Jimmy Kimmel took a vicious swipe at both Donald Trump and his wife Melania during the Academy Awards ceremony.
While presenting the award for Best Documentary Feature and Best Documentary Short, the talk show host added fuel to the fire of his feud with the president. Kimmel took to the stage and noted one glaring omission from the nominees — and joked that the absence of the Melania documentary would leave Trump enraged.
He said, "Oh man, is he going to be mad his wife wasn't nominated for this." The jabs did not stop there, as Kimmel pulled no punches when pointing out the rough time he and his talk show host colleagues had under the Trump administration.
"We hear a lot about courage at shows like this, but telling a story that could get you killed for telling it is real courage," Kimmel said. "As you know, there are some countries whose leaders don’t support free speech. I’m not at liberty to say which. Let’s just leave it at North Korea and CBS."
CBS appointed its MAGA-friendly boss, Bari Weiss, last year. Though her time as head of CBS has been marked by controversy, even Weiss has irked the president and the White House team. The appointment of Jeremy Adler, a new communications executive who formerly worked for Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY), infuriated the Trump administration.
"The idea CBS would hire Liz Cheney's flack, who has worked to jail President Trump and make it impossible for anybody who supported the president to get hired, is insanity. What the hell is Bari Weiss thinking?" a White House official told Axios.
Kimmel then turned his attention back to the Melania documentary, an Amazon-funded documentary directed by Brett Ratner.
He said, "Fortunately for all of us, there’s an international community of filmmakers dedicated to telling the truth, oftentimes at great risk to make films that teach us, that call out injustice, that inspire us to take action, and there are also documentaries where you walk around the White House trying on shoes."