\nMilitary Pressured to See \u2018Melania\u2019 Against Their Will<\/h3>\n
Thousands of active-duty military personnel may have been \u201cpressured\u201d into seeing the Melania documentary at cinemas around the country, a watchdog has warned.<\/p>\n
The $75 million Amazon film opened last week to $7 million at the box office\u2014despite universally terrible reviews.<\/p>\n
According to the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, those numbers have been artificially inflated by pressure from MAGA-aligned officers leaning on their troops to buy tickets.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople are scared,\u201d Mikey Weinstein, president and founder of the MRFF, said. Weinstein said he has received letters from members of the U.S. military at eight facilities worldwide, complaining that their superiors encouraged or pressured them to see the film.<\/p>\n
He told Business Insider. \u201cThey were pressured to see the movie. Your military superior, that\u2019s not your shift manager at Taco Bell or Starbucks. They have complete and total control over you.\u201d<\/p>\n
The MRFF, a non-profit founded in 2005 to promote the separation of church and state within the military, has roughly 100,000 members.<\/p>\n
\u201cNobody that I know wanted to go except for those that did not want to get jacked up by our unit commander for not attending,\u201d one of those members told Weinstein in a letter seen by journalist Jonathan Larsen.<\/p>\n
The unit commander in question is alleged to have worn red MAGA hats in the past and \u201cmade it very clear\u201d how he feels about those who do not support the administration\u2019s agenda.<\/p>\n
He is also alleged to have made seeing Melania count as one of the three \u201cunit activity events\u201d service members are required to attend each month. Such events are designed to promote bonds within combat units and their families.<\/p>\n
The letter said, \u201c\u2026he \u2018advised\u2019 our unit members and their families to join him and his wife and children for a showing of that new documentary called \u2018Melania\u2019 at an off-base movie theater\u2026 When he said \u2018advised\u2019, we know what that meant.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe feel helpless to try to fight against what he is doing here.\u201d<\/p>\n
Weinstein said that manipulating troops to spend their leisure time on ideologically driven activities negatively affects unit cohesion.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt tears it down,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s like injecting cancer into the body of the military unit.\u201d<\/p>\n
In a statement to the Daily Beast, the Department of Defense said that there \u201cis no Department of War [sic] directive requiring service members to see this film, though the film is fantastic.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump has given the Department of Defense the secondary title \u201cdepartment of war,\u201d but cannot legally rename it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
There’s that impartiality we expect from a “news” organization like the Daily Beast. There’s more at the source if you’re looking to crack a molar grinding your teeth.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Melania has a new documentary out. As stunning as she is to look at, and impressive … Troops ordered to see Melania documentary?<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":664,"featured_media":84597,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[646],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-179257","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-morale"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179257","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/664"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=179257"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179257\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/84597"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=179257"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=179257"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=179257"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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