Los Angeles Metro officials have had to move several buses with ads for First Lady Melania Trump’s new documentary, Melania, after people vandalized images of her at bus stops.
For the last several weeks, people have been vandalizing promotional posters for the documentary at bus stops, adding things like devil horns and Hitler mustaches to Melania's image.
The city's metro officials told the LA Times that the vandalism kicked off after federal immigration agents shot and killed Alex Pretti, 37, in Minneapolis last week.
One of the officials called the damage to bus stops carrying the ad "extensive and severe."
“Given that Metro buses have had significant vandalism and damage during previous periods of heightened public activity, we made the decision in the interest of protecting our riders, employees and assets, and out of an abundance of caution, to shift some of these buses to areas where we were not observing that vandalism,” Metro spokesperson Patrick Chandler told the LA Times on Thursday.
An activist collective in LA called Indecline took responsibility for at least one of the defaced posters. The group shared a video on its Instagram of the defaced poster, which altered the image of the first lady sitting in a chair to her defecating on an American flag.
“We know that as a proud immigrant, Melania Trump gives a s*** about America. We also know that advanced ticket sales to her documentary have been abysmal," Indecline wrote in a cheeky Instagram post. "So, as lovers of cinema, we have gone to great lengths and risks to help create a little marketing buzz ahead of her big premiere tomorrow."
LA Metro officials reportedly moved the buses with Melania advertisements to areas with less graffiti.
They said that all of the buses are still in active service.
The documentary, which tracks the first lady during the 20 days leading up to Trump's return to the White House, premiered on Thursday night in Washington, D.C. at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.
The Independent's chief television critic, Nick Hilton, called the documentary a "ghastly bit of propaganda" and gave it a one-star rating.
"It will exist as a striking artefact – like The Birth of a Nation or Triumph of the Will – of a time when Americans willingly subordinated themselves to a political and economic oligopoly," Hilton writes.
Amazon paid approximately $40 million — including $28 directly to the first lady — to make the documentary.
The National Research Group, which tracks various industries, predicts that the documentary will bring in $5 million during its opening weekend, Puck reports.
The film will have to compete with Sam Raimi's horror thriller Send Help, projected to bring in between $14 million and $17 million domestically.
The president praised the film after its debut screening, writing in a Truth Social post that it is a "MUST WATCH" and insisting that it is "SELLING OUT FAST," though data and initial reviews don't support either claim.
When a reporter at the documentary's premiere asked the first lady to describe the making of the film in three words, she gave the following not-three-word response:
“I think the people will judge it for themselves,” she replied, according to The Daily Beast. “It’s beautiful, it’s emotional, it’s fashionable, it’s cinematic, and I’m very proud of it.”
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