Billionaire's Melania snub suggests 'buyer's remorse' among Trump's enablers: analyst
The celebrities missing from the red carpet glitz of the Kennedy Center's premiere of Melania says more about Trump's fortunes than who was there, a Guardian columnist wrote Friday.
Most notably, Amazon founder and billionaire Jeff Bezos and his wife snubbed the event — a move that suggested second thoughts among the ultra-wealthy class largely responsible for President Donald Trump's rise to power, wrote Marina Hyde.
"How heartbreaking to look at the parade of henchmen and their out-of-towner wives and realize that there was absolutely no sign of Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez Bezos," Hyde quipped.
"What happened? Not only did Jeff’s Amazon pay hysterically over the odds to license and market the film, but he and Lauren have never met a red carpet they didn’t love."
Bezos' Amazon paid $35 million to produce Melania, a documentary about the first lady, followed by millions more to market it. It's predicted by many industry insiders to become a major flop.
Thursday night's premiere was attended by multiple administration insiders, along with celebrities including rapper Nikki Minaj.
But, despite Amazon's substantial financial investment in licensing and marketing the film, Bezos and his wife failed to appear despite, earlier that week, attending Paris couture shows with considerable fanfare.
Apple CEO Tim Cook's attendance at a separate White House screening on Saturday raised internal concerns at the company. An online photograph of Cook posing with documentary director Brett Ratner generated backlash among Apple employees, prompting Cook to issue a public statement calling for "de-escalation in tensions in Minneapolis" — a carefully worded response to the controversy surrounding his presence at an event coinciding with federal enforcement operations that resulted in civilian deaths.
Ratner, making his documentary directorial debut, brings a complicated history. During the #MeToo movement, actress Olivia Munn publicly accused him of engaging in inappropriate behavior in his trailer. Ratner has denied these allegations. Munn currently stars in Apple's series "Your Friends & Neighbours," creating an awkward dynamic with her employer's visible support for the director.
The pattern suggests tech executives may face pressure similar to that experienced by Russian oligarchs under Putin's regime, Hyde wrote in the column, titled, "From ICE to Melania’s black carpet, are Trump’s techlords getting pangs of buyer’s remorse?"
"Could it be that the techlords are starting to realize what they got into with Trump?" she added.
" ... But the worry for the techlords must be that the increasingly erratic Trump is only just getting started with them. Whose turn will it be next? You’ve heard plenty about tipping points this week – but the big one will be when the cost of doing business starts to really cost these guys business."