Nia-Malika Henderson
January 3, 2026 — 1:30pmSave
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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.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.
President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump arrive for a New Year’s Eve celebration at their Mar-a-Lago club. AP Photo/Alex Brandon
“She loved her tiny little office,” President Donald Trump told Laura Ingraham on Fox News, confirming his wife’s concerns about levelling the East Wing. “But you know what? She is very smart. In about one day … if you would ask her now, she says it’s great.”
Well, it’s not great. But the first lady saunters on, often seeming more like a content creator than anything else.
In October, that content included a speech where she seemingly tried to cover for Russian President Vladimir Putin by downplaying one of the worst atrocities of his invasion of Ukraine: the abduction of tens of thousands of Ukrainian children. Trump announced that she had been in communication with Putin about the “Ukrainian children residing in Russia”. What she failed to mention is that Russia has kidnapped an estimated 35,000 children in an attempt to “re-educate”, forcibly adopt them or even conscript them.
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Yet, in the first lady’s telling, this Russian campaign is simply the incidental byproduct of the fog of war.
“Each child has lived in turmoil because of the war in Ukraine,” she said in her speech announcing the return of eight children. “Three were separated from their parents and displaced to the Russian Federation because of frontline fighting. The other five were separated from family members across borders because of the conflict, including one young girl who has now been reunited from Ukraine to Russia. I have learnt a lot about this matter during the past three months. Russia has demonstrated a willingness to disclose objective and detailed information reflective for the current situation.” (Russia doesn’t disclose objective information.)
Domestically, Trump has revived her oddly named Be Best campaign, which aims to combat online bullying. (Yes, irony abounds.) She also backed the Take It Down Act, bipartisan legislation signed by her husband in May, aimed at enacting stricter penalties for so-called “revenge porn”. Last month, she sat next to her husband as he signed an executive order called “Fostering the Future for American Children and Families”, which aims to improve the lives of children in and transitioning out of foster care. Such appearances are likely to be content for future money-making ventures as part of Trump’s production company, which she announced in November.
At the start of her second term, Trump suggested people don’t really know what she does; yet over the past 11 months, she hasn’t bothered to fill in many details. She is hardly a consistent presence – over the first 108 days of her second tenure, she spent fewer than 14 days at the White House. Notable exceptions include her presence during September’s state visit to the United Kingdom and during November’s visit from Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Her customary appearance to greet the White House Christmas tree this month was perfunctory.
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Her documentary, Melania, comes to theatres on January 30 and covers the 20 days leading up to the inauguration. (It will be followed by a three-part documentary on Amazon.) It’s a fitting title. While most first ladies focused on being good stewards of the White House, wielding soft power and leaving behind a lasting legacy, Trump seems to be mostly focused on increasing her wealth and her celebrity, whether through movies or memecoins. History will judge her harshly.
Nia-Malika Henderson is a politics and policy columnist for Bloomberg opinion. A former senior political reporter for CNN and The Washington Post, she has covered politics and campaigns for almost two decades.
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