Trump Says The Oscars Flub Was Because Of Politics

After all the hits he took at the Oscars, everyone knew that it was only a matter of time until our pop-culture-obsessed president responded. In an interview with Breitbart following the Academy Awards, President Donald Trump took credit for the Oscars' Moonlight mix-up:

I think they were focused so hard on politics that they didn’t get the act together at the end.

In the exclusive interview, Trump also criticized the event for not being glamorous enough, and told Breitbart that "something special was missing" because the presenters and award-winners were too focused on politics. The interviewer reportedly also asked the president questions about healthcare, taxes, and other important issues, but the interview has yet to be released in its entirety.

In characteristic Trumpian fashion, the president said the mix-up was "a little sad." and that the political focus "took away from the glamour of the Oscars."

The cause of the heavily memed Moonlight flub hasn't yet been revealed, but PricewaterhouseCoopers, the Oscars' accountants that oversee the award ballots, apologized for the fiasco that resulted in La La Land's cast and crew initially accepting an award that Moonlight won. The scandalous gaffe was embarrassing at best for an awards ceremony that has been accused of racism in the past, but it most certainly had nothing to do with a president that all of Hollywood seems to despise.

This isn't the first time Trump tried to twist a news event in his favor — following the tragic shootings at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando last June, the then-candidate tweeted in appreciation of himself for being right about "radical Islamic terrorism" in his initial response to the massacre. Following criticism for his remarks, Trump doubled down and claimed that he'd received "tens of thousands" of tweets, calls, and letters thanking him for it, and that he was "the one who predicted it." It comes as no surprise to me that the president who once congratulated himself for predicting a shooting at a gay club would blame the Moonlight flub on Oscars presenters focusing too much on him.

The absurdity of the Trump presidency (and Hollywood's ironic criticism of him) likely won't slow down anytime soon, but Trump's unsurprising response contains another level of craziness — that he chose to respond to the Oscars attacks through Breitbart, and not through his preferred medium of Twitter, which lends credence to the once-wild idea that Breitbart might become Trump's state media network. For now, let's enjoy this laugh at the president's expense, but remain vigilant to the very real danger at hand.