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Oscars 2017: Donald Trump accuses Jimmy Kimmel of playing the 'race card'

Rob Moran
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It was just another throwaway gag, gently mocking Donald Trump as much as the Oscars themselves, but it got under the US president's skin.

"Maybe this is not a popular thing to say, but I want to say thank you to Donald Trump," began Oscars host Jimmy Kimmel's quip. "I mean, remember last year when it seemed like the Oscars were racist? It's gone, thanks to him!"

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Trump accuses Kimmel of playing 'race card'

After persistent goading at the Oscars by host Jimmy Kimmel, US President Donald Trump finally takes the bait, albeit two days later and on his network of choice.

It was perhaps the lightest of Kimmel's opening monologue jokes at Monday's Oscars – a segment that included digs at Mel Gibson and Hollywood's own diversity issues ("It has been an amazing year for movies: black people saved NASA and white people saved jazz. That's what you call progress," he mocked) – but it worked.

Trump, who's remained uncomfortably quiet following Monday's telecast, addressed Kimmel's comments while appearing on his personal favourite TV show, Fox & Friends.

"It just seems like the other side, whenever they're losing badly, they always pull out the race card," Trump said.

"I've watched it for years. I watched it against Ronald Reagan, I've watched it against so many other people. And they always like pulling out the race card."

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Humming a familiar tune, Trump rejected the idea that his administration has a problem with racism and defended his appeal amongst minorities.

"In fact, I did pretty well, much better than past people in the Republican Party, in the recent election having to do with Hispanics, having to do with African-Americans," he said. (According to the Washington Post, Trump got 8 per cent of the black vote and 28 per cent of the Latino vote, up on Mitt Romney's 6 per cent of the black vote and 27 per cent of the Hispanic vote in 2012.)

"I have to write it off as being purely politics," he said about the accusations.

Kimmel's hosting gig, which promised so much in the way of Trump roasting, was sparse but sharp with its barbs.

Among his bits were a Trump-baiting tweet, hoping to illicit a reply from the tweeting president "during his 5am bowel movement", and, perhaps most successfully, an extended riff where he criticised the "uninspiring and overrated" Meryl Streep.

"From her mediocre early work in The Deer Hunter and Out Of Africa to her underwhelming performances in Kramer Vs Kramer and Sophie's Choice, Meryl Streep has phoned it in for more than 50 films over the course of her lacklustre career," Kimmel joked, using Trump's own tweeted words to make him the night's buffoon.

While the ceremony's political content was largely left to the acceptance speech-givers – such as Best Foreign Language Film winner, Iranian Asghar Farhadi, who delivered a statement slamming Trump's "inhumane" travel ban – Kimmel's barbs were enough to peeve noted Hollywood libertarian Vince Vaughn, who arrived onstage and stung the host with a "slender Sal Mineo" dig, a solid reference for all the millennials watching.

Trump – who had indicated he would not be watching Monday's telecast, which clashed with a state governors dinner in Washington DC – also discussed the Oscars in an interview with Breitbart, where he claimed some responsibility for the ceremony's infamous end-of-show gaffe.

"I think they were focused so hard on politics that they didn't get the act together at the end. It was a little sad," he said.