Jimmy Kimmel Has Melania Meltdown: Pushes Conspiracy Theories to Explain Away High Ticket Sales, Audience Review Scores

Jimmy Kimmel is criticizing President Trump again, but this time he’s focusing on a new target: the Amazon MGM documentary Melania. He’s questioning the film’s success at the box office and how audiences have reacted, suggesting what many believe are unfounded conspiracy theories about its performance.

On a recent episode of Jimmy Kimmel Live!, Jimmy Kimmel publicly doubted how well the documentary was actually doing in theaters and whether its high ratings were genuine. He hinted that the movie’s ticket sales and positive reviews might have been faked, though he didn’t offer any proof.

Here’s the thing – his predictions were way off! It turns out people actually went to see the movie, and surprisingly, they enjoyed it. It completely threw his assumptions out the window, which is kind of funny to watch as a movie fan.

Kimmel Floats Ticket Block “Theory”

Okay, let’s talk box office. Jimmy Kimmel started his monologue by playfully poking fun at the surprisingly strong opening weekend for this documentary. Eight million dollars domestically? That’s huge for a political film, and he definitely wasn’t letting that fact go unnoticed. He seemed genuinely amused by how well it did, and made it a central point of his commentary.

Rather than accept that performance at face value, the host suggested something more nefarious.

According to sources, tickets to the show Melania were bought in bulk and given to Republican activists and residents of senior living facilities – essentially the same group, he explained. He joked that it might have sounded like, ‘Good morning, Mrs. Greenwald. Here are your heart pills and liver pills, and here are a couple of tickets to Melania.’

While framed as “comedy,” the insinuation was clear — that the audience turnout wasn’t organic.

As a big supporter of this film, I’ve been following all the discussions about ticket sales, and honestly, nobody has actually proven that buying tickets in bulk had any real impact on how well it did in theaters. It’s all just speculation at this point.

Buying up large numbers of movie tickets isn’t new in Hollywood. Disney, the company that owns ABC and Jimmy Kimmel’s show, has been accused of doing this before, often to boost appearances for promotions or opening weekend numbers. This makes Kimmel’s recent questions about ticket buying seem ironic – is he pointing out a real problem, or hinting at something the studios themselves have done?

Audience Score Mockery — Despite Overwhelming Approval

Kimmel then shifted the conversation to how the movie was being reviewed, noting the significant difference in opinion between professional critics and regular moviegoers.

According to reports tonight, critics have given the film ‘Melania’ a very low score of just 5% on Rotten Tomatoes. However, audiences seem to love it, giving it a 99% positive rating – even higher than the classic film The Godfather. The speaker jokingly suggested this positive audience response had nothing to do with Donald Trump.

This suggests the audience scores are being artificially altered somehow. However, Rotten Tomatoes’ current system makes that unlikely. Unlike critic reviews, audience scores are based on tickets actually purchased through the site, which makes it much harder to widely manipulate the results as Kimmel implies.

Viewers who actually purchased tickets gave the film an overwhelmingly positive score of 99%. However, the general online reaction is much more negative, with a score of only 29%. This big difference suggests that the overall score might not accurately reflect what people who saw the movie really thought.

Hollywood often accuses viewers of unfairly lowering scores (“review bombing”) when movies with strong progressive messages receive negative feedback. However, when a film with conservative themes is highly rated, the claim shifts to suggest the positive scores are artificially inflated.

The most likely reason for recent movie trends is something Hollywood doesn’t want to admit: there are a lot more moviegoers with traditional tastes than they thought – and the box office numbers prove it when these viewers either come to the theater or stay home.

Critics vs. Audiences — And One Major Credibility Problem

Jimmy Kimmel’s disregard for how audiences reacted to the film would be more convincing if critics themselves had been seen as completely trustworthy when reviewing it.

But that’s where the narrative starts to fracture.

Several critics who spoke negatively about Melania later admitted they hadn’t seen the film before sharing their opinions or ratings. This raises doubts about how valid some of the negative reviews really are.

Which raises the obvious question:

If people actually had to buy tickets and prove they watched the documentary… but reviewers freely criticized it without even seeing it… whose argument about whether it’s a valid work is stronger?

Demographics Tell the Real Story

The numbers from the film’s first weekend show a much more straightforward—and less mysterious—explanation of who went to see it.

According to theatrical tracking:

72% of the audience was female
83% were over the age of 45
Nearly 75% identified as White

The film did particularly well in cities like Dallas, Orlando, Tampa, Phoenix, and West Palm Beach – areas where similar documentaries often see strong results.

Basically, the number of people who attended matched pretty closely with who we thought would be interested in the topic.

No conspiracy required.

Kimmel Calls for ‘Investigation’ into ‘Melania’

Kimmel continued to play on the joke, turning it into a playful parody of an investigation. He jokingly called for Tulsi Gabbard and the FBI to investigate every movie theater in the country, demanding they seize everything from ticket machines to popcorn buckets as evidence.

Presented as a comedy, yet it still suggested the movie’s success wasn’t genuine or deserved.

When Ideology Collides With Audience Reality

The main issue with the disagreement between Kimmel and Melania isn’t actually about how many tickets were held or what scores the movie received. It’s about something else entirely.

It’s about expectation collapse.

Some media personalities, especially those who are critical of Donald Trump, seem surprised or unwilling to accept that a documentary about Melania Trump could be popular or well-received.

So rather than reevaluate their assumptions, the easier path is to question the data itself.

However, the data – including ticket sales, audience reviews, and who actually went to see the movie – all show a consistent trend.

People showed up. And many of them liked the film.

Despite what you might hear in late-night comedy, the real mystery isn’t about a conspiracy involving the audience – there’s simply no proof to support that idea.

2026-02-06 16:59