First lady Melania Trump dropped a little teaser for her “Fostering the Future Together Global Coalition Summit” on X Monday afternoon, so let’s get hyped. Not that you’d know what to get hyped about from the brief video—it literally contains the name of the summit, the dates, and that Melania will be putting on this charade with the help of the White House and the State Department.
Well, to be fair, the video also included Melania’s first lady seal, which is hilarious as there is no such thing as a first lady seal, nor has anyone prior to Melania tried to have one.
Okay, so back to Fostering the Future. Melania is bringing together 45 countries and 28 tech companies to “empower children through education and technology.”
“Melania, the movie” by Clay Jones
Ooh, empower how? With AI, of course. “Fostering the Future Together will make available to countries of the world advanced technology, including artificial intelligence (Al), to assist children, educators, and parents, while also protecting them from online dangers.”
Despite all the fanfare, it isn’t really possible to determine who is attending.
Of the 45 countries, there is a “sampling” of member nations, one that dovetails with quite a few of the samples also being members of Trump’s Board of Peace. Membership is also limited to spouses of heads of state, not the heads of state themselves.
As far as the 28 companies? The “sampling” of attendees there includes OpenAI, Microsoft, xAI, Meta, Palantir, Adobe, Google, and Zoom Communications.
Nothing says “tools to empower children and keep them safe” like having Palantir in attendance. Are the children of the world crying out for more efficient brutalization of immigrants? And Meta! The company that is the defendant in a six-week trial over whether it lied about the safety—or lack thereof, really—of its platforms, allegedly putting profits first, rather than protecting children.
Related | Palantir happily helped Trump's deportation push—and screwed itself
Remember Be Best, Melania’s first-term initiative that was supposed to help children, somehow, vaguely? Fostering the Future is … part of Be Best? Perhaps Melania will pay more attention to Fostering the Future than she did Be Best, which didn’t do much save for highlighting existing government programs.
The Global Summit just looks like a way to build markets for favored Big Tech companies.
Indeed, it’s not a particularly subtle effort. The official White House page for this nonsense offers “a hands-on tech and education exposition for First Spouses and their advisors in attendance to engage directly with private-sector leaders and interface with a variety of innovative and educational products and services.”
Yeah, that’s a sales conference, not a global summit.
And who are the most-yet-unnamed technology partners? “Learning-tech companies, online safety firms, AI infrastructure partners, software firms, and hardware and device manufacturers.”
This isn’t about other countries, children, or safety. It’s about the American government coordinating with billionaires to get other countries to buy their stuff.
There’s little to no chance this was Melania’s idea, given that it mostly tracks the education ideas being pimped over at the ai.gov site, all of which are basically about forcing AI on K-12 schoolchildren so they will one day “thrive in the AI-driven workforce.”
But part of what makes Melania who she is is that she genuinely seems to believe that the no-show jobs invented for her are real, and that she is a deep thinker and an entrepreneur extraordinaire. Witness this cringe from her four-minute speech at the White House for Women’s History Month.
Melania is “often alone at the top,” but that helps her listen to her instinct and “always maintain a laser focus.”
A laser focus on … what, exactly?
“Attention to detail, demanding schedules, and multitasking are everyday realities when building towards success.”
Somehow Melania thinks that multitasking is her guiding light, and that “the principle resonates across all my roles as a mother, humanitarian, philanthropist, and entrepreneur as well as with my new film where I shaped its creative direction, served as a producer, managed post production, and activated the marketing campaign.”
See? Melania believes that the $75 million bribe that Amazon gave to Trump to make the documentary about her is a real thing, and that she did real marketing. If she did, she certainly wasn’t good at it, as the film disappeared after four weeks and bombed financially, making only about $16 million.
Melania is also convinced that all her other little fake companies and products are in demand,. According to Melania, it’s curiosity that gives her an “unrestricted mindset” that has led her to build across very different sectors: “fashion, digital assets, publishing, accessories, skincare, commercial television, and of course, film making.”
Lady, you went on Fox News to pimp your book, your ugly jewelry, and your even uglier ornaments. That’s not Fox News being blown away by the quality of Melania Trump, Renaissance Woman. That’s just giving the first lady airtime because it’s their business model.
Related | Melania Trump turns Fox News into the Home Shopping Network
And her book? Not really a successful publishing effort. Though it topped The New York Times Best Seller list its first week, it did so with 85,349 sales. In comparison, Michelle Obama’s “Becoming” sold 636,696 copies in its first week. And who can forget that the audiobook was AI-generated? See, even Melania didn’t want to read the whole book.
But how about those digital assets? She must be talking about her meme coin, the one that dropped 98% in value from January to August of last year. Real marketing genius on display there as well.
It’s pretty clear that Melania is being installed as the ostensible head of the Fostering the Future effort so that it looks like she’s doing first lady stuff. But let’s be honest: she’s going to wander off from this just as she did Be Best, but likely not until those big tech companies that are sucking up to Trump land some international deals. Billionaires gotta get paid.
