Melania Trump tried to do damage control over the Minnesota ICE unrest. It’s going worse than ever

With Minneapolis in crisis and the polls sliding, Fox & Friends aired the strangest PR campaign in modern history for the first lady’s $75 million Amazon documentary, writes Holly Baxter

Guys, I know there is a lot happening in Minneapolis right now. But have you seen the new Melania film?!

If not, Fox & Friends would very much like to fix that for you.

Tuesday morning opened with a bang in Far-Right Messaging Land — not the bang of a masked federal agent executing a medical worker in the street, but the bang of party poppers! Because, what with all the “shooting Renee Good in the face and then calling her a bitch” and the Alex Pretti stuff and the “locking up American citizens for a while just for looking a bit brown” thing, everyone’s sort of forgotten about Melania’s big moment. She had just 20 days before Inauguration Day to get the East Wing ready, for God’s sake!

So, on Tuesday, America was treated to an interview. It opened with a trailer for the movie, all swelling orchestral music over close-up shots of a black stiletto emerging from a limo and imagery of the First Lady sitting comfortably on Air Force One. The aesthetic is somewhere between Sex and the City and a prestige fascism biopic: lingering shots of Melania nodding solemnly, repeating what her husband has just said, lips glossy, posture perfect; men in the background enacting Project 2025. Just before the clip cuts off, the First Lady is shown with her stylist sketching out the design for her inaugural ball gown. Who cares if people are dying outside? Would you look at that dress!

The opening question on Fox & Friends as soon as the trailer cut off was, naturally ... about Minneapolis! Over a chyron at the bottom of the screen reading, “MELANIA THE MOVIE OUT ON FRIDAY,” the First Lady was asked: “What is your message to America about unifying both sides?”

Melania Trump called for peaceful protests in Minneapolis — where two US citizens have died at the hands of federal agents — as she hawked her new documentary on Fox & Friends Tuesday. (Fox News)

This, presumably, is because the polling and reviews on the Trump administration’s actions in Minnesota do not look great for her husband.

Obviously rounding up people of color (including 2-year-old citizens and 5-year-olds in Spiderman backpacks and bunny hats on their way home from preschool) was going to be OK. Tearing breastfeeding babies off their screaming mothers and then sending Mommy to Cuba? Sure. Renee Good — well, she was a liberal, queer woman, and she was also a woman driving a car, so maybe that “f***ing bitch” got what she deserved.

But Alex Pretti changed the optics. He was a white man, yes, and that helps, but also an ICU nurse for veterans? A legal gun owner who, according to video footage, only had his phone out — not a handgun — and was busy asking a woman if she was OK? What’s the messaging here? It was “law and order” a couple weeks ago; now it’s just emptying a cartridge into a Boy Scout.

Trump tried the whole “don’t carry a loaded gun around with you at a protest” thing but I mean, come on. Kyle Rittenhouse took an assault weapon to a protest, killed two people, walked free — and got a standing ovation at AmericaFest. The Second Amendment crowd is not going to buy this pivot.

So out comes the big red UNITY button. And unity, in American politics, still requires a woman’s face.

Not that woman, obviously (the one known for cheerfully recounting how she killed a puppy.) No, not Kristi Noem — we need a woman who sounds soothing on television. A woman who wasn’t recently photographed in a bulletproof vest and combat gear, brandishing a weapon. And yes, preferably — conveniently — a woman who also has a movie to promote.

Enter Melania Trump.

There she was on Fox & Friends: immaculate blowout, full makeup, tone grave and disconcertingly maternal. “Please, if you protest, protest in peace,” she said (obvious subtext about Good and Pretti: they had it coming.) The body count involving ICE was now two-to-zero, but never mind that.

This screengrab of video footage shot by @dangjessie, shows ICU nurse Alex Pretti (L) and a federal immigration agent (C) before he was shot dead in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on January 24, 2026. (@dangjessie/UGC)

Stills from a video taken by ICE agent Jonathan Ross of Renee Nicole Good shortly before he fatally shot her (Alpha News/Jonathan Ross)

“We need to unify. I’m calling for unity.” Her husband, she explained, was speaking with Minnesota Governor Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey; together they were “working to make it peaceful without riots.” Because the riots really are the issue. Did you hear that, Republican voters? The riots! My God, the midterms are coming. RIOTS!

She then expressed “deep compassion” for those affected by the winter storms. “I hope the weather will get better soon.” (I, too, was reminded of Eleanor Roosevelt’s Pearl Harbor address.)

The documentary, in case you missed it, is called Melania.

It may be the strangest PR campaign in modern American politics. The audience, Melania Trump explained to a Fox News host, will see “how I manage my business, philanthropy,” and inside her East Wing office, as well as that renovation of her husband’s that rendered it demolished.

They’ll get to see what she thought about the Christmas decorations and the annual Easter egg roll. Invading Greenland and deconstructing NATO? No, she’ll be sharing scintillating details like the fact that the Bidens were “very nice” and “cordial” in the car on the way to Trump’s second inauguration. Sometimes she gives her husband advice, by the way. She’s “very action-oriented”.

Behind her, the black-and-white backdrop simply read (you’ll never guess): MELANIA. Viewers were encouraged to visit her website to learn more about her work with kids (not those kids. Stop asking about those kids!)

Outside the Fox News Rockefeller Center studios, the country continued to burn and freeze and burn. Alex Pretti’s parents released a statement asking that people remember their son was “a good man” and that they’ve been sickened by the “reprehensible and disgusting” lies told about him “by this administration”.

Inside the studio, however, unity was being sold: tastefully lit, carefully framed and beautifully packaged — and out in all good movie theaters Friday.