Art of the deal: Melania is the first of White House ladies to milk it for millions
Unlike first ladies before her, Melania Trump manages to turn her official role into content for money-making ventures.
Opinion
By Nia-Malika Henderson
January 3, 2026 — 1.30pm
First lady Melania Trump’s official White House portrait says it all. Pictured in a black pantsuit and white collared shirt, she stands at the head of a table, as if in a boardroom ready to make a deal. And sure enough, even before she moved back into the (RIP) East Wing, she had inked a $US40 million ($59.71 million) deal for a documentary about her life.
“What I’m [doing], what kind of responsibilities I have – people, they don’t really know,” she said on Fox News early in 2025, describing the documentary. “It’s day to day, from transition team to moving to the White House, packing, establishing my team, the First Lady Office, moving into the White House, what it takes to make the residence your home, to hire the people that you need.”
First lady Melania Trump at her Mar-a-Lago club on Christmas Eve.Credit: AP Photo/Alex Brandon
Somehow, most first ladies were able to do all of the above without needing to make millions of dollars and a having a film crew in tow. But Trump, like her husband, has shattered the norms and ethics of the White House, transforming the role like no other first lady before her – and not for the better.
When Melania Trump left the White House in January 2021, she had an approval rating of 42 per cent, the lowest on record for any first lady. And a 2020 Siena College study of all first ladies ranked her dead last on every metric, including value to the country, value to the president and stewardship of the White House. Now, at the end of 2025, only 36 per cent of those surveyed by YouGov have a positive impression of her.
Nothing captures the emptiness of her second turn as FLOTUS more than the demolition of the “First Lady Office” that Trump spoke about in previewing her documentary, which debuts this month. The East Wing, which Eleanor Roosevelt built up as a place and an idea, is now just a pile of rubble, slated to become a massive ballroom bankrolled by corporate and private donors.
While, privately, the first lady reportedly “raised concerns” about the demolition, her input wasn’t enough to halt the erasure of the space occupied by modern first ladies.
