Today, Explained - What Melania reveals

Episode Date: February 3, 2026

As a first lady, Melania Trump has kept a low profile. Until now. This episode was produced by Ariana Aspuru, edited by Amina Al-Sadi, fact-checked by Andrea Lopez-Cruzado, engineered by David Tatasciore and Patrick Boyd, and hosted by Astead Herndon. First Lady Melania Trump at the world premiere of Melania at The Trump Kennedy Center. Photo by Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images. Listen to Today, Explained ad-free by becoming a Vox Member: vox.com/members. New Vox members get $20 off their membership right now. Transcript at ⁠vox.com/today-explained-podcast.⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

When it comes to the new Melania movie, here are some important numbers to remember. 40 million. That's how much Amazon paid Melania Trump's production studio for the rights to the film. It's the highest price ever paid for a documentary. 35 million. That's about how much Amazon spent marketing the film. 28 million. How much went to the First Lady?

And 7 million. That's how much the Maloney's. movie made on opening weekend, which is honestly pretty good, and certainly more of the mini box office insiders projected. So how did this movie get made? Who's it for? And if this is finally Melania Trump's side of the story, what does she have to say? That's coming up on Today Explain from Vox.

Support for Today Explained comes from BetterHelp. It's February, which means you'll be seeing lots of flowers, heart-shaped boxes, and endless social media posts from people in seemingly perfect relationships. That's their journey, says BetterHelp. No matter where you are, whether you're married, single, dating, getting flowers or not, it is fine. BetterHelp says therapy can help you find your way, determine that it's fine, and see more clearly where you want to be.

You can sign up and get 10% off at BetterHelp.com slash explained. That's betterhelp.com slash explained. This week on the gray area, we're talking about what unites us. We've kind of created a society now where really the monoculture is just football and Taylor Swift. Those are really the only things that are like that now. And I'm not being sarcastic. It really is the case. So what does that say about American culture? Listen to the gray area with me, Sean Elling. New episodes available everywhere. This is Today Explained. Mary Jordan is an associate editor of the Washington Post. She wrote a book on Melania Trump called

the art of her deal, the untold story of Melania Trump. On Friday, she and producer Ariana Aspudu braved the cold and went to see a morning showing, a Melania The Movie. The press was barred from the premiere the night before, which itself was unusual. And so I went the next morning. And there were a couple dozen people in the theater. So it was mostly empty. But it was in New York, and that's not Trump country, clearly. Theatislav.

Bought our ticket. We're at the AMC, because there's quite a few theaters that are now screening it along with other movies. So we'll see if anybody shows. I mean, the focus of this, they keep saying, is 20 days

leading up to the inaugural. So I don't, I don't know. Will there be something interesting or relevant? We'll find out. But I guess I was more surprised that at the end, there was one person who was wildly clapping.

So no matter how many detractors, and boy, there are a lot of both Melania and certainly this movie, which has become like a parody in some ways. Melania, I just asked. They have SpongeBob buckets, but not? Not Melania buckets. There are still clearly people that like her and are going to like what they see. What ended up being my most favorite thing about this movie was the fact that it was so enlightening. She was an executive. She was a great model. She's gorgeous.

The theater were, it was actually a full theater. Everyone was kind of clapping and it was, it was a fun experience. Okay, so give me your review overall out of how many stars if you could sum it up. If you looked at it as I did as a lost opportunity for Melania to really come center stage and and gain more fans, it was kind of a zero. You know, it was advertised as this new reveal, pulling the curtain back on Melania. But actually, you never see her jeans. She's constantly perfectly dressed in designer gear, full makeup. I think she could have humanized herself.

And, you know, if that was the goal, which I think people want to know, what does she do? You know, she disappears for weeks at a time. What is she doing? And there's none of that. We see her jet setting in and out of, you know, vans getting into a private plane and jetting between her mansion in Florida, beside the ocean, with a spa,

and then coming back into Trump Tower, gold doors, mahogany, marble floors. And we know that we've seen that. My sense is that this has been kind of ravaged by critics, that you're not alone in your low star rating. Is that right? Well, people have said, you know, it's an infomercial. It's the worst movie we've ever seen. It's an abomination. It's an embarrassment.

All right, what we have with Melania is a part documentary, part propaganda film, part Devil Wears Prada sequel without the lovable lead. It totally makes no sense. If they wanted to make a documentary about her, they should have given us some more of her backstory, instead it's truly all about the hamburger look. And Rotten Tomatoes, you know, had a little. I gave it 11% out of a, in a scale of 100.

But, you know, we've seen movies that people go to see and like that critics, you know, pan. So here we go again. Here we go again. I want to get into the meet also. But, you know, how did this movie even come to be? Like, what gave us the origin story of the Melania Trump documentary? Apparently there was a conversation that included Jeff Bezos. who not only is one of the richest men in the world,

but he owns Amazon and he owns this studio. And there was talk, and, you know, Malania wanted to do a movie, and voila, a deal was made. And he paid an extraordinary amount for it. The fact that there's so much criticism that Amazon paid $40 million to acquire the rights to this film. And reports say it could be one of the most expensive documentaries to have ever been made.

At one point in the movie, Melania says, I intend to break norms as First Lady. Well, the very first thing was the money she took. That broke all norms because typically you wait to leave public office to do these commercial ventures. Why? Because of the appearance of graft, of corruption. I mean, sure. Rich guy, let's say like Jeff Bezos, who has government contracts, might like to curry favor with the president by throwing millions of dollars at his wife.

I mean, that's why you don't do it. On to the film in its substance, Melania Trump said that the movie was a never-before-seen look into her life. You mentioned this earlier, but I just want to ask it directly, like, did we, what did we learn about her life from this documentary? I did not know that she has an entire drawer full of designer sunglasses. There were things like that. Very, you know, at one point she's asked, who's your favorite recording artist? And she says, Michael Jackson, what's your favorite song?

And she said, Billy Jean. All right, now we know that. So there were like a few little things. That honestly is like maybe the chat GPT answer, if you put in, like, if you average all of humanity, what their favorite song would be. I mean, like, that's not that deep of it. No, there was no deep reflection. I mean, I think, again, what a missed opportunity. She has an

incredible story to tell, and she just doesn't tell it. I mean, actually, it made me think that maybe she's smarter than many people believe, because now she can get paid for another movie that offers to reveal, like, she can do a sequel, and, okay, this time I really will reveal, and she could make millions more. You know, a lot of celebrities have shied away from, you know, public vulnerability. They don't necessarily that maybe we're not surprised that this documentary doesn't lay out kind of deeper insights into her life. But, you know, a fashion also seems to be a core part of what this documentary was. Was it making some sort of argument that even I have heard some Trump supporters make in political spaces that, you know, Melania Trump is an undulya?

Trump is an underrated figure in, you know, when we think about legacy fashion worlds like Vogue or other things like that. I think clearly she thinks about fashion. She thinks about clothes to an extraordinary degree. Just my style. There is not really a message. That's what I like. And they will see it in the film. Okay.

And she talks about sharp colors and that black and white are her favorite colors. and there's an enormous percent of the movie. She's standing there, and she's like, take this in a pinch, you know, with people hemming. And, like, you clearly see that she has an eye. The idea from the details, how I designed it. Yes. And it will be all in the film. And every detail.

She talks that her mother, who was a seamstress and made patterns, gave her her fashion sense or attention to detail. That we know, we believe. It's just that when you're the first lady, there is this expectation that you do that for other people. So why, for instance, didn't she announce that, okay, $20 million made by this thing will go to help young people. Young people who want to go to fashion, you know, underprivileged people. There was one part where she talked about fostered children. I mean, I have no doubt that she cares about children. She is clearly a concerned mom, a devoted mother.

She talks about Barron. We see him on the screen. We don't see the other stepchildren, except glancingly in the back. But Barron is something that's talked about and front and center in her life. She loves children. I believe that. I know that talking to people. But what is she doing for them?

She talks about fostering children. But there's no details. And because in the past, the Trump's, you know, Donald Trump included, have said that they're doing this. Why do we never see details? And then when we actually dig into, the journalists dig into it. It turns out that, hey, this was advertised. This is a big philanthropical thing, but it didn't really work out. And the charity didn't get the money.

So if they're doing that, let's be front and center and talk about details. How many kids and what are they doing? Yeah. I've read that all of the heavy hitters are in this movie. You get cameos for Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, J.D. Vance. I mean, I guess I wanted to know, of course, the president plays a big role, should mention him. What do they say? Do we learn anything about their relationship to her from it?

What is their role in the doc? This is Melania, by Melania, named Melania. She does, you know, you don't hear from any of those people. You have a glance, even Donald Trump is pretty much silenced in this. She is the focus. And, you know, fair enough. The guy has stolen the limelight for decades since they've been married, right? This is her one moment.

But there is this one moment where she walks in when he's practicing his inaugural for January 2025, and he said he wants to be a peacemaker. And she goes, and unifier, and then cut. My proudest legacy will be that of a peacemaker and unifier. That's what I want to be, a peacemaker and a unifier. And he uses her word unifier. You know, obviously a nod to showing she has influence. So, but we only really see Donald when it supports Melania because she had creative control.

Yeah, yeah. So you're saying, like, we don't get like, You know, Trump doesn't talk about, you know, when they met or anything like that. It's just like... Oh, gosh, no. That would be too deep. That would like, no, no, no, no, no. This is, that's why people are saying it's an infomercial.

It's like a montage of wedding photos. It's, you know, it's not, at no point do we, you know, if somebody else were doing a book on a movie on Melania, they would ask, they would do that, of course. This is the danger of being in charge of telling your own story. Coming up, what do we know about Melania Trump? Support for today, Explain, comes from Quo. Business has evolved in the last 50 years, but the basic things still matter, says Quo. Things like you cannot miss a call from a customer.

And Quo, spelled QU, oh, by the way, says they can help you make sure you stay on top of things and keep missed calls to a minimum. Quo says that more than 90,000 business. businesses already rely on Quo to stay connected, professional, and consistently reachable. Your entire team can handle calls and texts from one shared number. No more missed messages or disconnected conversations. Everyone can see the full thread. Quo wants to be more than just a phone system. They want to be a smart system. Their AI can automatically log calls, generate

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watching videos of what's happening on the streets of Minneapolis and understanding what it is that we're seeing but also what's real and what isn't and what's AI and who is taking these videos and how we're supposed to understand the source feels harder than ever.

So this week on the Vergecast we're talking about what's happening in Minneapolis how information moves in an AI age and what it means to make sense of it all. All that plus what's the first. new with the new TikTok, why everything feels like it's falling apart on TikTok, and more on the Vergecast wherever you get podcasts. Hi, Mr. President.

Congratulations. Did you watch it? I did not. Yeah, I will see it on today. Explained. We're back with Mary Jordan. Mary, since you wrote a biography about Melania Trump in 2021, we wanted to ask you to fill in some of the gaps that were maybe left out of the movie.

Can you tell me about the process you went through in your book? What did you learn about the famously closed-off figure? I ran the Washington Post Bureau's in Tokyo, Mexico, London. I've worked in 40 countries. I've met a lot of interesting people, both in politics and in public life. I have never, including drug cartel leaders, met someone more secretive. She was the hardest target because she had so few friends, so few people who knew her. You know, I'd go to Slovenia and I'd get the class list in their elementary school, find them. And they would all say, well, she really talked that, but there were one person. And you find the one person, you get tiny bit. She was so quiet. And this was true for her whole life.

Whole life. She was tough to write about because, like, Donald Trump has so many people that you can call who have direct interaction, right? Yeah. She does not. A lot of Americans would love to hear the inspiring story of her mom who was a factory worker in a former communist country. She comes. She wants to make it big. She doesn't have that much money. She first lives in New York City and she has to share her one bedroom, you know, curtain down the middle. And you live in the city, so it's hard to have a pet in the city. Yes, that's true. It's New York, so it's a very busy place. And I, you know, I said to many people in New York who knew her after, when she was younger and she had just married Trump, they said that she just wanted to act like she was always like this, always rich.

What was your first impression of Donald Trump? But he was very charming and we had the great sparkle. Can we think about the usual role of First Lady? How does she depart from that other than the obvious ways? Like how, you know, even though going back to her first term, how was she been different in that role? Well, there was this expectation that because the public elected you when you're in the White House that the public pays for and you have Secret Service and you have Air Force One, all that on the government time, that you tell people where you are. Like, there's a public agenda. What are you doing today? She said, well, I don't have to do that. I'm not elected. I'm just the spouse. So she would hide. Like, nobody knew where she was.

Why wasn't Melania Trump at the White House with President-elect Donald Trump? Where on earth is Melania? So she has redefined the role, and she says, and she told me, you know, I'm not the elected one, and she can do whatever she wants. And so if she doesn't feel like it, she doesn't go. And, you know, it kind of works because people, oh, my God, Malani hasn't been seen in two weeks. She's coming out, and so she does get more people to pay attention when she does speak. Again, we have this tradition that the First Lady helps others, uses the powerful office,

the amazing reach of the microphone and platform of the First Lady. I mean, it's so powerful. Laura Bush did it. Created the National Book Festival. Had a whole campaign. Let's read, literacy. No matter what our political views might be or what our differences might be of any kind, We all love books, and we all love reading.

Michelle Obama tackled the obesity campaign to achieve a single, but very ambitious goal. And that's to solve the problem of childhood obesity in a generation. So, like, let's, she could do something, even if it was in fashion. Hey, wouldn't that be great? You know, all, hey, all these young people who want to get in fashion, I can help you. But the absence does, like, lead to some questions. I mean, you've got to have implied this, but do we,

know where she's been? Like, you know, my quantum question for the last year is actually just, you know, what has she been up to? Well, she's wherever Barron is, pretty much. And Barron now likes to be in the White House. I like my suitcase. Now he's 19. And so she's now, in this term, more in the White House than she has in the past, mainly because Barron wants to be there. But she loves to go to New York and Trump Tower. And she loves to go to Marilago. She calls it Marilago. in Florida, her refuge in the movie. She spends a lot of time not with her husband.

And that's, I think, the big difference. Like, the Bidens, you'd see them in Delaware riding bikes. You'd see the Obama's going to dinner. These little candid moments where it actually looked like they liked each other, you know, the bushes, holding hat. Like, you don't see that with the Trumps.

When he's leaning into kisser under her hat, it looks so awkward you'd want to cringe. You know, the idea of happy marriage political couples has seemed necessary in the White House. But I guess there is the question that is implied in all of this is that should it be, you know? When you mention that Melania Trump says, I'm not the elected one, a part of me wants to give that argument some credence. I mean, is there some power in her saying, stepping away from that public role and kind of saying, you know what, I don't have to be that for Americans. I don't have to be America's wife. She's absolutely right.

She flat out said, I don't get paid. I don't have to do this. Of course, that's it. It's just that, you know, it's disappointing to some people that she is given this amazing platform. She is the first, first lady in American history who grew up not speaking English as their first language, that as an immigrant, maybe she could use this privilege to help others.

The irony is her husband's brutal crackdown, you know, his hard line on immigration makes it kind of more, you know, disappointing to many people. And I've heard that over and over when I was talking to people. I'm against the violence. So if, please, if we protest, protest in peace. And we need to unify in these times. But you were talking about power. And I think this is really important, is that Malani has way more power. than people realize. She has all the secrets on Donald Trump. If she walked out on him right now and she's like, bye-bye, Donald, you know,

his fan base would hate it. Magin would hate it. You know, political spouse, as you mentioned, can be an important role. We know that some have played important roles in politics in the past. I think even Jill Biden was an important figure in former President Biden's re-election campaign.

Do we know outside of what she projected in the movie, is she exerting any influence on him politically? Is there any way that, you know, as you even mentioned, stuff like the immigration crackdown, that someone like Melania Trump might become a bigger figure going forward? I definitely think she has influence. And when she told me and she's told others that I give him my opinion, He doesn't always take it. Sometimes he does. Sometimes he doesn't. Does she have impact with you?

Well, the fact is I have George and Carolyn, but I also have George and Carolyn, and I have my little Melania. I don't agree always what he posts, but his action is his action, and I tell him that. But I know, for instance, that he relies on her

because he trusts her. Her last name is Trump and her son's last name is Trump. She wants Trump to secure. succeed. And the longer Donald has been in the White House, the circle of people he trusts is shrunken. She's been called into meetings when he wants to, hey, should I have this person for this job or this person? And she tells him. So he does rely on her because he trusts her. She has never once rang up some journalists and said, I got a story for you about Donald Trump and women or

Donald Trump and Epstein or, you know, I mean, she could do that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. She has definitely stuck by him, and I think it's been important, as you mentioned. I mean, I don't want to move on from the ethics of here a little too fast, though. Like, what do we know about what comes next for Melania Trump? She hasn't said, but it's very noticeable how she appears happier and more confident now in public. You know, but some of that is just more experience in the public eye. So I have no doubt that she's going to continue her business deal. She's done a best-selling book. She's now done this movie that's made her millions.

She has all kinds of jewelry and things that you can buy on MelaniaTrump.com. She says in the movie that she wants to talk to other leaders around the world and have a coalition to help children. I think she can pivot very quickly. She is actually quite young. She's only 55. We're going to see Melania for a long, long time. If she chooses to, you know, stay out there and do things. And even though people, and she says, and everyone says, oh, she's so private,

she actually likes when she's ready and when she's perfectly outfitted, likes to go into the public. So I don't think she's going to completely disappear when they leave the White House. Mary Jordan is a reporter and associate editor at the Washington Post. She's the author of the book, The Art of Her Deal, the untold story of Melania Trump. Today's show was produced by Ariana Aspudu and edited by Amina Alsadi, fact check by Andrea Lopez-Cruzado, and engineered by David Tadishore and Patrick Boyd. I'm Asted Herndon, and this is today explained. You know.