:36]
D
Look perfect right now. Melania would be perfect.
[30:41]
E
My sister is actually like that. So I'm kind of watching in fascination, like, you know, I have a lot of vintage clothes and they kind of fall apart while I'm wearing them. And she is perfect, down to the last scintilla of everything, to her red souled lubitance. And, you know, I think my sister loved it and really enjoyed it and admires her. And I'm sure she's gonna go back and see it again.
[31:11]
D
I wanna end by asking you, since we've been talking about propaganda, how does Melania rate as a work of propaganda compared to other famous works like Triumph of the Will, which arguably is also very much about aesthetics? How does Melania rate? How many stars?
[31:29]
E
Well, I was watching the Leni Rifenstahl documentary after I saw Melania, and it was so funny. Cause she's getting quizzed by interviewers over the years, like, couldn't you see what was coming with Hitler? You were glorifying him. And she's like, well, it was 1932. He was very charismatic as it was a much more interesting documentary in terms of this incredible thing that she was doing and she was being semi honest about what she was doing. So, yeah, as I say, the only thing you're learning from this is that she's on board with the corruption of taking money like the Trump family. And she looks great in high heels.
[32:23]
D
Corrupt and looking great doing it.
[32:26]
E
Yes. That should have been the title of the movie subheading.
[32:32]
D
Carlos, what do you think? How does this rate as a work of propaganda?
[32:35]
B
Yeah, how does this stack up? I mean, you mentioned Triumph of the Will. If I remember correctly, that movie also began with a plane ride and a motorcade. You know, so a lot of, you know, Hitler being transported and taken around different places. I don't know that I'd put Ratner in the Leni Riefenstahl category. I'd be surprised if decades from now, we're still poring over the Melania movie as a key way to understand this time. A movie like Triumph of the Will. Right, which was about, like one big rally in Nuremberg for Hitler in the 30s, you know, it's an intensely militaristic Nationalistic movie. Everything is about the leader projecting strength. Right? This is about a leader adjacent character projecting softness, reasonableness. You know, it's a very different, but yet kind of insidious in its own way sort of story precisely because of the contradictions and the hypocrisy that Maureen highlighted.
[33:34]
E
Well, Hitler hated makeup. He did not want women to wear makeup, so he would not have liked this movie.
[33:41]
B
There's your headline. Hitler would have hated this movie. Okay? I mean, everything in a movie like this is, you know, precooked and planned and, you know, created to create a certain effect. But, like, you know, she goes to St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York to mark the anniversary of her mother's death. You know, that's a human moment, and so very little in this movie is relatable. But lighting a candle for a loved one who has gone is a relatable moment.
[34:09]
E
Even in the scene where she goes to St. Patrick's it is, you know, a lovely moment. But then she comes out and she doesn't. There are a bunch of people out there, and she doesn't look at them or talk to them. I mean, it's as though they don't exist. The hoi polloi.
[34:27]
D
Yeah. Yeah. We spend so much of the film watching her design this big hat that she's gonna wear at the inauguration. And then there's this little shot where.
[34:36]
E
We see the part looks like the hammer.
[34:38]
D
It totally looks like the Hamburglar hat. But there's also this little shot where we see that one of the purposes of this hat is that it can completely hide her face from cameras, from people, whenever she needs to hide. And I left this film.
[34:51]
B
You can barely see her eyes.
[34:52]
D
Yeah, you can barely see her eyes. And I left this film feeling like here is someone who wants to remain the portrait, who wants to remain purely a surface that we never get to see behind.
[35:03]
B
The surface is all there is, right? This movie ends with an extended photo shoot, right, of Melania. People hovering around her, you know, getting her clothes just right. And then the last thing you see is her name flashing on the screen. And then that crackling sound of, like, the old fashioned flashbulb. And then, boom, the name is gone and it's over. Right? Like there is nothing else. There's nothing else.
[35:26]
E
It also ends with Brett Ratner being rehabilitated thanks to Melania and Jeff Bezos having more influence in the government thanks to Melania. Jeff Bezos, who's destroying the Washington Post.
[35:41]
D
It's true. That is one of the things that comes from this film. But I think that yes, this like this flashbulb ending. Here's the posed, completely pre planned portrait of her. And that is what you have just seen. That's what this film is. And that's the perfect note for us to end this on. Cause it really is just what this sums up to is a portrait, a very, very posed portrait. Carlos, Maureen, thank you so much for being here today.
[36:11]
E
Thank you, Nadja.
[36:12]
B
A real pleasure. Nadja, let's go see more movies.
[36:15]
E
Yeah, let's do it again.
[36:46]
C
If you like this show, follow it on YouTube, Spotify or Apple. The opinions is produced by Derek Arthur, Vishaka Darba and Gillian Weinberger. It's edited by Kari Pitkin and Allison Bruzick. Mixing by Efim Shapiro and Sonia Herrero. Original music by Isaac Jones, sonia Herrero, Pat McCusker, Carol Sabaro, Efim Shapiro and Amin Sahota. The fact check team is Kate Sinclair, Mary Marge Locker and Michelle Harris. The head of operations is Shannon Busta. Audience support by Christina Samulewski. The director of Opinion shows is Annie Rose Strasser.