Stephen Miller’s podcaster wife has launched a new effort to defend Melania Trump’s documentary at the expense of hundreds of journalists losing their jobs.
The First Lady’s $75 million documentary, Melania premiered globally on Jan. 30 to scathing reviews, including a Daily Beast review that dismissed it as an “abomination.” Katie Miller is trying to combat the overwhelming critical consensus by attacking the Washington Post, which laid off 30 percent of its employees on Tuesday morning.
“The American people don’t want to read biased trash. Melania is doing well and blowing past expectations because the Elites still don’t understand the American people. The Washington Post is still trying to figure out how President Trump won,” she wrote on X.
Miller, the wife of Trump’s senior white house advisor, was responding to a post by founding partner and senior correspondent at Puck, Dylan Byers, who had shared a New York Times story about job cuts at The Washington Post affecting up to 300 people.
The piece noted, “The cuts, announced in a video call with employees, are a sign that Jeff Bezos, who became one of the world’s richest people by selling things on the internet, has not yet figured out how to build and maintain a profitable publication on the internet.”
Opens in new window“Have to wonder if this, from the profitable New York Times, stings Bezos just a pinch,” Byers wrote.
Roughly 300 staff members reportedly lost their jobs in the cuts, including many overseas employees and potentially the entire sports desk, representing some of the deepest cuts the paper has ever faced.
The Post did not have kind words for Melania, which chronicles her in the 20 days before President Donald Trump’s second inauguration last January. In its review, the Post wrote that the film “promises to take us behind the scenes” of Melania Trump’s life but ultimately offers little substance beyond polished visuals.
It argued the documentary fails to provide genuine insight into its subject, instead focusing on the First Lady’s image and aesthetic decisions without revealing meaningful personal depth.
The review added that the film “ends just as a potentially revealing moment arrives,” reinforcing skepticism that Melania’s carefully managed public persona represents “all there is.”
The Post’s negative review of the film joined scores of others. Rotten Tomatoes, a film review site that compiles critics’ reviews, currently gives Melania a 5 percent rating.
“Of course, everyone knew the film, directed for an obscene amount of money by notorious sex pest Brett Ratner, was going to be bad. It’s the specific kind of bad I was on a fact-finding mission for,” wrote Kevin Fallon, editor-at-large at the Daily Beast’s Obsessed. “Melania is a level of insipid propaganda that almost resists review; it’s so expected and utterly pointless.”
Despite the poor reviews, the film opened stronger than anticipated, pulling in an estimated $7 million in ticket sales, according to studio figures. One industry expert claims that the volume of tickets sold for Melania may have been inflated by people who bulk bought tickets for showings of the movie.
The theorized bulk buying might have boosted the numbers, but the opening-weekend earnings are still far below the $40 million Amazon spent on the rights to Melania, and the historic $35 million spent on marketing it.
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