U.S. first lady Melania Trump visits the Smithsonian's National Museum Of Asian Art in Washington, D.C., US, September 24, 2026. Finn Gomez/Pool via REUTERS
A biographer for President Donald Trump continues to drag the first lady after her lawyers threatened to file a defamation suit against him. While Michael Wolff spent the weekend detailing some of the latest moves of Melania Trump on the Daily Beast podcasts, his new column scolds her for intentionally trying to create intrigue to make more money.
Most first ladies have a cause that they push while in office. Michelle Obama had several around healthy food, exercise and worked with then-second lady Dr. Jill Biden to support military families. During her first term, Mrs. Trump supported an anti-bullying initiative. Laura Bush championed literacy and libraries. It's unclear what the second term is about for Mrs. Trump.
"She is documenting all this absence and nothingness, and it will become part of a new Melania movie, which follows a first 'Melania' movie of almost unutterable insubstantiality which followed a book that was wholly disengaged from meaning, value, and importance," wrote Wolff on Monday. "There is no ‘there’ there, but she’s making gobs of money off of it."
Another unique piece of Mrs. Trump's second term, Wolff said, is that journalists have largely avoided probing the reality of Melania Trump’s life, including where she lives, her relationships, her marriage and the path that brought her to Trump.
One reason, he said, is that "it is quite unclear how to even speak of her without getting an immediate letter from her lawyers."
The biographer acknowledges that Mrs. Trump's independence from her husband could, in theory, be seen positively, whereas Hillary Clinton's was seen negatively. But he argues that Mrs. Trump's version is less about autonomy or public purpose than personal enrichment. It could be a cynicism that conservatives admire rather than reject.
"She is much more readily understood as a fictional character, embodying a life of improbable leaps and adventures — which is perhaps why she now seems allowed to create a fictional world for herself with its blithe disregard for the actual world," suggested Wolff.
He added that "she's being lavishly paid to create this world." It makes her nothing more than a content creator based on things that have nothing to do with the day-to-day things a first lady must do. Instead, she's playing up the "famous first lady" part of her job.
"Her work as first lady is staging being the first lady," wrote Wolff. "This is being paid for — an outsized payment at that — by Amazon and its owner, Jeff Bezos, who is eager for good relations with the White House, and who, himself, has married a woman who too aspires to be a fictional character."
What that looks like is a first lady who does whatever she wants while making millions off it.
"She announces an organization that does not exist, and will never exist beyond the announcement of it, and she can be confident she will not be dogged by questions about it because everybody understands the wholly cynical and ephemeral nature of it. What you see is simply what you get," Wolff closed.
