US Politics
Jimmy Kimmel’s Oscars slap at Melania Trump sends White House into a meltdown
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White House Communications Director Steven Cheung has lashed out at Jimmy Kimmel after he mocked First Lady Melania Trump’s new Amazon documentary at the Oscars.
Kimmel, presenting the award for Best Documentary, took to the stage in Los Angeles on Sunday night and said, without even having to invoke President Donald Trump by name: “Oh man, is he gonna be mad his wife wasn’t nominated for this.”
Cheung duly took to X (Twitter) to berate the stand-up comic, well known for ridiculing Trump on his nightly talk show, responding: “Jimmy Kimmel (Mr. Blackface) is a classless hack who is self-projecting his depression and sadness onto others.
“He lives a pathetic existence where nobody – not even his family – enjoys his miserable company. The only people giving him any attention are Hollywood Elites. BUH-BYE!”
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The West Wing aide was alluding to Kimmel’s earlier apology for doing impressions of Black celebrities like Oprah Winfrey and Snoop Dogg.
Other members of the MAGA community sharing clips of the joke and fuming included Benny Johnson, who called Kimmel: “Trump Derangement Syndrome patient zero. So pathetic.”
Another person branded the host a “Trump Deranged crybaby” and “the most broken man on planet Earth!” and a third described him as an “insufferable TDS-deranged p****” and raged against “woke Hollywood” and its refusal to nominate a Daily Wire film entitled What is a Woman as further evidence of liberal bias at work.
Elsewhere in his speech, Kimmel joked that Melania, for which Amazon spent a reported $40 million in acquiring the rights and another $35 million promoting, largely consisted of its subject walking “around the White House trying on shoes,” leading another MAGA commentator to accuse him of “showing his misogynistic side.”
The prize Kimmel was presenting ultimately went to the Russian documentary Mr. Nobody Against Putin, about a schoolteacher’s growing disgust at the incursion of state propaganda into his classroom amid the war in Ukraine.
“As you know, there are some countries whose leaders don’t support free speech,” the host observed. “I’m not at liberty to say which. Let’s just leave it at North Korea and CBS.”
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Attending the Vanity Fair afterparty, Kimmel told a reporter he was “exhausted” from having to joke about Trump in his opening monologue every night.
“We live in a ridiculous country,” he said. “We always lived in a ridiculous country, but it was always ridiculous in a fun, Mr. T kinda way. Now we’ve got a different Mr. T.”
Kimmel famously hosted the 2024 Oscars ceremony and read aloud a Truth Social post from Trump attacking him, to which he responded by asking the then-presidential candidate, “Isn’t it past your jailtime?”
Kimmel also derided Melania on his show earlier this month, joking: “Between this and Sinners, it’s been a big year for vampire movies.
“And while some might say that it is not a great look to be plugging your vanity project while your husband’s bombing another country, Melania has never cared much about optics. She can’t even pronounce optics.
“More than anything, this documentary is dreadfully dull. The whole thing is Melania going to fittings, riding in a car, trying on clothes, and interviewing people to work for her.”