Last week the 96th Academy Awards had everything: male near-nudity, a Field of Dreams rant, a dog. It also had a brief appearance by someone who wasn’t exactly welcome: Donald Trump. The former president didn’t appear in the flesh, but his words did appear near the end, when host Jimmy Kimmel read aloud his negative pan of the show as it was still in progress. Well, sir, Trump didn’t like that.
Trump: Jimmy Kimmel’s ratings are terrible. He’s not a talented guy… pic.twitter.com/k9ZP9MFlQf
— Acyn (@Acyn) March 17, 2024
Per Mediaite, Trump did a Fox News sit-down Sunday, where he again claimed the 2020 election was “rigged” and said it’s unclear how Alexei Navalny died. He also fielded a softball question about his anti-Kimmel rant, which unwittingly wound up on the show itself.
“Every night he hits me, I guess,” Trump explained. “His ratings are terrible. He’s not a talented guy. I hear he hits me all the time, so I figured I’d hit him because I thought he was a lousy host.”
What he wasn’t expecting was for Kimmel to read the whole thing aloud on live television. After all, it wasn’t exactly flattering.
“I said, ‘this guy’s even dumber than I thought,’” said Trump. “The thing went viral. It’s been all over the world now, and all he had to do is keep his mouth shut.”
Of course, Trump’s takes aren’t exactly respected in Hollywood, and the crowd surely got that the joke was on him, not on Kimmel.
In his Truth Social post, Trump went off on Kimmel’s emcee bona fides. “Has there EVER been a WORSE HOST than Jimmy Kimmel at The Oscars,” he wrote. “His opening was that of a less than average person trying too hard to be something which he is not, and never can be. Get rid of Kimmel.”
After reading the post to howls, Kimmel quipped, “Isn’t it past your jail time?”
Trump had a busy one this weekend. Not only did he chat with Fox News in person, but he also held a rally in which he vowed that if he wasn’t re-elected, the American auto industry would suffer a “bloodbath” — a choice of words that didn’t exactly allay fears of potential political violence from the Jan. 6 guy.
(Via Mediaite)