Movies

The Daily Show’s Jordan Klepper Meets Melania Moviegoers (It Totally Bombed. I Did the Math)

Posted by on February 4, 2026 at 2:35 pm. 3 Comments :

One of the most consistent features of Donald Trump’s severely impaired persona is his compulsion to exalt himself at every opportunity. He does so with no regard whatsoever for any factual basis. His representations of alleged success are wildly overblown and riddled with inflated – and often just made up – numbers. When asked for verification he responds with angry insults and wanders off.

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Donald Trump Baby and Melania Trump

This past weekend Trump celebrated the premiere of the CROCKumentary about his former mistress, and current wife, Melania. He described it on his dedicated propaganda platform, Truth Social, as a “BLOCKBUSTER! [that is] on track for best opening weekend of any documentary in last 10 years” Which, typically for Trump, is a blatant lie.

SEE THIS: Melania Trump Crocumentary Crew Want Their Names Removed From Credits and Hope the Film Flops

The film has already broken records. However, not the ones that anyone would brag about. It has achieved an abysmal rating of 5% on Rotten Tomatoes. And on IMDB it is scored as the “The Lowest-Rated Movie Of All Time.” But not to worry. Trump watched it twice and loved it. And the same is true for some MAGA cult followers who attended the premiere at the Trump Kennedy Center. They were interviewed by Jordan Klepper of the Daily Show, who got some revealing commentaries…

Attendee: Everyone loves that narrative arc where someone comes froma a small European country and ends up becoming the First Lady of the United States of America.
Klepper: It’s truly an immigrant story.

Exactly! A true immigrant story of a high fashion model who comes to America on a fraudulent visa, poses nude for a lot of money, and marries a nepo-billionaire. It’s the classic American rags to riches tale. Klepper also addresses the recent report that the director, Brett Ratner, was found in the Epstein files, and that his career was upended due to allegations of sexual abuse by numerous women. Which makes him a perfect fit for a film by the Trump family. In a hilarious display of mockery, Klepper entraps some oblivious attendees by simply saying “Me too.”

For the record, the film is as big a financial fiasco as most of Trump’s other business ventures. Never mind the mindless cheering from Trump and his cult disciples. The math doesn’t lie. Jeff Bezos and his Amazon/MGM Studios paid Trump a $40 million bribe for the rights. Then he spent another $35 million on marketing. And its premiere only managed to bring in $7.8 million.

MAGA World, however, is crowing about that take because it beat extraordinarily low expectations. But that is not how success is measured. Here are the facts…

  • Melania opened on 1,500 screens. Each screening seats on average about 150 people. And there are five showings per day on each screen. So for the three day weekend that’s about 3.375 million available seats.
  • The reported $7.8 million at $13.00 each (average ticket price nationwide) is only 600,000 seats/tickets sold. Or about 27 tickets per showing (1,500 screens, five shows each, for three days).

Selling an average of 27 tickets per screening isn’t anyone’s idea of a blockbuster. In fact, it’s a full-blown bomb. It means that some screenings in Mississippi or Wyoming might have sold out. But others in New York or Illinois would be empty. And there have been numerous reports of empty theaters. A hit film selling out 1,500 theaters would have earned nearly $44 million dollars in the opening weekend. Melania did less than 18% of that. And with a short theatrical run it’s going to earn even less streaming.

Nevertheless, the people who did go, as represented in Klepper’s video, will go away satisfied. Because their standards are so low that just seeing Melania on the big screen will send them into fits of ecstasy. And it won’t matter to them this “documentary” was produced by her as a piece of pure propaganda and a vehicle to funnel money to the Trump family. Consequently, as a bribe it truly is successful.

UPDATE: The Melania CROCKumentary “added 300 theaters in its second weekend but dropped steeply with $2.4 million in ticket sales, down 67% from its much-discussed debut…[it is] likely heading toward flop territory.”

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Death Of A Prez Ads Nixed By CNN, NPR

Posted by on October 24, 2006 at 4:26 pm. 1 Comments :

Death of a President is a new film that has been generating both controversy and acclaim. It is the winner of the International Critics’ Award from the Toronto Film Festival. The film’s web site describes it as…

“a fictional TV documentary broadcast in 2008, reflecting on another monstrously despicable and cataclysmic event: the assassination of President George W. Bush on October 19th, 2007.”

Sadly, the media’s martinets of virtue are again patrolling the avenues of our psyches, deciding what is safe for our aesthetic consumption.

CNN and NPR are refusing to air advertisements for the film. There is nothing in the ads that is inappropriate for broadcast. Indeed, the ads were approved by the Motion Picture Association of America for all audiences. But that fact has not deterred the programmers from engaging in censorship. CNN issued a brief statement that virtually admits its intention to censor, saying that…

“CNN has decided not to take the ad because of the extreme nature of the movie’s subject matter.”

By basing their decision on the movie’s “subject matter”, they have installed themselves as the public’s nanny. They believe that they are in the best position to decide for us which subjects matter. While they are a couple of yards further over the line than NPR, the public radio network’s excuse is not much better:

“The movie is fairly likely to generate significant controversy and we’ll cover it as a news story. To take a sponsorship spot would raise questions and cause confusion.”

One wonders if that criteria also applies to sponsorships from Ford or McDonald’s. Surely they have generated controversy connected to their products. Has their sponsorship raised questions or caused confusion?

This film already has an uncommon burden to overcome as a result of its premise. Two of the nation’s biggest movie exhibitors, Regal Entertainment and Cinemark USA, have announced that they will not play the movie in any of their ~8000 theaters. Newmarket Films, the movie’s distributor, insists that they will be able to open in plenty of theaters. They say that they are getting support from many exhibitors including the Landmark Theater chain.

These broadcasters and exhibitors, who have appointed themselves the protectors of the public’s tender sensibilities, deny that any partisan motive is at play. But an objective observer would note that they all previously played nice with another controversial release distributed by Newmarket, “The Passion of the Christ.”

So what is the reason that this film is getting such a different reception? It couldn’t be the subject matter, could it? Look at the trends:

  • The Dixie Chicks criticize the president and they’re thrown off the radio. Has that ever happend to a right wing artist?
  • A network TV biopic about Ronald Reagan is protested by conservatives and it gets shuttled off to cable. But ABC’s Path To 9/11 airs despite opposition.
  • An artist exhibits a work entitled, “The Proper Way to Display the Flag,” and the gallery is told to shut it down. But when Bush walks on a flag at Ground Zero, it’s just another photo-op.

It appears that everyone has an equal right to protest, but only Republicans can turn their protests into edicts that deny all Americans access to the embattled works. It’s called censorship, and it’s alive and well in America.

Update: Tim Graham at NewsBusters takes issue with this story. Responding to my criticism of NPR he asks…

“Can’t this blogger differentiate between a Bush assassin and Ronald McDonald?”

Tim is veering off on a detour to address a point that’s right in the middle of the road. If NPR declines an ad for this movie because of the appearance of bias in the event that they cover it editorially, doesn’t that same consideration come into play for any sponsor that they might cover editorially? And by the way, I can differentiate between a Bush assassin and Ronald McDonald. The Bush assassin in the movie harms no one except another character in the film. Ronald McDonald’s influence on real children harms thousands of them every year.

Deep In The Heart Of Dixie Chicks

Posted by on September 19, 2006 at 1:26 am. NO Comments :

The Toronto International Film Festival recently screened the documentary, Shut Up and Sing, chronicling the travails of the Dixie Chicks after their righteous slap at Crawford’s Lost Idiot. In remarks at a post-screening news conference, the Chicks demonstrate their grasp of the hazards of institutional media:

…the Chicks say they have absolutely no regrets about speaking their mind. If anything, the experience made them realize just how vulnerable to censorship we are in the world of consolidated media ownership and nationally uniform radio playlists.

“Consolidation means one guy at the top decides everything and I don’t think the media has been successful in pointing out why it’s so dangerous,” [Emily] Robison says.

Of course “the media has been [un]successful in pointing out why it’s so dangerous.” The handful of corporations that control the media are the architects and beneficiaries of consolidation. That the Dixies recognize the significance of this issue speaks to the fact that they are well informed and aware of the forces that they have learned, the hard way, are dangerously encroaching on press and creative freedom.

Since the media cannot be depended on to act in the interests of the public, it is up to all of us to act in our own interests. Visit Stop Big Media, bookmark it, and email the link to your friends and family. Contact the FCC and tell them that more consolidation does not create competition. It is critically important that people realize that we cannot solve any of our society’s problems without solving the problem of the media first. No matter what your pet issue is, you need access to communication channels to produce movement. Without a free, diverse and independent media, those channels will be denied to us.

The Dixie Chicks get it. They continue to be impressive, both artistically and socially. Their honesty and courage shines through the mud that is hurled at them. And throughout the ordeal they’ve refused to back down as evidenced by their hit single “Not Ready To Make Nice” and by the audacious declaration in the documentary that Bush is a “dumbfuck“.

Ah…the simplicity of truth.