- Jimmy Kimmel says he was told backstage not to read Trump’s review of his performance at the Oscars.
- Obviously, Kimmel did it anyway.
- Trump made the post on his own social network, Truth Social.
Jimmy Kimmel apparently went against producers’ advice at the Oscars when he decided to fill some spare time by reading President Donald Trump’s review of his performance.
“I was told we have, like, an extra minute, and I’m really proud of something and I was wondering if I could share it with you. I just got a review, and um…,” Kimmel said during the ceremony before proceeding to read an excerpt of Trump’s review of his performance off of a cellphone.
In a Truth Social post, Trump lambasted Kimmel’s performance, questioning whether there had ever been a “WORSE HOST” in the award ceremony’s history. He also denounced the program as a “really bad politically correct show.”
In a post-show interview with Kelly Ripa and Mark Consuelos, Kimmel said that he read the post against the advice of those backstage.
“They’re like, ‘You got a little bit of time.’ I was like, ‘I’m reading the Trump tweet,'” Kimmel said, referring to Trump’s post.
“‘They were like, ‘No, no, don’t read that,” he continued. “‘Yes I am!'”
Representatives for the Oscars did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Truth Social is Trump’s social platform, launched after he was permanently suspended from X (then Twitter) after the January 6, 2021, siege. In a statement, Twitter said the ban was due to the “risk of further incitement of violence.” After Elon Musk took over the company, Trump’s account was reinstated, but the only public post on his account since its reinstatement is his August 2023 mugshot.
The 2024 presidential frontrunner has historically been a prolific poster, but he doesn’t have the same reach he did in the past. Axios found in December 2023 that Trump’s social reach was much smaller on Truth Social than on Twitter before his 2021 ban and that his engagement on Truth was falling.
Truth Social, as the Daily Beast reported, crashed on Thursday as Trump posted through President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address. The platform hasn’t been doing well financially, either: a November 2023 SEC filing revealed that the platform had lost nearly $23 million in the first half of 2023, compared to a nearly $29 million profit during that same time period in 2022. And in April of 2022, the president reported in a financial disclosure form that he had made less than $201 on Truth Social.
After reading his review, Kimmel hit back at Trump, chasing the self-deprecating humor with a jab at the former president, who faces many criminal charges.
“Thank you, President Trump. Thank you for watching, I’m surprised you’re still — isn’t it past your jail time?” Kimmel said to laughter from the audience.
