Not Too Swift, Not Too Sure
The release of Melania’s second official portrait as First Lady alerted us to something startling: the woman is a power broker. We hadn’t known. We missed all the cues. Her gaffs caught our attention: plagiarized “Be Best” booklets, pinched speeches, crippled English, haute couture safaris, I-don’t-care jackets, murderous headgear. Any sense of her ascending power slipped passed us, though. And, unforgivably, we mistook her charismatic allure for pouting. But Melania was on the march. She was going to get somewhere, and we were going to know it.
It took her a while to get her bearings. As first lady the first time around, her goofs were indeed conspicuous. Right off the bat, she sued the Daily Mail for saying she had worked as an escort in the 1990s. While no doubt motivated by the highest moral umbrage, Melania’s original suit complained that the tabloid’s claim hindered her “unique, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity . . . to launch a broad-based commercial brand in multiple product categories, each of which could have garnered multi-million dollar business relationships for a multi-year term during which [she] is one of the most photographed women in the world.”
After someone discreetly explained to her that being First Lady was not a for-profit position and that making millions should not be top of mind, the complaint was — as discreetly — revised to remove mention of all that money. Melania handily won the suit, the Daily Mail retracted its story and apologized, and Melania got her first big payout: $3 million. It just didn’t feel like a win compared to her initial demand, Trump style, of $150 million.
The lawsuit did not deter her from immediately exploiting her position to promote her wares. From her Web site, she peddled a Love & Gratitude necklace for $245, offering one-of-a-kind customization, that is to say, necklaces could be engraved on request; a gold-plated Vote Freedom pendent for $600; and “Christmas ornament.”1 She also sold digital collectibles of herself. In buying one of those, you would possess “a piece of history.” You can’t now; they’re all sold out. But those lucky enough to have secured one find their piece of history in “a digital file that contains a one-of-a-kind code and is permanently recorded on a blockchain. This ensures it cannot be altered, guaranteeing authenticity.” Thus is authentic history, the authentic history of Melania Trump, that is, preserved forever.
But all that was the first time around. Small potatoes and, looking back on it now, somewhat embarrassing.
While a meme coin has scant utility, $MELANIA gave a grateful nation the opportunity to express its enthusiasm for the first lady by buying some.
As her husband’s venality swelled, then suppurated, during his second administration, Melania’s business started looking up. Of course, she was on her toes this time. Just days before his second inauguration, Trump launched his $TRUMP meme coin. Not to be left behind, Melania launched her own meme coin, $MELANIA, mere hours before his inauguration. Both launches were understandably a little rushed to elude any constitutionality fuss about sitting presidents — or their wives — enriching themselves.
While a meme coin has scant utility, $MELANIA gave a grateful nation the opportunity to express its enthusiasm for the first lady by buying some. And they did. According to Dexscreener, within hours of its launch Melania’s meme coin was trading at $8.04, giving the token a market cap of over $8 billion, which was very exciting for the first lady, until she was told what market cap was, that is to say, that the $8 billion was not hers.2 Curses. Still, she raked in millions on the maneuver,3 perhaps even on the lucrative trading fees, provided hubby had told her anything about that end of the business. He may not have.
High on success, Melania had her memoir written. She haughtily accepted $40 million from Jeff Bezos to produce a documentary of herself that, fittingly, left $27 million for her. That was a tidy windfall. But it was nothing, really, compared to the serious money her husband was scarfing up as president this time around, payoffs from entire countries! That bugged her. She had gotten a more lucrative divorce deal out of him in 2015-2016, refusing to move to D.C. until he signed, which he apparently did because, after quite some time, she made the move. But that kid stuff made her wince now.
Determined to make a mark and a fortune of her own, Melania pushed her fashion card hard. However, despite an unlimited budget and her own personal stylist, she only managed, time after time, to come across looking like a goon, dumpy, or stupid. It started out very badly her first time around when, in extremely poor taste, she decked herself out in designer safari duds and a colonial pith helmet to be photographed as she had herself ferried around Africa solo. But this time around, her hats, which dwarfed those of Queen Camilla, were literally repulsive. On greeting her, heads of state whipped back to avoid collision with her lethal brims. Some hats were so wide that people couldn’t tell if she was under it without stooping to see, which seemed indecorous, so no one did. One head covering was so absurdly flat — the notorious second inauguration hat — as to conjure a figure in Alice in Wonderland Lewis Carroll left out.
Melania wanted billions like her husband, and she wanted clout like her husband. She wanted to tell people what to do and hear them groan as the world watched them bend to do it.
At some point during her ride in the splendid Trump sidecar, Melania acquired a taste for power. Her husband had it. He quite publicly bossed and buffeted, cuffed and extorted, bruised and abused, appropriated an entire country’s reputation and financial power to intimidate heads of state for his own gain while Congress and the dumbfounded public alike clucked passively in disapproval. He had James Comey scrambling once again to raise money for another potentially ruinous lawsuit just by telling his DoJ to get on it. He had miraculously managed to keep the Epstein scandal at arm’s length by telling his people they better keep it at arm’s length. He sued media companies and legal firms frequently; meddled in top university curriculum and policy; got rid of slews of attorneys general and research scientists and climate experts and just anybody he wanted rid of; had Congress cutting or swelling budget items according to his demands; and pressured states to redistrict to favor Republicans ahead of the mid-terms so he wouldn’t get impeached a third time. Even the Supreme Court heeded him.
But what about her? Who heeded her? Who paid any attention to her tantrums and her directives, her orders and her whims but a wimpy stylist who okayed her worst sartorial ideas, a lackluster interior decorator who said yes to black Christmas trees, an assistant who handed her other first ladies’ speeches to deliver as her own? What was going on? What decisions did she get to make beyond those wretched Christmas decorations that bombed and Easter Egg rolls featuring an Easter bunny the size of her husband? Well, no longer would she allow herself to be appeased with big hats and crappy millions. She wanted billions like her husband. She wanted clout like her husband. She wanted to tell people what to do and hear them groan as the world watched them bend to do it. The power bug had bitten hard.
Her big break came in April. Jimmy Kimmel made a joke about her on one of his shows. For some reason, he said she had “the glow of an expectant widow.” When someone told her about the joke, she didn’t get it. They tried to explain it to her, then gave up. But, most commodiously, a commotion at the White House Correspondents dinner some days later occurred, which the press and everyone else called an attempt — not on her life, no — but on her husband’s life. Seizing that chance to come into her own, Melania demanded Jimmy Kimmel be fired. Posturing as a woman who loved her country and her husband above all else, she posted on X:
“Kimmel’s hateful and violent rhetoric is intended to divide our country. His monologue about my family isn’t comedy — his words are corrosive and deepens the political sickness within America. People like Kimmel shouldn’t have the opportunity to enter our homes each evening to spread hate. A coward, Kimmel hides behind ABC because he knows the network will keep running cover to protect him. Enough is enough. It is time for ABC to take a stand. How many times will ABC’s leadership enable Kimmel’s atrocious behavior at the expense of our community.”4
It was a real power punch and felt soooo good. And the world responded! People all wondered what would happen. She had connected. She had pull. She had muscle. No longer would she be overlooked or slighted. Maybe people would start asking her how to open the Strait of Hormuz; she had ideas about that, too, you know. She could do more movies. More books. More meme coins. Maybe perfume and fingernail polish. Life was looking pretty dandy. And all it had taken was demanding a head, her first head, albeit the head of a comedian, on a platter.
- This designation is no grammatical slip. The Slovenian woman’s Web site offers one Christmas ornament, an American star. ↩︎
- Note that of the 1 billion $MELANIA meme coins that could potentially by released, only 200 million had been, which means the highly touted market cap included $4.8 billion in meme coins that hadn’t, so to speak, been born yet. ↩︎
- The $MELANIA meme coin is managed by MKT World LLC, a Delaware-based company associated with Melania Trump since 2021, though its exact role and profit distribution remain undisclosed. Consequently, Melania Trump’s personal earnings from the project, which are tied to a complex structure of entities and insider trading activity, have not been publicly disclosed. You bet. https://nypost.com/2025/05/06/business/crypto-traders-who-bought-melania-trump-coin-before-launch-bagged-100m-report/ ↩︎
- https://x.com/FLOTUS/status/2048769128513585618 ↩︎