Melania: The Spinoffs

By Laurie Baron in San Diego

Now that the history of cinema has been enriched with the premiere of Melania, Donald Trump is planning documentaries about other members of his inner circle to improve their public images. You can expect these films soon.

Kristi: This film opens with Kristi Noem recounting why she killed her dog, Cricket. In her memoir, she explained her motive by blaming Cricket for acting rambunctiously on a pheasant hunt and scaring the birds away. Now she has revised her story to appeal more to the MAGA base. According to this version, she bought the German wirehaired pointer and trained her to point at illegal aliens with criminal records so they could be apprehended by ICE. When Cricket just wanted to be petted by them, Noem considered deporting the dog back to Germany but decided to execute it as an unpatriotic traitor instead. The movie subsequently shows Noem visiting an ICE detention center to select immigrant women with chestnut brown tresses to be sheared to make Noem’s extensions. In another scene, she goes shopping for clothes at an Army surplus store.

Miller: To illustrate the domestic side of Stephen Miller, the camera crew follows him to his residence in a funeral home. After checking that ICE has made its quota of arrests for the day, he sleeps during the day in a gilded coffin that Donald Trump gave him as a gift. His nocturnal schedule dovetails perfectly with the President’s. During these evening sessions, he edits Trump’s Truth Social posts to render them crueler and more insensitive. He jokes with Trump that if his administration eliminates birthright citizenship, then the Department of Homeland Security will have to deport Barron.

Hegseth: Borrowing the approach of Miller, an interviewer goes inside Pete Hegseth’s home to record how he spends his days. In the morning, he gets a testosterone shot and shaves off any beard that has grown from the injection he received the day before. Then he enters his game room, where he plays with the GI Joe action figures he has collected over the years and competes with white Army generals in games like Risk, Call of Duty, and Battlefield. If they defeat him, they are court-martialed. In his room devoted to his hunting exploits, the stuffed head of Cricket hangs on the wall as an homage to his female counterpart, Kristin Noem. At every meal, he eats red meat and drinks a clear liquid that looks like water but smells like vodka. He finishes his day by dancing off his drunkenness with scantily clad women he has invited to party with him.

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Laurie Baron, retired from San Diego State University, is a professor emeritus of history.