Military Pressured to See 'Melania' Against Their Will [View all]

Source: Daily Beast

Updated Feb. 7 2026 3:21AM EST
Published Feb. 6 2026 7:18PM EST


Thousands of active-duty military personnel may have been “pressured” into seeing the Melania documentary at cinemas around the country, a watchdog has warned. The $75 million Amazon film opened last week to $7 million at the box office—despite universally terrible reviews.

According to the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, those numbers have been artificially inflated by pressure from MAGA-aligned officers leaning on their troops to buy tickets. “People are scared,” Mikey Weinstein, president and founder of the MRFF, said. Weinstein said he has received letters from members of the U.S. military at eight facilities worldwide, complaining that their superiors encouraged or pressured them to see the film.

He told Business Insider. “They were pressured to see the movie. Your military superior, that’s not your shift manager at Taco Bell or Starbucks. They have complete and total control over you.”

The MRFF, a non-profit founded in 2005 to promote the separation of church and state within the military, has roughly 100,000 members. “Nobody that I know wanted to go except for those that did not want to get jacked up by our unit commander for not attending,” one of those members told Weinstein in a letter seen by journalist Jonathan Larsen. The unit commander in question is alleged to have worn red MAGA hats in the past and “made it very clear” how he feels about those who do not support the administration’s agenda.

Read more: https://www.thedailybeast.com/obsessed/military-pressured-to-see-melania-whistleblowers-warn/