Trump's Trials - Big budget Melania Trump documentary premieres with splashy rollout

Episode Date: January 29, 2026

A big-budget movie about first lady Melania Trump premieres today with a splashy event at the newly renamed Trump Kennedy Center in Washington, DC. NPR's Tamara Keith reports. Support NPR and hear every episode of Trump's Terms sponsor-free with NPR+. Sign up at plus.npr.org.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

You're listening to Trump's Terms from NPR. I'm Scott Desh. We're going to be doing all sorts of things. Nobody ever thought was even possible. It's going to be a very aggressive first 100 days of the new Congress. Unpredictable, transformative next four years. The United States is going to take off like a rocket ship. Every episode of Trump's terms, we bring you NPR's latest coverage of the 47th president.

With a focus on actions and policies he is pursuing on his own terms and in the process, taking the presidency into uncharted territory. Today's story starts right after this. On NPR's Wildcard podcast, Oprah, on the Art of Being Alone. Are you good at being alone? Oh, my God. I'm a master at it. Tell me more. I cherish it.

I revel in it. I can't wait to be alone. Watch or listen to that wildcard conversation on the NPR app or on YouTube at NPR Wildcard. This is NPR News. I'm Lela Falded. If you've been watching TV, you've probably seen the ads for Melania, a movie about First Lady Melania Trump that premieres today. NPR Senior White House correspondent Tamara Keith reports.

The film follows Mrs. Trump in January 2025 as she prepares to re-enter the White House. Here we go again. The trailer features dramatic music, glamorous visuals, and an intriguing moment of spous interaction. Hi, Mr. President. Congratulations. Did you watch it? I did not. Yeah, I will see it on the news. In an interview earlier this week on Fox and Friends, she was asked about the decision to include that scene.

I want to show the people that they will see the communications and private communications between me and my husband. On the surface, this would seem to be a documentary, but Mrs. Trump is also an executive producer. And this is how she described it, on Fox. In these situations, you could only have a one take. So whatever, we got it, we got it. It was directed by Brett Ratner, known for the rush hour action films and for being ostracized in 2017 after accusations of sexual misconduct. He denies wrongdoing. Jason Spingarnkoff is a professor of journalism at UC Berkeley and a former Netflix executive who has worked on hundreds of documentaries. Once the subject of the film is a producer or has substantial editorial input or even editorial control,

then I really think we're in the realm of public relations, or in this case, it seems to be a work of myth-making. The First Lady has a very carefully cultivated and controlled image. Kate Bennett wrote a book about Melania Trump and covered her for years at CNN. I don't think the public will ever really know the deep inner thoughts and behind this scenes, moments of Melania Trump by design. She is a private person in her DNA. And Bennett says she is also at her core, a Trump, a marketer who rarely appeared during the campaign without getting a financial cut. There's something really interesting to the fact that we're seeing her the most during this presidency on a screen, in a theater. And that's unlike anything we've seen in traditional politics.

Amazon acquired the film for $40 million and is spending another $35 million on marketing, according to a source with direct knowledge who requested anonymity because they are not authorized to speak to the media. Spingarnkoff says documentaries normally don't fetch that kind of money. It's just hard to imagine why this number is justified for Melania. Questions about how much the First Lady is personally making from the film, and whether its outsized budget could have been an effort to curry favor with the president were not answered by the White House. Tamara Keith, NPR News. We will note that Amazon is among NPR's recent financial supporters and pays to distribute some NPR content.

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