2024 Academy Awards: Kimmel takes dig at Trump after former president pans performance

LOS ANGELES — Politics was a relatively low-key subject during most of the 96th Academy Awards ceremony on Sunday, but host Jimmy Kimmel had a last-minute comeback after receiving what amounted to a “mean tweet” from former President Donald Trump.

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Kimmel, just before the 3 1/2-hour show ended, read aloud the social media post from his cellphone, Variety reported. The post sounded like a segment from his recurring sketch “Celebrities Read Mean Tweets.”

Trump, writing on his Truth Social media platform, blasted Kimmel as being “disjointed, boring and very unfair,” according to Deadline.

“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 to be something which he is not, and never can be,” Trump wrote. “Get rid of Kimmel and perhaps replace him with another washed up, but cheap, ABC ‘talent,’ George Slopanopoulos. He would make everybody on stage look bigger, stronger, and more glamorous.”

“Blah, blah, blah, Make America Great Again,” Kimmel said, still reading the post out loud.

“OK, now, see if you can guess which former president just posted that on RruthSsocial. Anyone? No? Well, thank you, President Trump,” Kimmel said. “Thank you for watching, I’m surprised you’re still -- isn’t it past your jail time?”

Trump had shared the post with his 6.7 million Truth Social followers about 45 minutes before Kimmel responded.

That was one of the few American partisan political jokes from Kimmel, who spent much of his air time joking about nominees and the length of the Oscars telecast. He did make a brief mention of U.S. Sen. Katie Britt, R-Ala., joking about her response to President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address on Thursday.

Other than that exchange about Trump, politics played a prominent, but less bombastic part during Sunday’s telecast.

Many attendees at the Oscars ceremony, including Mark Ruffalo and Billie Eilish, wore red pins in support of a ceasefire in Gaza, Variety reported.

“The Zone of Interest” director Jonathan Glazer, accepting an Academy Award for best international feature, spoke about the violence in the Middle East and compared it to the message of his Holocaust film, according to the entertainment news website.

“Our film shows where dehumanization leads at its worst,” Glazer told the audience. “It shaped all of our past and present. Right now, we stand here as men who refute their Jewishness and the Holocaust being hijacked by an occupation which has led to conflict for so many innocent people. Whether the victims of October 7th in Israel or the ongoing attack on Gaza, all the victims of this dehumanization -- how do we resist?”

Mstyslav Chernov, who directed the Oscar-winning documentary feature “20 Days in Mariupol,” brought up the conflict in Ukraine, Deadline reported.

“I’m honored, but probably I will be the first director on the (Oscar) stage who will say, ‘I wish I would never make this film,’” Chernov said. “I wish to be able to exchange this (for) Russia never attacking Ukraine, never occupying our cities.

“I wish to give all the recognition to Russia not killing tens of thousands of my fellow Ukrainians. I wish for them to release all the hostages, all the soldiers who are protecting their lands, all the civilians who are now in their jails. But I cannot change the history, cannot change the past. But we all together, among you, some of the most talented people in the world, we can make sure that the history record is set straight and that the truth will prevail and that the people of Mariupol and those who have given their lives will never be forgotten.”

Cillian Murphy, who won the best actor award for his role in “Oppenheimer,” appealed for world peace.

“We made a film about the man who created the atomic bomb, and for better or worse, we are all living in Oppenheimer’s world,” Murphy said. “So I would really like to dedicate this to the peacemakers everywhere.”

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