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Politics have never been far removed from the Academy Awards ceremony. More than 80 years ago, when Hattie McDaniel became the first Black woman to win an Oscar, for her supporting role in Gone with the Wind, she had to sit at a small table against the wall at the Cocoanut Grove, which had a whites-only policy at the time.
More recently, Patricia Arquette called for equal pay for women during her acceptance speech for best supporting actress in Boyhood; Leonardo DiCaprio reminded people of climate change after winning best actor for The Revenant; and Spike Lee, winning best adapted screenplay for BlacKkKlansman in 2019, called on people to get out and vote “on the right side of history” in the 2020 election.
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In one of the more controversial Oscar moments, Michael Moore, accepting the best documentary prize for Bowling for Columbine, called out then-president George Bush for the recent U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. The stars in attendance were split between cheering and booing until the orchestra drowned him out.
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But the salvos have traditionally been lobbed from the Oscar ceremony to the corridors of power. Not so last night, when host Jimmy Kimmel interrupted the flow of events to read a social media post from former president Donald Trump.
“I just got a review,” he began, before reading out: “Has there ever been a worse host than Jimmy Kimmel at the Oscars? His opening was that of a less than average person trying too hard be something which he is not and never can be. Get rid of Kimmel and perhaps replace him with another washed up but cheap ABC talent, George ‘Slopanopoulos.’ He would make everybody onstage look bigger, stronger and more glamorous … blah, blah, blah, make America great again.”
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When the laughter died down, Kimmel continued: “Now, see if you can guess which former president just posted that on Truth Social. Anyone? No? Well, thank you, President Trump. Thank you for watching, I’m surprised … isn’t it past your jail time?”
Interviewed backstage right after the show wrapped, Kimmel told talk-show hosts Kelly Ripa and Mark Consuelos that he’d been advised against reading Trump’s remarks but had gone ahead with it anyway.
“They’re like, ‘You’ve got a little bit of time,’ and I was like, ‘I’m reading the Trump tweet,’ and they’re like, ‘No, no, don’t read that,’” he said, adding his final word on the matter: “Yes I am.”
It’s not the first time Trump has taken a swipe at the awards show. In 2021 the former president issued an official statement to the effect that calling the show “the Oscars” and not “The Academy Awards” was to blame for its declining viewership, adding: “If they keep with the current ridiculous formula, it will only get worse — if that’s possible.”
The previous year, while in office, Trump had complained about the best picture prize going to the South Korean film Parasite, asking: “What the hell was all that about? We got enough problems with South Korea on trade, and on top of it they give it the best movie of the year. Was it good?” He followed up that remark by asking: “Can we get Gone with the Wind Back, please?”
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