President Donald Trump tore into the “failed” Academy Awards at a rally in Dallas on Thursday.
Trump spoke to a crowd of approximately 30,000 people gathered at the American Airlines Center in Texas, where he derided the 2020 Democratic presidential candidates and much, much more. Among his targets was the Oscars, which the president touched upon while commenting on the news cameras recording his speech.
“Don’t worry. I won’t say anything bad about your network,” he said to the assembled press. “Because a lot of the times, I get ready to do a number on these phony networks and you know, you see those red lights go off off off off. They don’t want their viewers to see it. But that’s OK, I’m not going to say it tonight. I’m going to say, ‘You’re legitimate media.’ I don’t actually mean that.”
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“But look at all those cameras,” Trump continued. “That’s like the Academy Awards used to be before it failed. You know why it failed? You know why it failed? Because they came after us. That’s why it failed. It failed because they had stupid people saying horrible things about us. Stupid, stupid people.”
The broadcast, which airs in February or March, has featured in the past few years celebrities lambasting Trump and his administration on stage. Jimmy Kimmel, who hosted in 2017 and 2018 and is a notorious critic of the president, made hay out of the Trump administration before the show went on without a host in 2019.
Host Jimmy Kimmel speaks at the Oscars on Sunday, Feb. 26, 2017, at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles.
(Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP)
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“They are stupid people, and their ratings have dropped like a rock, and I love seeing it, I’m telling you. Love it,” Trump went on. “But no matter how hard they try, they will fail because the people of Texas and the people of America will never surrender our freedom to those people right there.”
Kimmel’s 2018 hosting of the 90th annual Academy Awards marked an all-time ratings low for the broadcast, which rebounded by 12 percent in 2019, sans a host.
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Trump previously commented on the low 2018 ratings with a tweet saying: “Lowest rated Oscars in HISTORY. Problem is, we don’t have Stars anymore – except your President (just kidding, of course)!”
