Melania Trump vs the world

0:04Over the weekend, the self-titled Melania documentary hit cinemas worldwide, coinciding with one of the most turbulent periods of Donald Trump's presidency. So who is Melania Trump telling us she is? And is her documentary worth a watch? Hi, and welcome back to The Standard Podcast. I'm Tamara Kormonik. If you're new here, hit follow and give us a rating. For all the latest news, head to standard.co.uk. Coming up, Melania Trump versus the world. safe to say the u.s is in political turmoil ice operations are dominating the national conversation donald trump is getting closer to achieving access to venezuela's oil reserves shockwaves are still being felt by the global diplomatic community after he threatened greenland sovereignty and he's in another standoff with iran over their nuclear activity enter melania trump's documentary about the 20 days leading up to her husband's inauguration for the second term of his presidency last year.

1:06Here we go again. Hi, Mr. President. Congratulations. Did you watch it? I did not. Yeah, I will see it on the news. Everyone wants to know. So here it is. For today's episode, I'm joined by Standard columnist Melanie McDonough, who is fresh out of a matinee cinema screening of Melania. Hi Melanie, thanks so much for joining me on The Standard Podcast. Hello Tamara, lovely to be here. So you've just seen this documentary. If you could describe the documentary in three words, what would those words be? Heels, self-control and beauty. Well, I mean, Donald Trump famously loves beautiful women, so we can't be too surprised.

1:58Yes, he does talk about my beautiful wife, Melania, quite a lot during the course of the film. He comes across oddly because he's a sort of walk-on character. And he does occasionally come across as quite hubris and rather having a joke on himself. And it's an interesting sort of take on Trump as being the adjunct to his wife's story. So watching the documentary, how did you feel that Melania was wanting you to see her? I think she wants us to see her as somebody who does have a programme of her own. So the final credits itemise the achievements that she wants to put before us. And there's her work for foster children.

2:45There's her letter to President Putin and subsequent work trying to obtain the rescue of kidnapped Ukrainian children in Russia during the course of the conflict. There's the release of the husband of another hostage whom she met during the course of the documentary and it was a very emotional scene. and then there's her contribution to getting legislation passed in terms of banning sexually explicit images without consent. So there are some serious kind of elements to her agenda and I think she wants us to take those on board and we see those in her interviews with other spouses. So she's talking on Zoom to Brigitte Macron and they're talking about the amount of screen time that children have, which is something terrifying in the United States.

3:36And Brigitte is kind of very much on the side and is right behind her. And we've got her encounter with Queen Renée of Jordan in her office in person, and they're comparing notes on how to help foster children. So she is trying to convey substance, and I think she does convey substance. We see somebody who's got human warmth. We see somebody who takes her business of wearing clothes seriously and making clothes seriously. And then there's her family life. We see a bit of her with her son Baron. He's that very peculiar combination of her and Trump, which it really is a union of complete opposites.

4:15So you mentioned Brigitte Macron and Queen Rania. Do you get the sense that Melania is trying to model herself on any other figures, maybe past or current figures, especially as it's very difficult to forget the alleged lifting of Michelle Obama's speech that happened a few years ago. So I'm wondering if she's trying to emulate somebody. Well, it's interesting that the shots at the end of the documentary, which weren't by chance, were of three former first ladies. One was Eleanor Roosevelt, who was an exceptionally substantial woman, highly intelligent and a very real influence on her husband.

4:58And then I think it's Manny Eisenhower. And then there's Jacqueline Kennedy, the wife of John F. Kennedy. And she's famously stylish and also a very intelligent woman in her own right. And somebody who actually set her stamp on the White House. So I wonder whether she's trying to get us to see her as an influence on the White House, not in terms of the substantives like threatening to invade Greenland, but more in terms of how the presidency is perceived. So she very deliberately gives us a shot of her sitting in on Trump's preparation for his inauguration speech, where he says that his most valuable legacy will be that of Peacemaker.

5:42And she pipes up from the sidelines. And Unifar, which may go back to her Yugoslav days which was all about brotherhood and unity but that little interjection gets put into his inauguration speech and he looks back at her to say well I did it and so one gets the impression that she wants to be seen as an influence in the White House and she wants us to know that she does have a bearing on her husband's actions though she doesn't pretend that it's in terms of detailed policies so much as in the philanthropic side of things and in the tone of the presidency. I mean, it's not her fault that she's had various initiatives recently which rather detract from all that.

6:30So I think Melania has a bit of a hill to climb when it comes to public perception. This is something you've also recognised. I mean, before this film was even released, there were over a thousand one star ratings on the letterbox. Why do you think she made the very ballsy decision to do a full release in cinemas? Do you think it sort of added to the experience because she specifically chose Amazon MGM for the release because of that cinematic component. Why do you think she specifically wanted people to see this in a cinema and run the risk of terrible reviews and bad ticket sales?

7:19Well, first off, I think that there are some people who hate Trump so much that they are going to hate this film come what may. They might as well not go and see it. They might as well just sit at home, write their zero-star review and post that. I mean, it's just a waste of two hours for them to go to the cinema, frankly. And I think it was quite gutsy because you didn't get the press screenings, you didn't get the previews that you get with every other film and every other documentary. So we had to take it on its own terms in the cinema and present it as a film. So you're sitting there with your popcorn like everybody else and you're seeing it at the same time as the rest of the viewing public.

7:58So that's actually quite salutary because it puts the professional commentators in their place. And it also means that we're obliged to see it in the cinema context, which makes, I think, the visual aspect of the film more striking. What was the screening like that you went to? It was hilarious. There were six of us there, of whom three of us were journalists. So we journalists comprised 50 % of the entire audience. I have to say it was at 1.40 in a view cinema in Shepherd's Bush. so it wasn't perhaps a normal screening. I mean, I can't see it being any kind of box-offered success. I can't even see it washing its face but it'll do better than Jacinda Dern.

8:43I mean, there are any number of well-meaning documentaries by well-meaning people. Not hard to beat. Not hard to beat, I have to say. Would you recommend for people to see it? Do you know, is it worth watching in your view? Simply, it was interesting in what it set out to do and what it was. It gave you an insight into The Wife of the Most Powerful Man on Earth, which I think is fascinating. I wouldn't go and see it as entertainment. If I'd be left to my own devices, I wouldn't pay to see it. But if you're a political nerd, if you're interested in American politics, and if you're interested in that whole world, then I think it is absolutely fascinating.

9:22I think it does present a different aspect of the woman than we've seen before, and to a certain extent, a different aspect of the president. So for political nerds everywhere, I would say go and see it. And simply as something to talk about. I mean, one of the inadvertently humorous bits of it was during the actual inauguration when he was taking his oath and all the rest of it. And he was preceded by Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. And Kamala Harris's expression would have carded the cream. I mean, she actually looked volumes. Absolute poison. And so there were little touches like that which made the thing worthwhile.

9:59And it was quite interesting to see her in Jill Biden. I think she's maybe trying to channel Princess Diana or indeed Jackie Kennedy. She's not in their league, but in terms of contemporary American politics, which isn't saying very much, she is by some distance the most poised and deliberate person in that environment. We'll take a quick break. Coming up, Melanie and I discuss Melania's choice to step into the spotlight this presidential term and her motive behind building her own brand.

10:37Welcome back. Let's head straight back to my chat with Melanie. Considering the political climate in the US at the moment, do you think this is the right time to release the film? Do you think it's going to strike the right note for enough Americans? Should they have delayed the release? Well, I don't think they could. I think once you set this juggernaut in motion, it's very difficult actually to roll back on it. And you just don't know what's going to be happening next in the great Trumpian scheme of things. I mean, if you were trying to plan this. That's true. It could get worse. If you were trying to plan this, you wouldn't be planning it for a time after.

11:13There'd been this terrible standoff with Denmark about whether he was going to be invading Greenland. I mean, it's not the idea. And now Iran. And that bit about being a unifier doesn't terribly come across well, given the situation in Minneapolis. So it's not been great timing, but you can't blame her. I think the blame lies entirely with the husband. So I want to move on to the different side of Melania we're seeing in the second term versus the first term. notably the first time we don't really see much of her. She didn't move into the White House and she was pretty absent last summer during Trump's campaign trail.

12:04You know, people were writing articles asking where she was, where is Melania. So having seen the documentary, how would you compare second term Melania with first term Melania? Well, I think this is one reason why she's produced the documentary, to give a different account of herself from that very reserved and aloof sort of sphinx-like figure that she appeared to be in the first term. And she does say repeatedly how proud she is to be First Lady as a way of doing service for her adopted country. And that element that she's from abroad, but she's very much trying to give the impression to Americans, I think, that she is one of them, that she is kind of committed to the national project.

12:55Talking about being seen how you want to be seen, a celebrity documentary is nothing new. A lot of people in the public eye have made documentaries. The Beckham documentary did very well. These are, of course, public figures who are in entertainment or sports space, and that's kind of blended. Do you think it's appropriate for a politician to be putting out a kind of self-aggrandising documentary? No, I don't really. And I think that all these documentaries are obviously vanity projects. But in her case, she did it, I think, because her PR was just so negative in so many important respects that it was as a corrective to that.

13:42and I have to say that I can only speculate that a share of 40 million dollars must be welcome even to somebody who's married to a very wealthy man but she did I think want to put her side of the story and it would have been better I think if she'd entrusted that to an independent documentary maker for him to follow her around and then make what he or she would of the Melania project, but she wasn't taking any chances. She wanted to have the thing in her own hands so that she could be sure that she got across what she wanted to get across. And what do you think this documentary sets Melania up for next?

14:22What do you think her ambitions are? Well, I think it sets her up for more serious projects. I mean, the ones that she's embarked on at the moment are quite interesting and perfectly useful, I mean, by comparison with other first ladies, and then of foreign policy initiatives. She wrote that letter to Putin to try and secure those Ukrainian children's release after being kidnapped and taken to Russia. And I'm sure that President Putin has rather a crush on her. And this may be one reason why he responded so positively. So it may be that when... Who knows, but it may be that she can deploy her her poison her beauty to good effect on the diplomatic front.

15:07Speaking as one first lady to others, she and Brigitte got on, she and Queen Mania got on, so it may be possible for her to do more of the same. To wrap up, I want to chat about something that she said last year that you've actually picked up on in some of your articles about her. So in an interview with Fox and Friends, she said, I have my own thoughts, I have my own yes and no, I don't always agree with what my husband is saying or doing and that is okay. In your article you went on to say that if the film conveys that, job done. So how does the film measure up? On how terms, that is to say to project yourself as a woman in her own right, the documentary succeeds.

15:56Whether it succeeds as entertainment is quite another matter. But this is what she set out to do, to present herself on her own terms to the public. And I think that she's done that. She's left us with an impression of somebody who's not an idiot, who's not just a clothes horse, who is beautiful, but who is also interested in the world around her and as a loving daughter. So we're left with a better and more rounded image of Melania than we had at the outset. Thank you so much, Melanie. Well, thank you, Tamara, for having me. And that's The Standard. For all the latest news, head to standard.co.uk.

16:34If you'd like to get in touch, email us at podcasts at standard.co.uk. We'll be back here tomorrow morning. See you then.