Jimmy Kimmel takes jabs at Donald Trump while hosting the Academy Award, tweets at him live on stage

Monday, 27 February 2017

Jimmy Kimmel, while hosting the Oscars 2017 made President Donald Trump the butt of his jokes throughout the night, taking time to subtly criticize the president and even went as far as tweeting at him twice.

While giving his opening monologue, Kimmel insinuated that most of the countries of the world now hate America because of Trump's policies.

He then took to Twitter while still on stage to send messages to Trump, in what is believed to be a slight Jab at the President for always using the social platform to air his grievances.

"Hey @realDonaldTrump u up?" one of his tweets read.  

The other said; "@realDonaldTrump #Merylsayshi."

Donald Trump had earlier attacked actress Meryl Streep for her political Golden Globes speech which criticized him, calling her "over-rated", and Kimmel used his position as the host to help redeem Meryl. First, Kimmel tried for sarcasm as he called on the crowd to give a "highly overrated" Meryl a standing ovation for her 20 oscar nominations all through her career. He said;

"One actress has stood the test of time for her many uninspiring and overrated performances. This is Meryl's 20th Oscar nomination... she wasn't even in a movie this year, we just wrote her name in out of habit."

"Nice dress by the way... Is that an Ivanka?" Kimmel asked Streep, alluding to Trump's daughter's fashion label, which has been dropped by major stores like Nordstrom.

Kimmel also predicted that Trump will tweet criticisms at the Oscar winners' acceptance speech "in all caps during his 5 a.m. bowel movement tomorrow". So far, Trump is yet to reply to the taunts from Kimmel and other Oscar winners who criticized him in their speech.

Asides Kimmel, a number of other Hollywood personalities waxed political during their speech,  Alessandro Bertolazzi, a well-known makeup artist dedicated his win to "all the immigrants".  Moonlight director Barry Jenkins promised the people who do not feel like they have the needed support from the president that the American Civil Liberties Union and artists have got their back over the next four years that Trump is president. 

On his part, Iranian director Asghar Farhadi winner of the Academy Award for best foreign film for his drama The Salesman, was not present to accept his win and according to him, it was out of "respect for the people of my country" who have been banned from entering the United States.

Mexican actor, Gael García Bernal, also weighed in as he presented an award saying: "I'm against any form of wall that wants to separate us."