No points for guessing which social media company got the bulk of that ad spend.
In a Berlin shopping mall.
https://www.ndtv.com/entertainment/melania-trumps-documentar...
Or anywhere else in Europe
The person? „Nicht relevant“.
Still, for those that feel that way I can only recommend Klemen Slakonja's First Lady Melania Trump: sLOVEnia biopic that follows her return to the land of both her and Laibach's origin.
Melania, in one word, "Egal". In two words, "Völlig egal".
Only because no one can prosecute it without retaliation from petulant man-children.
It’s not. And it will probably be investigated by a future administration when we do a Nuremberg-style review of this term.
It's also worth noting that Kelly was unanimous and FEC upheld the ruling of the district court which the FEC had appealed.
"Now isn't the time for recriminations for behavior long in the past, now is the time for forgiveness. Time to reach across the aisle in unity, time to heal the nation." - Democrats
Sadly, small beer now that nuclear containment has also expired and been cleared from the table.
The Last Nuclear Deal Is Expiring. Does Anyone Care? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46821225
Nuclear Arms Race 2.0: Ready, Set, Already Go .. You're Late!
emolument clause be dammed.
it turns out all you need to do is 1) blatantly ignore/violate the law, 2) have appointed justices to the court who will provide you will full immunity while in office (Trump vs United States)
1. Assume that Amazon knows the future
2. Then spending $250M on Rings of Power is a bad decision
3. Therefore paying $28M to Trump is also just a bad decision, and not a bribery
Tech CEOs attend Amazon-funded "Melania" screening at White House
Maybe we shift a bit of focus towards Congress, supreme courts and frankly voters who are apparently OK with this.
https://www.abajournal.com/news/article/wife-of-chief-justic...
The people most capable of fighting back, and who ultimately have the most to lose in a kleptocratic, authoritarian state, apparently to be cowards and losers. Bezos and Jassy could tell the administration to pound sand, given how critical AWS is, and that Amazon is part of the like, 4 companies propping up the teetering stack of cards holding up the thing this administration (and its weaponized voters) think represents “the economy”. But they won’t, because they’re a bunch of feckless children, desperate for scraps.
That’s quite the take.
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/white-ho...
https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/27/ceo-captured https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/01/27/mg-cook-melania
> So, what’s the point? How does this superficial, wilfully deceitful reality readjustment serve the sociopathic ascension of Trump’s will (because everything has to)? Watching Melania get fitted for expensive clothes in gaudy rooms, or talk up how extravagantly staged she demands her balls be - and both happen a lot in Brett Ratner’s unrelentingly boring feature doc debut - only strengthen perceptions of her as a chilly, lifeless socialite wannabe.
Ok, ice burn mostly so far. Expected. But:
> And I realised then what the point was - Trump is tightening his family business’ grip on the White House beyond his years and before our eyes. MELANIA is not the story of the First Lady of American politics, but the imagining of the first homeland monarch in U.S. history. This is not a film concerned at all with the America of today; it is propaganda that serves the formation of a future non-democracy.
I'm all too afraid that there is something truly wicked this boring dry flop of a movie will accomplish, over time, for some incredibly infernal anti-Democracy forces in the world. That one of the top 3 richest men in the world would give a messely couple million bucks for an anti-Democracy pro-Regal pro-Imperial project like this is perhaps unsurprising, beyond the simple dimension of grift it obviously presents.
https://screenspace.substack.com/p/the-animated-pics-vying-f... via the lovely https://bsky.app/profile/numb.comfortab.ly/post/3mdncqwyuks2...
And we see how crypto companies court the Whitehouse through various mechanisms.
How might this factor into "mere" unicorn startups? I think it does but not sure how.
My guess is that if you're an early stage startup that isn't an AI company already worth billions, you can probably ignore this as noise and focus on building product. It's reasonably likely that by the time your startup is sufficiently large, there will be a new administration (because it takes a few years and presumably he will not be president in 2029).
mkw5053•1w ago
selimthegrim•1w ago
willturman•1w ago
Sell: To transfer to another for an equivalent; to give up for a valuable consideration; to dispose of in return for something, especially for money.
Selling, even for free, implies demand.
ceejayoz•6d ago
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/21/books/donald-trump-jr-tri...
willturman•5d ago
i.e. you can't "sell" something when you can't even give it away.