Melania's low profile masks a lucrative White House side hustle

U.S. first lady Melania Trump visits the Smithsonian's National Museum Of Asian Art with First lady of China Peng Liyuan (not pictured) in Washington, D.C., US, September 24, 2026.

Little attention is being paid to the ways first lady Melania Trump has found to cash in on her position in government.

While President Donald Trump's grift reveals something new almost weekly, businesses linked to his company, run by his heirs, are being handed huge government contracts. But Mrs. Trump's ways of making money off of the White House are staying quiet.

The Editorial Board of the Philadelphia Inquirerwrote on Saturday morning that the move is all part of "Trump’s shameless Art of the Steal." This week, Trump launched a television ad campaign, paid for by U.S. tax dollars, promoting himself and his "One, Big Beautiful Bill," set to a song that continues chanting "Love me, love me" in the background.

While there's Trump's cryptocurrency, there's also the first lady's.

"She launched $MELANIA, a memecoin that had an initial market capitalization of about $1.7 billion, but quickly plummeted by about 95 percent," the editorial board recalled. But that only came after investors banked about $100 million.

"A lawsuit accused the designers of Melania’s cryptocurrency of orchestrating a 'pump-and-dump' scheme,'" they noted.

Unlike Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump, Jared Kushner, and the family’s cryptocurrency ventures, Mrs. Trump does not feature prominently in foreign investment, government contracts, deregulation, or business arrangements that could overlap with White House policy. Instead, what she's focused on is ways she can benefit commercially even though she isn't formally running a major corporation or working as a "government envoy."

Mrs. Trump is building her brand and profiting primarily through media. The Inquirer suggested in the piece that while she is keeping a lower public profile than other Trump family members, her Amazon documentary and related content deal is the largest example.

Trump biographer Michael Wolff alleged this week that the first lady's new "Davos for women" initiative is really just a platform for her to orchestrate content for her latest film or reality show.

Critics have raised questions about whether a first lady should be able to use her White House status and public events as material for a private media project, particularly when the project’s commercial value is inseparable from her unusual access to the presidency. So far, she's pocketed an estimated $40 million off of the Amazon documentary. It's unknown how much she made from her memoir titled Melania.

The report goes on to highlight what Kushner and Ivanka Trump managed to score from their time in the White House. In the first term, the two "reported between $172 million and $640 million in outside income while working for taxpayers. That was before Kushner got $2 billion from the Saudi investment fund to start what is now a "fledgling private equity venture," the board characterized.

While Kushner is away claiming to negotiate an end to the wars between Russia and Ukraine and an end to the war in Iran, he is also "reportedly trying to raise $5 billion for this private equity fund from Middle East governments, even as he serves as Trump’s point person in negotiating a peace deal with Iran."

“You cannot both be a diplomat and a financial pawn of the Saudi monarchy at the same time,” said U.S. Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.).

If voters cast ballots for the Democrats in November, both the House Oversight and Judiciary Committees plan to investigate these reports of using the government directly for profit. So far, it appears at least one Republican supports the move.

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