Oscars shots are pure gold for Trump
Hollywood elites’ snark bolsters prez
Before the best picture gaffe stole the show last night, Hollywood took some shots at President Trump during the Academy Awards, a chorus political strategists say plays right into the president’s hands and solidifies his status as the antithesis of liberal elites.
Host Jimmy Kimmel set into Trump right away, citing a “divided country” in his opening monologue and leading a standing ovation for legendary actress Meryl Streep, who made headlines after attacking Trump in her acceptance speech at the Golden Globes last month.
Kimmel mockingly referred to Streep as “overrated,” something Trump called Streep in a dismissive tweet after the Golden Globes, before honing in on race relations under Trump.
“I want to say thank you to President Trump. I mean, remember last year, when it seemed like the Oscars were racist?” Kimmel said. “That’s gone thanks to him.”
GOP strategist Ford O’Connell said the Americans who put Trump in the White House would likely be put off by quips at the commander in chief.
“Any time Hollywood liberals politically grandstand it helps the president,” O’Connell said. “Ordinary Americans have never been to Tinseltown, and their concerns revolve around making rent and paying college loans, not virtue signaling for the sake of standing on a red carpet.”
Later, Kimmel mocked Trump’s fondness for Twitter, noting the president hadn’t tweeted once during the show and saying he was “worried about him.”
A tweet Kimmel sent to Trump onstage, which read, “Hey @realDonaldTrump u up?” had been retweeted more than 175,000 times less than an hour later.
Democratic strategist Scott Ferson said politically outspoken celebrities and Trump are in a kind of dance aimed at provoking each other and topping the news cycle.
“This is a win-win situation for the person who does it and for the president, it seems to me,” Ferson said. “Hollywood gets to stand up to the president of the United States; it’s great for the people they pal around with. And the president gets to speak to his base, who hate Hollywood.”
Director Asghar Farhadi, an Iranian who won the best foreign language film award for “The Salesman,” boycotted the Oscars because of Trump’s travel ban and had a representative read a statement on his behalf from the podium.
“My absence is out of respect for the people of my country, and those of the other six nations whom have been disrespected by the inhumane law that bans entry of immigrants to the U.S.,” the representative read, saying the ban creates “a deceitful justification for aggression and war.”
When he took the stage as a presenter, Mexican actor Gael Garcia Bernal targeted Trump’s plan to build a massive wall along the Mexican border, saying: “As a Mexican, Latin-American, migrant worker, as a human being, I’m against any kind of wall that wants to separate us,” prompting some audience members to stand up and applaud.
And though the shots at Trump appeared to be wellreceived, Andrew Hemingway, co-chair of Trump’s New Hampshire campaign, agreed that stars outwardly opposing Trump “only helps him.”
“I think for a long time, the media and the elites, Hollywood, have been the perpetrators of a system that has put America in the position that it’s in today,” he said. “The average person in America recognizes that the elite are out of touch — they don’t have a clue.”