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--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Welcome to Today Explained. I'm your host, Sean Rameswaram.
--:-- Noel King: And I'm Noel King.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Today, we're talking about Melania Trump's new memoir. Book critic Martin Pengelly read it so you don't have to.
--:-- Martin Pengelly: That's right. I read it last week, middle of last week, Wednesday. I got it earlier than the rest of us.
--:-- Noel King: How did you get it earlier than the rest of us?
--:-- Martin Pengelly: I could tell you, but I'd have to kill you. That's classified.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: [laughs] You've got a Melania mole.
--:-- Martin Pengelly: Martin Pengeli is a freelance reporter in Washington, D.C. who works with The Guardian, and it was for The Guardian that he read and reviewed Melania.
--:-- Noel King: Explained asked him if it's a good read.
--:-- Martin Pengelly: No, it's a quick read. Well, you know, literary critic and reporter. It's a good read in the sense that you can steam through it.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Oh, wow. It's a very, very bland, carefully picked out, self-justifying memoir.
--:-- Martin Pengelly: It's not rigorous. I don't think the ghostwriter's first version has been that rigorously fact-checked or checked for grammatical or style errors.
--:-- Noel King: It tells a very bland story of her life in Slovenia growing up.
--:-- Martin Pengelly: A small, beautiful, and then communist country in Central Europe. My parents impressed on me the values that you work hard for what you want in life.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: How she got into modeling, how she came to New York. After living and working in Milan and Paris, I arrived in New York City 20 years ago and I saw both the joys and hardships of daily life.
--:-- Martin Pengelly: It skates over controversial things that have proved controversial, like how she got a visa, the Einstein visa or whatever it was.
--:-- Noel King: If that's accurate, it would mean she had a type of visa, possibly a tourist visa, that needs to be updated periodically. But that type of visa does not allow working in the United States.
--:-- Martin Pengelly: She leaves out a lot of stuff about Donald that impinges on her. So there's no Stormy Daniels, there's no Eugene Carroll, there's no Karen McDougall, there's no anyone else.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: She regularly praises Donald as someone who works incredibly hard for the country, a hero and so forth.
--:-- Martin Pengelly: Also at the same time giving her a lot of space to how she doesn't like people who lie. So irony isn't her strong suit.
--:-- Noel King: And there's a 64-page photo in the middle. 64 pages of photos.
--:-- Martin Pengelly: Wow. In a short book. Yeah, it's a small book. It's not a big coffee table, but it has the coffee table feel.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: There's all these photos of her modeling career. And at the end, the last photos in the photo section are her hawking her NFTs that she sells on her website.
--:-- Martin Pengelly: So it feels very Trumpy in that sense. You could almost say Vanity Project.
--:-- Noel King: It definitely felt that way from the promotion of it.
--:-- Martin Pengelly: She doesn't get into the tough stuff with her husband. And she doesn't get into how she got her visa.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I have no idea how she got her visa. But what does she get into?
--:-- Martin Pengelly: A good illustrative story is she tells about the plagiarism scandal in 2016 at the Republican convention when she was found to have repeated sections from Michelle Obama's speech in 2008.
--:-- Noel King: You work hard for what you want in life. That your word is your bond. That you do what you say you're going to do. And you do what you say and keep your promise.
--:-- Martin Pengelly: She does tell a story about that, and it's indicative of the whole Trump world thing.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: She describes how it came about that Michelle's words got into her speech by saying that she read them over the phone to a ghostwriter, who then included them in the speech.
--:-- Martin Pengelly: And the speech, she's very insistent the speech wasn't vetted, the speech wasn't checked, and this plagiarism scandal happened.
--:-- Noel King: But she also says in this relatively for the rest of the book detailed account that she read the speech repeatedly practicing it and even went through it on the teleprompter a number of times to make sure she could really deliver it.
--:-- Martin Pengelly: So words that she admits she caused to be in the speech she says she practiced a number of times and then says she was shocked to be told she'd plagiarized Michelle Obama.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So again, it's probably conspiracy not cock up because people are never clever enough.
--:-- Martin Pengelly: But it's like, that shows in the copy. You're reading it thinking, you're just admitting that you knew about this. It's inconsistent.
--:-- Noel King: Yeah, it's inconsistent. It's kind of nuts.
--:-- Martin Pengelly: And it's one of the more detailed pieces about her time in politics, and it's a cell phone.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: She also deals with the famous trip to the border The First Lady on her way to visit those detained children On the back of her Zara jacket the words I really don care do you
--:-- Martin Pengelly: And was accused of callousness. It was called tone deaf.
--:-- Noel King: That conversation is still going on.
--:-- Martin Pengelly: Here's part of that. This man asking how many times can a person plead ignorance, referencing her times when she wore heels to go to a disaster zone, when she had a speech that had some suspiciously similar words to Michelle Obama.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: She says that was meant as a message to the media. She didn't mean anything to do with the migrant children she was going to see.
--:-- Martin Pengelly: That's her way out of it. And she blames her then press secretary for mishandling the whole thing.
--:-- Noel King: That press secretary, Stephanie Grisham, got a book out where she detailed that event and said that when they got back to the White House, they were told off by Donald Trump, who said, you better just tell people that you were aiming that at the media.
--:-- Martin Pengelly: Oh, no. I mean, the terribly sad thing is that I know that because I've read all these books. I'm sorry.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I know. But it doesn't indicate that's wrong, I suppose. You know, because Stephanie Grisham might not be right.
--:-- Martin Pengelly: She might have had her own reasons for saying it. But again, it just jars. It's an attempt. It blunders into this very Trumpian world of controversy through the jacket and through the versions of why the jacket was worn and so forth that don't match each other.
--:-- Noel King: So it's just a circle of Trumpy stuff.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: What does she have to say about the former president? And maybe future president.
--:-- Martin Pengelly: My word. She repeatedly says she loves him very much.
--:-- Noel King: She doesn't discuss the old reports that on election night 2016 she was in floods of tears because she didn't want to go to him to be president.
--:-- Martin Pengelly: That's nowhere to be seen. She says he's hardworking. She says he's truth-telling. She says he's a great father to Barron.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: She doesn't really discuss any of his other children. Ivanka gets one mention.
--:-- Martin Pengelly: It's basically a glowing portrait of him that leads to a very anemic backing to his election fraud, January the 6th stuff.
--:-- Noel King: She doesn't say it was right to attack the Capitol or anything, but she just deals with it in about one paragraph saying people had concerns, and I did too.
--:-- Martin Pengelly: But there shouldn't have been violence. It's very loyal. But she does disagree with him on abortion.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Yes, that's why that stood out.
--:-- Martin Pengelly: In the account of having a completely different view to the official Trumpian Republican Party line, she says she believes in abortion rights.
--:-- Noel King: She doesn't mention politics. She doesn't mention what Republicans have done. Doesn't mention the Supreme Court.
--:-- Martin Pengelly: The thing you'd say as an amateur psychologist slash person who reads all these books slash reporter is that might be agreeing with Trump.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Because most people think Trump was always pro-choice and has just adapted, obviously, somewhat uncomfortably now to the prevailing wishes of the hard right, the evangelical right.
--:-- Martin Pengelly: But when I was writing the story, I don't think I mentioned it in the end because it didn't fit.
--:-- Noel King: But there was a very one thing that stuck in my head from about 2015 when he was running for the White House.
--:-- Martin Pengelly: Trump did an interview with Maureen Dowd of the New York Times.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He was in trouble for having said some harsh things about abortion.
--:-- Martin Pengelly: And she asked him, have in all your years as a man about town and man with many wives, have you ever paid for a partner to have an abortion?
--:-- Noel King: And Trump's response, which is imprinted on my brain, was such an interesting question.
--:-- Martin Pengelly: What's the next question?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It sounds like you read a lot of these types of books, the types of books other people might be inclined to ignore or just read, you know, a quick review of to get the gist of.
--:-- Martin Pengelly: What was the point of this one in particular you think?
--:-- Noel King: Make money from Trump fans huh that's got to be it it's no it's i mean it's self-justifying but it's not weighty enough to really have any effects on the record
--:-- Martin Pengelly: I noticed on social media because you always look at what people are responding to your story on um the responses were split between liberals arguing about what she meant with her abortion comments and conservatives sending me abuse about how dare you write, how do you be rude about our beautiful first lady, she's wonderful, etc, etc.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So apart from curiosity value, there'd be no reason for the regular reader to read it.
--:-- Martin Pengelly: You can read Martin's review of Melania at theguardian.com
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--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Support for this show comes from Macy's.
--:-- Noel King: It's almost fall. And that means it's time to cycle your wardrobe to the cold setting.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Because while everyone loves a breezy summer outfit, let's be real, layering is even more fun.
--:-- Noel King: That's why Macy's Fall Fashion Guide has everything you need to piece together the perfect look for you.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's your one-stop shop for fall's latest trends and must-haves curated by their experts.
--:-- Noel King: Add a statement shoe to your collection like the calf hair loafers from Steve Madden or tap into your romantic side with flowy dresses from Cece and sheer pieces from INC.
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--:-- Noel King: It's very well today explained in the chapter.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Our friend Martin is gone, but Margaret Hartman is here.
--:-- Noel King: She's a senior editor at Intelligencer at New York Magazine.
--:-- Margaret Hartman: Margaret Hartman is here.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Margaret, Martin says this Melania book is just yet another in a long line of Trump grifts.
--:-- Margaret Hartman: I definitely agree with that.
--:-- Noel King: Trump has been putting out a lot of weird merchandise recently, and Melania has been doing the same.
--:-- Margaret Hartman: Donald Trump has just released three coffee table books in the past year.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Trump's the only person who writes books and gets booked in the same year.
--:-- Margaret Hartman: Everyone thought they would be actual presidential memoirs, but this is definitely not Obama's A Promised Land.
--:-- Noel King: These are glossy books. They're just filled with pictures of Trump and rude captions, some of which he wrote himself in Sharpie.
--:-- Margaret Hartman: He's dropped gold watches. There's only 147 of them available.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Each come in three different colors and 122 diamonds in them.
--:-- Margaret Hartman: Gold hide tops. That's the real deal.
--:-- Noel King: Silver coins. I've seen a lot of coins out there using my very beautiful face.
--:-- Margaret Hartman: I'm a very beautiful guy.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: A Trump-endorsed Bible. We must make America pray again.
--:-- Margaret Hartman: Multiple sets of NFT trading cards, some of which come with cut up pieces of his mugshot suit or the suit he wore to debate Joe Biden.
--:-- Noel King: So he really has really anything you can think of Trump is trying to slap his name on these days.
--:-- Margaret Hartman: I'm going to ask you this because I feel like if anyone has, it'd be you.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Has anyone tried to figure out whether these are real pieces of various suits or could it just be like a tablecloth?
--:-- Margaret Hartman: Well, Trump claimed that he had the mugshot suit examined by an outside company, and it's the most historically significant artifact in the United States history.
--:-- Noel King: It is an authentic piece of the suit I wore when I took that now famous mugshot, and it was a great suit.
--:-- Margaret Hartman: Believe me, a really good suit.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I don't know if anyone has actually verified that claim.
--:-- Margaret Hartman: So who knows? Maybe he's just going to the fabric store and cutting up little bits and gluing them on cards.
--:-- Noel King: Who knows? Wow.
--:-- Margaret Hartman: Would love to see that, if true.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The watches I've heard a lot about because they're like $100,000?
--:-- Margaret Hartman: Yes. One version of the watches costs $100,000.
--:-- Noel King: Those are limited, special edition, top-of-the-line watches.
--:-- Margaret Hartman: Now, each one of them is numbered.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That way you know exactly which one you're getting of the 147.
--:-- Margaret Hartman: Trump says he owns the very first one of them.
--:-- Noel King: What could possibly make it cost $100,000?
--:-- Margaret Hartman: Well, it has Trump's name on it.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So, you know, it's the best to pay for that kind of quality.
--:-- Margaret Hartman: OK, these are the latest grifts.
--:-- Noel King: But of course, having Trump's name on a product is nothing new.
--:-- Margaret Hartman: Can you remind us of a bit of the history here?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Sure. We've had, of course, there's so much real estate. He's put his name on.
--:-- Margaret Hartman: There was the Trump Winery. It's the largest winery on the East Coast.
--:-- Noel King: I own it 100 percent. No mortgage, no debt.
--:-- Margaret Hartman: Trump Steaks. When it comes to great steaks, I've just raised the steaks.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: One time I was surprised during a trip into Trump Tower in the early 2000s by Trump Ice, which is his little known personally branded water.
--:-- Margaret Hartman: She said it was the finest spring water in the world. And of course, that's not true. It's just regular spring water.
--:-- Noel King: There's Trump vodka. It's a great tasting vodka.
--:-- Margaret Hartman: And I'm very proud of the fact, actually, that I don't drink.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But it's a vodka that people really like. And as you know, it's taken off like crazy.
--:-- Margaret Hartman: I believe there's a Trump board game. Trump, the game where you deal for everything you ever wanted to own.
--:-- Noel King: Because it's not whether you win or lose, it's whether you win.
--:-- Margaret Hartman: There was Trump media that owns Truth Social.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Just anything you can think of, Trump has put his name on.
--:-- Margaret Hartman: Who is buying all of the junk, especially the latest junk?
--:-- Noel King: I assume that it's Trump supporters that he's marketing to.
--:-- Margaret Hartman: They already believe in the Trump brand and they want more and they think that they want to show their support for him.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: They believe that he is putting out high quality merchandise.
--:-- Margaret Hartman: So that's my assumption.
--:-- Noel King: But I've honestly never seen any Trump merch in the wild.
--:-- Margaret Hartman: Uh-huh.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And is it high quality? Because we know that, like, you know, Trump University, for example, wasn't of the highest quality.
--:-- Margaret Hartman: I mean, that's subjective.
--:-- Noel King: At Trump University, we teach success. That's what it's all about. Success.
--:-- Margaret Hartman: The books that I have read were not of the highest quality.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Most times that these products are assessed, they don't – like the watches aren't particularly high quality.
--:-- Margaret Hartman: It doesn't seem – sneaker experts did not think that they were worth the extremely high price tag.
--:-- Noel King: But, you know, there's a – it's hard to say how much does having Trump's name on something inflate the value.
--:-- Margaret Hartman: And how does this stuff differentiate from, say, like all of the MAGA branded stuff you can buy?
--:-- Noel King: Is there some through line there? That's separate.
--:-- Margaret Hartman: Like the red MAGA hats, those are campaign merch.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The stuff that he promotes on his infomercial style videos he posts on social media is supposedly just benefiting Trump personally.
--:-- Margaret Hartman: He actually will have a disclaimer on the bottom of most of these websites.
--:-- Noel King: The website will say something like God bless the USA Bible And then it says God bless the USA Bible dot com uses Donald J Trump name likeness and image under a paid license from CIC Ventures LLC
--:-- Margaret Hartman: This is not political and has nothing to do with any political campaign.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Whereas if you buy like a Make America Great Again hat or Keep America Great or America Great Again Keep or whatever the newest iteration is, that's going directly to the campaign, to the PACs, whatever?
--:-- Margaret Hartman: Yes.
--:-- Noel King: Is this more of a Trump thing than any other former president?
--:-- Margaret Hartman: Was there like a Grover Cleveland Bible or like a Herbert Hoover vodka? No, there was not.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Certainly presidents have to make money, and we've seen presidents raise money through memoirs or speaker's fees or like the Clintons have paired up with famous novelists like James Patterson to co-write books.
--:-- Margaret Hartman: But, you know, we don't have like Clinton stakes or Clinton NFT trading cards.
--:-- Noel King: Trump really takes it to a new level.
--:-- Margaret Hartman: And why is that? Is it just like a degree of shamelessness or does he need the money?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Is he poor?
--:-- Margaret Hartman: Yes, Trump is having some pretty significant legal trouble, which is it's kind of hard to wrap your head around because he is a billionaire.
--:-- Noel King: I think the latest estimate from Forbes was that he's worth three point seven billion.
--:-- Margaret Hartman: But the problem is he doesn't have enough liquid assets to cover his legal trouble.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So Forbes estimated that he had about $410 million in liquid assets.
--:-- Margaret Hartman: But when you tally up all the recent legal judgments against him, that came to $560 million.
--:-- Noel King: So there's a significant gap there.
--:-- Margaret Hartman: And he's fighting all these legal judgments against him.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And this isn't just the judgments against him.
--:-- Margaret Hartman: This isn't even taking into account the legal fees and other problems he's having with his real estate business.
--:-- Noel King: So he certainly could use the money.
--:-- Margaret Hartman: And his latest financial disclosures show that he is earning money from all these ventures.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's in the last one that he'd earned more than $12 million through licensing and royalty deals through the two LLCs that he owns.
--:-- Margaret Hartman: But this is where I get confused because it sounds like what you're saying is that, you know, all of this junk that he's hawking is to help him pay for his legal woes.
--:-- Noel King: Some of those legal woes are explicitly political. Some of them are totally personal.
--:-- Margaret Hartman: But like where those lines are drawn is sort of confusing and where they blur is sort of confusing.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Like, who is keeping track of where all this money is going and whether it's all above board since this guy is running for president and could very well be our next president?
--:-- Margaret Hartman: Yeah, it's it's not really clear.
--:-- Noel King: He doesn't release his tax returns like other presidential candidates have historically done.
--:-- Margaret Hartman: So we know a little bit of the picture from the required financial disclosures from the campaign stuff.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But we don't know exactly what's going on with his finances.
--:-- Margaret Hartman: It's all a little murky.
--:-- Noel King: And if there is something untoward going on, it may not be discovered until what?
--:-- Margaret Hartman: He might be president again, in which case nothing will happen.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Right.
--:-- Margaret Hartman: There's just so much with him. It's like this might have been a big story if Obama was selling cut up pieces of his tan suit.
--:-- Noel King: But with Trump, you know, this is like the 50th most interesting scandal of the week.
--:-- Margaret Hartman: And now he's roping in his wife.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Is that new or does that fit into the like larger history here?
--:-- Margaret Hartman: Since Trump left office, she has been promoting a few items.
--:-- Noel King: So after I left the White House in 2021, I established my two platforms, Web2 and Web3, that I create an art and collectibles.
--:-- Margaret Hartman: And all it's available on those two platforms, MelaniaTrump.com and USAMemorabilia.com.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So she's a little more selective in what she promotes.
--:-- Margaret Hartman: She has mainly various NFT collections.
--:-- Noel King: Some of those are physical Christmas ornaments and some of those are NFT Christmas ornaments.
--:-- Margaret Hartman: I don't quite understand what that is exactly.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But, you know, if you're decorating your NFT Christmas tree, Melania is there for you.
--:-- Margaret Hartman: She has actual physical jewelry. So she has like a Mother's Day necklace she released.
--:-- Noel King: There was a four leaf or I think it was a three leaf clover and that was $245.
--:-- Margaret Hartman: She just released a $600 necklace that she described as celebrating Lady Liberty, but it does not have a picture of the Statue of Liberty on it.
--:-- Noel King: So it's just a generic Lady Liberty.
--:-- Margaret Hartman: Now she has her memoir, and it comes in various price points.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You can get the basic one for $40 up to a special edition signed $250 version with extra photos and whatnot.
--:-- Margaret Hartman: Oh, extra photos. Yes.
--:-- Noel King: It's similar to what Trump did with his coffee table books.
--:-- Margaret Hartman: The basic coffee table book usually would cost around $75 and he put out at one point a supposedly leather-bound $999 coffee table book.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I guess like we can't knock him because people are buying this stuff.
--:-- Margaret Hartman: Yeah. So in theory, like there is an audience for this. Someone wants it.
--:-- Noel King: So this is America. I guess you can have it.
--:-- Margaret Hartman: Yeah.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: On the one hand, is he selling his supporters low quality junk? That's my view.
--:-- Margaret Hartman: But on the other hand, this is who he's always been. He's always been slapping his name on possibly not the highest quality products.
--:-- Noel King: So why not do it when you're even more famous after being president?
--:-- Margaret Hartman: Myers and Andrea Christensdottir were on the ones and twos, and I also participated.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: My name is Sean Ramos for him.
--:-- Noel King: The program is Today Explained.
--:-- [Theme music fades out]
