Jimmy Kimmel may not have hosted the Academy Awards this year, but he still got some shots in at Donald Trump.
On Sunday night’s Oscar show, Kimmel presented a pair of awards: Best Documentary Short and Best Documentary Feature. Before presenting, Kimmel joked that “as you know, there are some countries whose leaders don’t support free speech. I’m not at liberty to say which. Let’s just leave it at North Korea and CBS.”
Kimmel was briefly removed from the air last year, during a fight with the FCC, but ultimately returned to his timeslot.
omg Jimmy Kimmel just called out CBS at the Oscars and got a HUGE applause from the audience
“As you know, there are some countries whose leaders don’t support free speech. I’m not at liberty to say which. Let’s just leave it at North Korea and CBS.” pic.twitter.com/QcZhXuBYgV
— Spencer Althouse (@SpencerAlthouse) March 16, 2026
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And later, after reading the nominations for Documentary Feature, Kimmel interjected, “Oh man, is he going to be mad that his wife wasn’t nominated for this”
Jimmy Kimmel takes swipe at Donald Trump at the #Oscars: “Oh man, is he going to be mad that his wife wasn’t nominated for this” pic.twitter.com/h3WUfWAFy7
— Deadline (@DEADLINE) March 16, 2026
This was, of course, a reference to Donald Trump and Melania. That documentary, however, was released in January, and there is a 2026 release and would not have been eligible for this year’s Oscars. It could conceivably be nominated for the Oscars next year.
The winner for the Best Documentary Short was All the Empty Rooms, a film for Netflix about a reporter visiting the preserved rooms of four children who lost their lives in school shootings. And the Documentary Feature winner was Mr. Nobody Against Putin, a film about a man who was a dissident in Vladimir Putin’s Russia.
this was the most important Oscar speech of the night tbh
“Mr. Nobody Against Putin is about how you lose your country. What we saw when working with this footage is that you lose it through countless small, little acts of complicity: when we act complicit when a government… pic.twitter.com/QoqDHGS9xM
— Spencer Althouse (@SpencerAlthouse) March 16, 2026
Photo courtesy of an X screenshot.
