And the Oscar Goes to Trump Derangement Syndrome

I can’t review the Oscars because, for the first time in the 27 years I’ve been covering them, I did not watch. I already knew the outcome because anyone who covers the Oscars does. Predicting the Oscars this year was too easy. Just think: Trump Derangement Syndrome and you’re halfway there.

Trump was still the most famous person in the room, not in attendance. How do I know if I didn’t watch? Because I know them. The reason Paul Thomas Anderson’s truly awful film, One Battle After Another, won all of the top Oscars, including Picture, Director, Screenplay, and Supporting Actor, is because of Donald Trump. That is how small, petty, and sad Hollywood has become.

TDS hits everywhere, in every category, because to them, Trump is the Devil riding into Salem. He’s the guy who took everything away, knocked down their utopia by beating them twice. He is always hovering, the one guy they could not cancel, destroy, defeat, or outshine.

Trump is all the named evils in one person. Trump is Putin. Trump is Epstein. Trump is the dictator, the fascist, the racist, the pedo, the rapist, the Nazi.

There’s just one tiny problem. They had the chance to make history by giving Best Director to Ryan Coogler, making him the first to win in 98 years of Oscar history. It made more money, was more widely seen, received better reviews, and entered the race with a record-breaking 16 nominations, but they passed up that opportunity to stick it to Trump one more time.

Instead, Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another, which is not only his worst film but was a financial failure, making just $70 million (domestic) from a budget that was rumored to hit $170 million, had to sweep the top categories. That didn’t stop them from continuing to use black people as their living virtue signals, only to screw them over yet again by withholding the top prizes.

After they added 3,000 new members “of color” just to un-racist themselves, after the Golden Globes were canceled in 2022 for being racist and then bought by media mogul Jay Penske, they, too, added 300 new members “of color,” after the Oscars implemented a DEI mandate in 2024 that forced minorities to be cast in every film — destroying films entirely — they give their top awards to a film about racism directed by a white guy instead of the film about racism directed by a black guy.

I’m all for ridding Hollywood of its woke frenzy, but until they stop calling people like me, not to mention half the country, “racists,” they can sit down and shut up. Because if anyone is racist, it’s them. If you don’t have a nice white guy in your movie, you can’t win the Oscar for Best Picture, and Sinners did not have one.

Their membership is still mostly white, mostly male — it’s just that they’re guys like Jimmy Kimmel and John Oliver who really do think they’re the heroes of this story. They would never vote for a movie that makes all white guys look bad, like Sinners. They have to pick the one that separates the good ones from the bad ones and gives them that flattering magic mirror that tells them who is the fairest of them all. YOU ARE.

In the film, Leonardo DiCaprio stars as the one nice white guy in a country infested by racists and run by white supremacists. He is feminized to the point where he must take care of the baby abandoned by her revolutionary mother. And he must be the emotional support of his mixed-race daughter after she is almost murdered by her racist biological father (Sean Penn).

And if that weren’t bad enough, of course, she must rescue herself by the end, with Leo coming in behind with nothing but emotional support for his daughter because he’s just that kind of guy. A nice white guy in a sea of racists. “See, you can trust me! I’m not like those other bad white people!”

It might have been good if it were real satire instead of satire-lite. But this is a film that takes itself very seriously.

Liel Leibovitz puts it best in The Free Press:

And here comes the fun part: Having released my absurdly stupid movie, I’d wait for nattering nabobs like the know-nothings over at National Public Radio to celebrate my movie as “prescient, mesmerizing. . .and fearlessly political.” I’d accept a whole slate of the world’s finest film awards, and the nomination for the ultimate accolade: the Academy Award for Best Picture. I’d keep mum for a bit, and then, at the very biggest night in Hollywood, I’d blow the whole thing open.

“Morons,” I’d yell from the stage, “I can’t believe you fell for it. I literally just crammed the most obviously idiotic movie down your throats, and you’re celebrating it because your only criterion for judging art is whether it calls Republicans Nazis. You’re what’s wrong with American culture, and we would all be better served if you resigned en masse and sought professional help.”

The film has won more critics’ awards than any film in the history of film awards, crossing over from the indie world of the Gothams through to the mainstream of the National Board of Review, both Los Angeles and New York Film Critics, before hitting the Golden Globes, the BAFTA, and the Directors and Producers Guilds. The only reason it won is because of Trump.

They genuinely believe that the other half of the country is like the Jim Crow South. And that Sean Penn is representative of ICE. He just won his third Oscar for an absolutely terrible performance.

They are the ruling class who sneer at the working class, and somehow think that makes them the heroes of this story. It doesn’t. It just makes them look more out of touch than ever before.

All they have left is their collapsing empire, their failing utopia. We thought it would be forever. We never could have predicted a Donald Trump. We could never have imagined the country would want change.

That’s what they can’t forgive: that he took it all away. Expect more Trump Derangement Syndrome: The Movie to win Oscars until a Democrat is back in power.