Breaking News from Pod Save America - MELANIA Documentary Exposes Trump Family Grift

Episode Date: December 18, 2025

Jon Favreau and Tommy Vietor react to the Melania Trump documentary trailer and break down why it looks so bad. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

John, investigative journalism is back. It's a Christmas miracle. I'm talking, of course, about this new trailer for a hard-hitting documentary on Melania Trump that is coming to theaters next month. Let's watch. What is that hat? Where in the world is Carmen San Diego?

There she is. This beautiful imagery. I do like that lion thing. You can come in. I promise. I'm glad to say we'll be that of peace maker. Peace maker and just fire. Did she like Photoshop herself into that?

She spins. It's a folder. Together with like-minded leaders, we have a voice. Who is she talking to there? I don't know. Is it safe? Who is safe? Everyone wants to know.

So here it is. Know what? Hi, Mr. President. Congratulations. Did you watch it? I did not. Yeah, I will see it on the news. That's funny.

I can honestly relate to Trump with his wife not watching his speech. That's my wife never listened to our podcast. Honestly charming. But like the trailer, Melania walks places. She sits quietly in meetings and in cars. She calls her husband Mr. President, apparently. That was the craziest fucking part of this whole thing. Call your husband by his title?

Like, I could see an argument for it if it's like if she's in a meeting and there's a, even then it's weird. Yeah, it's one on one on the phone. And what was that conversation? Can you imagine Michelle Obama calling Barack. Obama, Mr. President. Like, maybe one time as a bit. She would rather die. So that was a trailer for a new documentary called Melania, which follows the first lady

in the 20 days before the 2025 inauguration. Because who hasn't wondered. A time period where everyone was like, what's going on with Melania? Everyone wonders, what is the almost three weeks before the inauguration really like for the first lady? But here's the best part, John. Amazon paid $40 million for the, the rights.

The going rate for documentaries. $40 million. Apparently there's also going to be some sort of docuseries quote about showing her life traveling between New York, Washington, D.C. and Palm Beach, sounds riveting. In case you want some extra material, extra content, they get another three-episode arc. She's on a plane. She's on a train.

John, I did a little research to try to give our listeners a sense of what a documentary normally costs. So what do you think the budget was for O.J. Made in America, which remember was a five-part, eight-hour mini-series that won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. $5 million. You nailed that. Really? Oh, my gosh.

Wow. In Hollywood. I've been in Hollywood. This is right. You would be gone. So, um, that is very much at, like, the high end of the range. So according to my friend, Mr. GPT, you know, sir, sir, president, GPT. A premium indie documentary could cost between like 600 grand and 1.5 million and then more high-profile

complicated, lots of travel, lots of heavy archival that you have to pay for could cost more in the 1.5 million to 3 million range. 40 million for this boring shit, it's just a bribe. That's the only way to explain that margin. Was this a Bezos bribe? Yes, Amazon. I was trying to remember who did the bribe. Yeah. And remember, this happened sort of soon after the Washington Post, which is also owned by Jeff Bezos, where they spiked their 2024 presidential endorsement and endorsed no one.

Right. Yeah, they don't want to take sides except if they want to pay Melania for. million dollars. And give her final cut. I think she has, she doesn't file cut. She has final cut in this. I'm sure that it'll be... So which means it's everything you see, for those who don't know final cut, for those who don't know, the lingo and the biz. But everything you see in this, she approved. Or it didn't approve. Johnny Weinstein over here. Was that a bad comparison? Well, just kidding. We should talk about it. We're going to talk about it. Yeah. Speaking of which, okay, so the director of this film is a guy named Brett Ratner. Ratner's best known for the rush hour film series, which, you know, the first one was pretty good. more on that in the second. He was going to say.

He also did like a Silence of the Lamb's prequel called Red Dragon. He did an X-Men movie. He did a movie with Nick Cage. Did another one like Pierce Brosnan and Salma Hayek. So he was like a big name in the industry. But then in 2017, he was accused of rape. And then when that story came out, six more women accused him of sexual assault and sexual harassment,

which led Warner Brothers to sever ties with him. Now Ratner is clearly using this Melania project as a vehicle to get back into the entertainment industry. And I guess like Amazon is just, cool with being a part of that, you know? And, yeah, and Melania Trump. But we know she's cool with trying to help burnish the reputations of serial abusers. Yeah. Since she's married to one.

Grab them by the, never mind. But yet, the Ratner allegations, too. There's a rape allegation. Really bad. Also, women came out, like Olivia Munn, Natasha Hensridge, were two actors who came out and said that he sexually harassed them. There's a story of him outing. Elliot Page.

Elliot Page. Yes. which was confirmed by multiple people who were there. Like, it's not, this is not like someone said, this is a pretty, a serious set of multiple allegations from multiple people who put their name on them. Yeah, the really predatory stuff. And then, right, on top of that,

I mean, Trump apparently lobbied Paramount to Greenlight Rush Hour 4, which is a script that had been kind of, I guess, circulating in Hollywood for years, but it didn't get the green light until Trump called Larry Ellison. I was just trying to imagine, imagine Barack Obama calling some suit over at Warner Brothers demanding like Harold and Kumar for he's like you got to take care of my guy Cal Penn.

I'm just trying to, I just think if you want to do this, I think it's a good idea. Look, I'd love to watch it. I mean, what do you think it will cost a greenlight rush hour for? Like 50 million, 80 million, 100 million? It's a lot of money. I mean, what does it cost to get his blessing to when the next offer they make to buy up Warner Brothers discovery. Yeah, so I'd almost forgotten about this documentary bribe because we had like Trump telling the FCC to fire, you know, Jimmy Kimmel. You had Trump, you know, trying to pick the winner of

the Netflix versus Paramount fight over Warner Brothers Discovery. But it's just, it's so egregious. It's so egregious. And I had, I talked to a few people who were in the business who were like, you know, it was, it was being shopped around to see if, yes, to see if other people beside before they got to Brett Ratner. Let's just say they tried some others and a lot of, and then they got turned down all over town until they finally landed on Brett Ratner, which is probably why an accused, someone who's been accused multiple times of sexual assault ended up is the only one who would take it.

Yeah, so there's just so many ethical problems with this sale and this process. It's hard to know where to begin. Like the price tag is a joke. Ratner's conduct is indefensible. I mean, he ended up fleeing the country. Yeah. He no longer lives in the United States. And then there is now the fact that Ratner clearly owes the second act of his career to the Trump family.

And yet Amazon, I guess, is willing to pretend that he could make an impartial documentary about Melania? Just also the idea that like, you know, Amazon's like, well, I don't know. Wondry, we're going to have to wind that down. But like, hey, the $40 million will pay for the Melania doc, no problem. Yeah, yeah. They shut down their entire podcast studio. sure they're going to get their investment back. I just, I didn't really realize until today that it's,

it's about the first, the 20 days before the inauguration. What a bizarre random period of time. They're not even in the White House. Also the line in there where she was like, so you all want to know. It's like, what do we? I literally, there's nothing I want to know. I'm indifferent to you. Nothing I want to know.

I want to know why you dress like spy versus spy. I want to know why you are still with this man. after all these years and is it a choice that you've made because you are attracted to him and love him very deeply and think he's just the most exciting person you could ever imagine or there are other reasons

and I don't think we're going to get an honest answer to that in this so therefore there is nothing that I want to know. I want to know which of your stepkids you find the most annoying guessing it's Don Jr. By the way, do you see he announced his engagement? Congratulations to Don Jr. I think Laura Lumer might have been announced her engagement.

I think Donald Trump announced both of their engagements. Don Jr. and Laura Lumer, it's a very, it's a happy season for MAGA. That's very weird. That's very weird. Well, do you have your tickets yet for the Melania Dock? You know, I said we had it in the office lag. I think we should all take an office field trip. We should just go together.

We should just pop on over to the Grove and let's line up because I'm, you know, it's going to be a tough, tough ticket to get. Yeah, it's our own version of an escape room. Yeah. Who could get out first? Okay, well, we'll let you guys know how the doc is thank you for watching this by the way please subscribe to Potta of America here on YouTube we will not be paying Amazon $40 million for this or anything else we'll not be paying the Trump family they certainly won't be

paying us they won't be paying us yet which is why we're trying to build our own progressive media company and it's not easy to do so please subscribe to Pod Save America here on YouTube