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Melania Trump is capping her first year back as first lady with the global release of a documentary she produced about the 20 days leading up to husband Donald Trump’s return to the White House.A private person, Melania Trump remains a bit of a mystery to the public in her husband’s second term. “Melania” premiered Thursday at the Kennedy Center before it is released on Friday in more than 1,500 theaters in the U.S. and around the world.“I want to show the audience my life, what it takes to be a first lady again and (the) transition from private citizen back to the White House,” Melania Trump told reporters as she and the president moved along a charcoal-colored walkway at the event attended by Cabinet members, members of Congress and conservative commentators.She said viewers will see how she conducts her businesses and philanthropy, cares for her family and builds her White House team.“It’s beautiful, it’s emotional, it’s fashionable, it’s cinematic and I’m very proud of it,” she said.The documentary was produced by AmazonMGM Studios and is said to have cost $40 million. It will stream exclusively on the Amazon Prime Video streaming service after its theatrical run.Director Brett Ratner said his measure of success would not be box-office performance.“It’s a documentary and documentaries historically have not been huge box office smashes,” he told reporters on his way into the premiere. “You can’t expect a documentary to play in theaters.”The Republican president saw the nearly two-hour film for the first time at a private White House screening over the weekend. He said Thursday that he thought it was “really great.”“It really brings back a glamour that you just don’t see anymore,” Trump said. “Our country can use a little bit of that, right?” ‘Melania’ more than a year in the making It was unclear how much money Melania Trump stands to earn or what her plans are for any film proceeds. Experts said it was unusual for a first lady to pursue a project of this kind from the White House but not unusual for the Trumps.“As far as I know, she’s the first first lady to be paid a lot of money to have a documentary made about her and it is unprecedented in terms of the Trumps because they are always breaking precedent,” said Katherine Jellison, professor emerita of history at Ohio University.Asked about the sum, Trump mentioned the book deal for Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle, that the publisher announced in 2017, shortly after he left office.Presidents and first ladies generally refrain from pursuing outside business ventures while in office to avoid potential conflicts of interest or raising ethical concerns.Both Trumps participate in numerous business ventures, selling everything from watches, fragrances and Bibles for him to jewelry, Christmas ornaments and digital collectibles for her.Marc Beckman, the first lady’s longtime senior adviser, defended the financial arrangement, which Amazon has declined to comment on. He noted that she was a private citizen when Amazon announced the film in January 2025 and that she is unelected and receives no salary as first lady. “So why should we limit her?” he said Thursday.The movie also marks another link between the Trumps and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who has worked to improve a once-tense relationship with the president.Melania Trump said Thursday that a bidding process was conducted and that Amazon “was the best because they agreed to do theatrical releases.”The movie is the first project by Ratner since he was accused of sexual misconduct in the early days of the #MeToo reckoning. Ratner’s lawyer has denied the allegations. ‘Here we go again’ In a scene from a teaser for the movie, it is Inauguration Day and Melania Trump is inside the Capitol, waiting to be escorted into the Rotunda for the ceremony. She turns her head, looks directly into the camera and says, “Here we go again.”She wrote in her self-titled memoir published in 2024 about how much she values her privacy. She is not seen or heard from as often as some of her recent predecessors, which may be influencing the public’s perceptions of her. But she also likes to do things her way.She said she did the film to show people what goes into becoming first lady.The U.S. public is divided on their views of her, but a significant number about 4 in 10 adults had no opinion or had not heard of her, according to a CNN poll from January 2025. About 3 in 10 adults saw her favorably while roughly the same share had an unfavorable opinion.Her standing among Republicans was higher, with about 7 in 10 saying in the poll that they viewed her favorably, but around one-quarter had no opinion.“I think it’s an attempt, in a way, to really augment or tailor or really refine her image for the American public,” said Katherine Sibley, who teaches history at Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia. “She’s a mystery to the American people.” First lady cites impactful first year of second Trump term Melania Trump, 55, said she’s honored to execute the traditional duties of first lady, such as planning state dinners, hosting the annual Easter Egg Roll and decorating for Christmas. But she also has said she wants to leave her mark in other ways, too.She spent chunks of time away from Washington last year working on the documentary and was deeply involved in every aspect of its development, according to Beckman.Her first-year record centers on the well-being and safety of children.She used her influence to lobby Congress to pass the “Take It Down Act,” making it a federal crime to publish intimate images online without consent. The president signed the bill into law and had her sign it, too.Her advocacy for foster children was enshrined in an executive order creating a “Fostering the Future” program. It’s part of the “Be Best” child-focused initiative she launched in the first term.She wrote to Russian President Vladimir Putin for help reuniting children who had been separated from their families because of his war against Ukraine. She had her husband hand-deliver the letter when the leaders met in Alaska, and she later announced that eight children had been reunited with their families.The first lady has a prominent role in the administration’s efforts on artificial intelligence and education and recently launched a global version of the foster child program.She told guests at a White House Christmas reception that she is working on a new legislative effort for 2026, but has not yet shared details. Associated Press writer Linley Sanders contributed to this reprt. Darlene Superville, Associated Press
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Gold and silver have had an exceptional year, breaking record high prices on whats felt like a daily basis. But, as the saying goes, what comes up must come down. On Friday, January 30, gold fell over 6.4%, to $4,962 per ounce in the lead-up to President Trumps announcement that Kevin Warsh is his pick to be the new Federal Reserve chair. Even a week ago, gold reaching over $4,900 would have been a record-breaking feat. The precious metal only topped $5,000 per ounce for the first time this past Monday. But, by Thursday, gold hit more than $5,580 per ounce, meaning it was up 23% for 2026 and more than 80% over the last 12 months. The idea of celebrating gold being worth below $5,000 was already long gone. As of publication, gold was at about $5,132 an ounce, over a 4% one-day drop. Silver, too, took a tumble on Friday. It fell more than 15% to near $95 per ounce after reaching a record high of over $121 per ounce the day before. The latter had meant that silver was up more than 65% this year and over 252% in the last 12 months. At publication, silver was at about $103 an ounce, just over an 11% one-day drop. Once again, this figure would have been remarkable until very recently, with silver reaching over $100 an ounce for the first time last Friday, January 23. Why are gold and silver dropping? The swift increase in gold and silvers worth has been primarily attributed to their status as safe-haven assets during a time of increasing geopolitical turbulence. Their fall came as Trump said on Thursday that he would be announcing his proposed replacement for Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell, whose term ends in May. Trump has continually criticized Powell, particularly for not lowering rates as fast as Trump would like. Earlier this week, the Fed voted to maintain interest rates. On Friday morning, Trump announced that he had chosen Warsh as Powells replacement. Warsh previously served as a Fed governor and has supported lowering interest rates. A stronger dollar is likely another reason for the falling price of gold and silver, as Barron’s points out. As the Financial Times reported, the U.S. dollar strengthened on Friday after Trump announced Warsh as his nominee.
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E-Commerce
Apple’s iPhone sales soared to a new quarterly record during the holiday season, despite artificial intelligence blunders that prompted the technology trendsetter to get a helping hand from Google.The October-December results announced Thursday reflect the allegiance of Apple’s fans, who eagerly snapped up the latest iPhone 17 models even though the company still hasn’t delivered on its 2024 promise to smarten up the device’s Siri assistance with AI.Apple tried to offset its AI miscues with a new “liquid glass” design for the iPhone 17 and older models installed by way of a free software upgrade released last September. That formula helped produce iPhone sales of $85.3 billion, a 23% increase from the same time in the previous year. It marked Apple’s highest iPhone sales for a three-month period since the device’s debut in 2007.“The demand for iPhone was simply staggering,” Apple CEO Tim Cook crowed during a conference call with analyst while predicting the device will become a cutting-edge platform for AI.The iPhone’s robust performance propelled Apple to a profit of $42.1 billion, or $2.84 per share for the quarter, a 16% increase from the previous year. Total revenue also rose 16% from the previous year to $143.8 billion. Both the earnings and sales exceeded the analyst projections that steer investors.Apple’s shares rose by about 1% in extended trading after the numbers came out. But the stock price still remains slightly down so far this year, and isn’t that much higher from where it finished at the end of 2024.Zacks Investment Research analyst Ethan Feller said the worries about Apple’s late start in AI appeared to have been overblown and now appears well positioned to roll out more of the technology “as a feature that scales naturally across its ecosystem,” which also includes iPads, Mac computers and smartwatches in addition to iPhones. Apple said more than 2.5 billion active devices worldwide are now running on its various operating systems.The Cupertino, California, company will try to sustain the momentum by finally releasing a batch of delayed AI features, including an Siri upgrade that is supposed to make the assistant more conversational and versatile.To pull it off, Apple is tapping into Google’s latest AI model, Gemini 3, in a tacit acknowledgment of its own shortcomings in a technology that’s widely considered to be the industry’s biggest breakthrough since the iPhone’s introduction.Despite its AI deficiencies, the iPhone ended last year as the worldwide sales leader with a nearly 20% market share that ranked just ahead of Samsung, according to the research firm International Data Corp.In a show of its confidence, Apple forecast its revenue for the January-March period will climb by at least 13% from last year, above the roughly 10% bump that analysts had been anticipating.The AI boom is confronting Apple with another challenge: a shortage of memory chips that for smartphones and laptops amid the voracious demand for the same processors in the massive data centers that are being built to power AI features.Besides threatening to curtail iPhone production, the memory chip crunch is also driving up their prices a factor that has already been eroding Apple’s profit margins. That financial pressure could eventually push Apple to raise the prices on iPhones and other products to help offset the rising memory chip costs“We do continue to see market pricing for memory increasing significantly,” Cook told analysts Thursday. “As always, we’ll look at a range of options to, to deal with that.” Michael Liedtke, AP Technology Writer
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