Melania is a rubbish film. Of course the man who defunded the arts loves it

The documentary premiered at the Kennedy Center. Three days later, the president announced he was shutting it down

• This was originally published in This Week in Trumpland; sign up to receive it in your inbox every Wednesday

Has anyone seen Melania (the film) yet? I have. I went to watch it on Friday morning. The idea was to interview other people watching the movie: to get a sense of why they wanted to see it, how they felt about Melania, how weird they were, etc.

It didn't really work that well in the end, because most of the crowd at the AMC in midtown Manhattan were journalists trying to do the exact same thing as me. As far as I could tell, three non-reporters attended our showing. Of the two who agreed to talk to me, one was there because he had a monthly movie theater pass, and the other was a man who, without wanting to be too unkind, had a very low bar for compelling drama. (I think it's interesting just to kind of see, you know, how her life really is, at least to some extent," this person told me.)