She's just another money-grubbing Trump

This is the woman who sells NFTs, who spitefully wore a coat emblazoned with the words "I don't really care, Do U?", and whose name is Trump.  I don't know what you expected.

Records show Melania Trump was also paid $250,000 for a Log Cabin Republican event in December 2022, one of three payments for $250,000 or more that she received for speaking that month, just after the former president announced he was running for reelection, according to Donald Trump’s prior year financial disclosure form.

[...]

Last month, CNN revealed that the former first lady spoke at two political fundraisers for the Log Cabin Republicans this year, and she was paid $237,500 for an April event, according to former President Donald Trump’s latest financial disclosure form. The payment was listed as a “speaking engagement.”

  CNN

I hope they raised more than the fee they paid her.

CNN did not sign the agreement.

Days later, after a separate CNN journalist asked Skyhorse Publishing about the exorbitant interview fee, the publisher said it had sent the payment demand by mistake.

[...]

The “Confidential Material” in the contract is described as “the unpublished manuscript of the Work, notes, letters, photos, or verbal information of any kind and any information obtained from any third party that Publisher or Author treats as proprietary and designates as Confidential Material.”

Any CNN employee who would work on the interview would need to sign the NDA, the contract states, and each breach of the NDA would entitle Trump and/or her publisher “liquidated damages” of $100,000, according to the document.

The NDA has signature lines for CNN, Lyons, president of Skyhorse Publishing, which is distributed by Simon & Schuster, and the former first lady’s agent Marc Beckman.

[...]

“It’s totally unprecedented. No former first lady has ever done that,” said Kate Anderson Brower, author of “First Women: The Grace and Power of America’s Modern First Ladies.”

They're saying Melania didn't know anything about it. I expect she knew that was a standing requirement for her in any event.

“It is a consistent practice with Mrs. Trump to make the choices that work for her and to be unburdened by any past practice by anyone else. She is her own enterprise when it comes to everything in her life,” [Anita McBride, director of The Legacies of America’s First Ladies Initiative at American University and a former special assistant in the George W. Bush White House] said. “That’s the premise of her book. I’ve made my choices and not constricted by anyone else before her.”

[...]

[A]ny payment or donation from reporters or news organizations related to politics is considered the ultimate anathema, because of conflicts of interest.

[...]

Ahead of her memoir’s release, Trump has thus far only been interviewed by Fox News, which touted last month’s sit-down with Ainsley Earhardt as an exclusive, the first with the former first lady in two years. The interview included what appeared to be old family and personal photographs. Trump was also interviewed by Fox’s Sean Hannity Wednesday evening.

“We did not pay any fee whatsoever for the interview, including licensing fees for photos,” a spokesperson for Fox News told CNN.

Hmmm.

“It’s super suspect that a political figure’s spouse would want to be paid for something,” McBride said.

Trumps want to be paid for everything.

Trump could lose some MAGA votes if he can't control his own wife.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.