A Fox News host made the bizarre claim that Melania‘s mediocre performance at the box office should be scaring Democrats ahead of the midterm elections.
During Monday’s episode of Outnumbered on Fox News, panelist Paul Mauro claimed that the $75 million documentary of the first lady, which made less than 10 percent of its total budget in its opening weekend, signals that the midterm elections are not a done deal for the Democrats.
What Democrats are “really worried about is if this is indicia for the midterms,” Mauro, a former NYPD inspector, said. “They’re all saying, ‘Oh, it’s done, we’re gonna control Congress.’ This is the indication that the silent majority is still out there.”
The critically panned Melania documentary performed better than expected in red areas of the country, but brought in $7 million in its opening weekend. Amazon shelled out $40 million for the rights to Melania Trump’s story, and spent an additional $35 million marketing it.
Host Kayleigh McEnany also offered up an improbable telling of her mother’s supposed experience seeing Melania in theaters. McEnany, President Donald Trump’s former press secretary, said that her mother’s screening of the film was “standing room only,” even though that is not how movie theaters operate.
“Not only was the theater packed,” McEnany, 37, said, “it was standing room only, if you could try to sneak into the back of the theater.”
“People were cheering through it, they were excited,” she continued. “It was interactive—people interplaying with the film. She said it was just electric.”
"Melania should be nominated for—I guess it’s an Oscar, right? That’s for movies?" she added. “And if she was to go, she would be the best dressed and the classiest dressed by a long shot.”
Amazon, which funded the vanity project directed by accused sexual harasser and friend of sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein, Brett Ratner, chalked up the film’s middling box office performance as a success, comparing it to the box office numbers of past documentaries.
“We’re very encouraged by the strong start and positive audience response, with early box office for Melania exceeding our expectations," Amazon MGM Studios’ chief of domestic distribution, Kevin Wilson, told The Hollywood Reporter.
The film bombed with critics, scoring only seven percent on Rotten Tomatoes, but has a suspiciously high 99 percent audience score.
The Daily Beast’s Kevin Fallon called it “a level of insipid propaganda that almost resists review; it’s so expected and utterly pointless.”
