Jeff Bezos Gave US ALL the Middle Finger…

Written by Ben Meiselas

I will keep this short, Meidas Mighty.

The fires here in Los Angeles, where I live, are bad.

I am still slightly outside the danger zone, but things are moving quickly.

My heart goes out to all those who were impacted.

Yesterday, we learned that Jeff Bezos, on behalf of Amazon, paid Melania Trump $40 million to license her documentary produced by disgraced director Brett Ratner.

As a “licensing deal,” Amazon doesn’t even get to own the film; they just get to distribute the film on their platform for a limited time during a “licensing period.”

To be clear, this is an unheard-of deal.

No one is getting paid anywhere near this amount of money for documentaries in 2025.

Most subjects of a documentary don’t get paid anything.

If they are paid for their personal archive or a licensing fee, no studio is paying anything remotely close to what Melania was paid, not even for the biggest stars.

The fact that this is a licensing deal and not an ownership deal makes it all the more untethered from the realm of a normal deal in this space.

I know this area very well because, when I was a practicing lawyer, I did movie, TV, and documentary deals at the highest level.

Before starting Meidas, I once negotiated deals directly with the heads of networks. I know this Melania deal is not a “normal deal.”

So what is going on here?

Well, we know that Bezos has been making the “pilgrimage of shame” to Mar-A-Lago and has been competing with Elon Musk for Donald Trump’s affection.

Gross.

Jeff Bezos is the epitome of “obey in advance.”

He is the epitome of a greedy oligarch.

He could be spending his wealth helping this country, but instead, he spends his time frolicking on superyachts, flying around in $100 million jets, shooting up rockets into the sky, and cuddling up with Donald Trump.

Again, gross.

Bezos likely saw the $15 million Disney funneled to Trump through the so-called “defamation settlement” between ABC and Trump and figured, what better way to curry favor with Trump than by giving Melania $40 million?

What better way for Bezos to show Donald he is an obedient little boy than by doing the ultimate obedient move and writing a $40 million check to license what will probably be the worst documentary ever.

Who in the world wants to watch Melania do anything?

Seriously, who?

This is as pathetic as it gets.

What pisses me off also is thinking about how $40 million could be spent for good.

There are so many nonprofits that money could go to.

There are so many valuable causes that money could go to.

I also think to myself about the small budgets pro-democracy media has and the day-in and day-out grind, while Melania is getting $40 million for total crap.

It’s gross. It’s disgusting.

Honestly, I don’t get why you would want to be a billionaire at all. How much money do you really need? It just seems so utterly wasteful and exploitative.

But then, even if you are a billionaire, if you have to behave in such a subservient fashion to someone like Trump and pay his wife $40 million, you really have given up all of your power and influence. So why even be a billionaire if you’re scared of your shadow like Bezos? The whole thing just seems so weird to me.

Anyway, whenever I feel like a billionaire oligarch is giving us all the middle finger, I try to channel it in the most productive ways by growing our 100 percent people-powered network here at the MeidasTouch Network even bigger.

We hit our paid subscriber goal yesterday.

Today, we’re trying to hit 100 paid subscribers to this Substack to send a message to Bezos and the oligarchs that we are going to keep on growing when they pull these stunts for Donald.

We might not have outside investors.

We might not have fancy shareholders or any shareholders at all.

We don’t want them.

We want to be people-powered and grow with this Substack.

It’s unconventional, sure.

But hey, we get better ratings on digital platforms than these billion-dollar companies.

So take that, Bezos.

If you can become a paid subscriber now, that would be super helpful. Let’s send a powerful message today!

If not, no worries.

Keep spreading the word about the MeidasTouch Network.

I hope you are enjoying our content on this Substack, which our team spends a long time curating.

We appreciate you, Meidas Mighty. Thank you to all, and thank you to our new subscribers who are joining now.

Let’s do this! Let’s make history together.