Donald Trump broke his silence on the 2017 Oscars Best Picture flub and claimed that the epic mix-up happened only because the stars were too busy attacking him during the Sunday, February 26, ceremony.
“I think they were focused so hard on politics that they didn’t get the act together at the end,” he told Breitbart News on Monday, February 27. “It was a little sad. It took away from the glamour of the Oscars. It didn’t feel like a very glamorous evening. I’ve been to the Oscars. There was something very special missing, and then to end that way was sad.”
As previously reported, presenters Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway were accidentally given the wrong card and announced that La La Land won the night’s most prestigious award. After the entire cast of the musical rom-com took the stage and started giving their acceptance speeches, organizers came out to clarify that Moonlight had actually won Best Picture. La La Land producer Jordan Horowitz explained to the crowd that it was “not a joke” and smoothly invited the Moonlight cast on stage to claim the award.
Earlier in the ceremony, host Jimmy Kimmel took aim at the POTUS during the show at L.A.’s Dolby Theatre. “I want to say thank you to President Trump. Remember last year when it seemed like the Oscars were racist?” he said in his opening monologue of the 2015 #OscarsSoWhite controversy. “It’s gone thanks to him.”
The 49-year-old comedian also did a bit about Trump’s tweeting habits. “We’re more than two hours into the show, and Donald Trump has not tweeted at us once,” he said. “I’m starting to get worried about him. Hold on a second.”
The late-night TV host proceeded to pull out his smartphone, which was connected to a projector, and typed out several tweets to Trump. “Hey @realDonaldTrump u up?” he wrote, adding in a second tweet, “@realDonaldTrump #Merylsayshi.” The commander in chief previously tweeted that Meryl Streep was “overrated” after she blasted him in her 2017 Golden Globes speech last month.
Kimmel wasn’t the only one who blasted Trump, though. Mexican actor Gael Garcia Bernal spoke out about the planned border wall, saying, “As a Mexican, as a migrant worker, as a human being, I’m against any form of wall that separates us.” Iranian director Asghar Farhadi had a statement read on his behalf when he won for Best Foreign Language Film that stated he didn’t attend “out of respect for the people of my country and those of other six nations whom have been disrespected by the inhumane law that bans entry of immigrants to the U.S.”
The businessman-turned-politician’s son, Donald Jr., also slammed the Oscars on Twitter on Monday. “Interesting mistake, its almost like Hollywood doesn’t really care about the little people behind the scenes,” he wrote, along with a link to a story about the Academy putting a photo of still-alive producer Jan Chapman in the “In Memoriam” segment.
