Let Them Eat Cake: While Minneapolis Mourned, Trump Hosted a Melania Gala

As protesters froze in the streets after the killing of Alex Pretti, Trump’s elite celebrated a $75 million vanity film—another glimpse of a family governing like royalty.

By Adam Kinzinger

On the day when 37-year-old Alex Pretti was killed by a Border Patrol agent in Minneapolis, thousands gathered in the city and in his hometown of Green Bay to protest. Seven hundred miles away, 70 of Donald and Melania Trump’s rich, famous, and powerful friends gathered in black tie in the East Room of the White House to get a sneak peek at a new film devoted to the First Lady—the Marie Antoinette of our time.

With the nation in crisis, it was a truly strange scene. There was self-help guru Tony Robbins yucking it up with Erika Kirk, widow of the assassinated right-wing provocateur Charlie Kirk. Tim Cook, chief executive officer of the Silicon Valley giant Apple, chatted with the film’s director (and accused sexual predator) Brett Ratner. Mike Tyson smiled for photos in front of a screen with the name “Melania” splashed across it in black. A military band played the “Melania Waltz,” which had been written for the movie by the Hollywood composer Tony Neiman.

Jeff Bezos’s Amazon Studios has put $75 million into producing, distributing, and publicizing the “documentary,” which follows Melania during the 20-day run-up to her husband’s second inauguration. (Out of this sum, an estimated $28 million was paid as a licensing fee to the First Lady herself.) Bezos couldn’t make the party, but Amazon Chief Executive Officer Andy Jassy, who greenlit the film, was able to attend.

As protesters froze in the Midwest, the champagne-sipping elite demonstrated an appalling insensitivity. (In contrast, an NBA game set for Minneapolis was rescheduled out of respect.) All wanted to help polish the image of the woman beside the man who is now America’s dictator. It was a travesty of egotism and heartlessness worthy of the Court of Versailles in the days before the French Revolution.

In partnering with Amazon on a cheesy, indulgent film, Trump lined up with all the authoritarians who have demanded—and manufactured—respect for themselves and their families as they grasped for more and more power. Think of Juan Perón and his wife Eva in Argentina, and Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos in the Philippines. Both brutal dictators made sure that their cults of personality extended to their spouses.

Melania doesn’t seem to want to succeed her husband as President, but as she pocketed her millions, she showed herself to be a true member of a clan that, like all dictators’ families, is eager to cash in on the patriarch’s power. In one year, the family has reaped between $1.4 and $1.8 billion (yes, billion) by leveraging the Trump name to sell cryptocurrency and gain access to dealmakers around the globe—especially in the Middle East, where politics, government, and payoffs mix freely.

The Trump family has cut licensing deals for property developments in Oman, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia, which depend on the United States military for their defense. As Middle Eastern countries have poured hundreds of millions of dollars into the Trump cryptocurrency business, the president has approved the sale of sensitive technology to the UAE. Qatar got permission to buy $1.2 billion in U.S. military hardware, and Saudi Arabia won access to $142 billion. The quid pro quos—cash for the Trump family in exchange for favors from the U.S. government—were done openly. When he speaks of a “Golden Age” for America, he’s speaking about his family first.

Tyrants routinely use their governments to get rich. Libyan strongman Muammar Gaddafi drained $200 million out of his country before he was killed during a civil war. Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad grabbed between $1 and $2 billion before his regime collapsed and he fled to Russia. Trump is operating in the spirit of these men, leveraging his power as chief executive of the United States to funnel profits to himself.

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This is not normal. Every other president in history has felt constrained by the traditions of democracy and the Constitution’s prohibition of emoluments (personal benefits). It was a scandal when Jimmy Carter’s brother, Billy, profited from selling beer named after himself. Before he was elected president, Joe Biden’s son Hunter sparked controversy by appearing to trade on the family name. But these pale in comparison with the direct money grabs now being perpetrated by the President and his family. They truly are acting as if the world is their piggybank.

Bad as the financial scandal may be, it pales in comparison with Trump’s other dictatorial impulse: violence. As we’ve seen in Minnesota and elsewhere, the President is a muscle-flexing autocrat who built—and is expanding—an army of Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to sweep through cities and towns in the chaotic pursuit of undocumented immigrants.

Trump promised in 2024 to arrest and deport millions of immigrants. He is following through by dispatching thousands of agents in combat gear, including bulletproof vests. Squads of masked agents drive the streets, sometimes searching for specific individuals and sometimes simply grabbing people off sidewalks or inside businesses. How do they identify targets? They look for Black and brown people, listen for Spanish speakers, and enter places where immigrants may work.

In Minneapolis, they are encountering thousands of protesters, including citizen monitors who follow agents to document what they are doing. Others bring food and supplies to immigrants hiding in their homes. These Minnesotans stand against tyranny like many before them.

Alex Pretti was acting as one of those citizen monitors when he was surrounded by uniformed agents on a Minneapolis street. After one agent pushed a woman to the ground and Pretti moved to help her, they grabbed him and began pummeling him. As they were filmed from the sidewalk, they beat and pinned him to the ground. Although the government later claimed Pretti brandished a weapon, he was holding a phone.

As agents pushed Pretti down, one noticed he had a pistol holstered on his hip. He was licensed to carry it. After one agent removed the gun, another shot Pretti once at point-blank range, and then three more times. Pretti died instantly. Eight agents briefly walked away from his body.

I could say I am shocked, but I am not. Three weeks earlier, Minneapolis resident Renee Good, also a citizen observer, was shot and killed after a confrontation with ICE. In both cases, Trump and his people immediately declared the victims “domestic terrorists” and falsely claimed agents were in danger.

In frame-by-frame analyses, the press has shown that neither Good nor Pretti posed imminent danger. Nevertheless, officials claimed Pretti intended to “massacre law enforcement,” that the officer feared for his life, and that Pretti was an “assassin.” Similar falsehoods followed Good’s killing.

This too is not normal. No normal administration would rush to blame civilians killed by federal officers. But dictators define reality by repetition. They insist protesters are threats and justify violence against them.

Trump has long reveled in violent rhetoric. He urged supporters to “knock the crap out of” hecklers. He said, “When the looting starts, the shooting starts.” He asked why officers couldn’t “just shoot them in the legs or something.” That tone filters down.

In the Pretti case, outrage has become national. Even several Republican senators have demanded an investigation. Under pressure, Trump appears to be bending—slightly.

Meanwhile, in another let-them-eat-cake display, Trump will continue promoting the movie about his wife. On Thursday, it will premiere at what is now absurdly called the Donald J. Trump and the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Courtiers will attend, eager to flatter a man who has openly said, “Sometimes you need a dictator.”

While Minnesotans pray, cry, and march for peace, America’s first-ever royal family will celebrate itself.