At the Oscars, scant mention of Trump—but plenty of underlying politics

Host Conan O'Brien kept things silly, but filmmakers found ways to make bold statements

If you were an alien who landed on Planet Earth Sunday, scored an invitation to the Oscars, and sat through a ceremony that ran for three hours and 45 minutes, you’d probably emerge with no idea who was president—much less how anyone in the room felt about him.

The first Academy Awards ceremony of the Trump 2.0 era was largely devoid of domestic politics. The president was rarely mentioned, and there were no quips about DOGE, Elon Musk, or the administration’s aggressive attacks on DEI, the federal workforce, or cultural institutions like the Kennedy Center.

Host Conan O’Brien has never been known for topical humor, and anyone who was hoping that the man who brought the world the Pimpbot 5000 would go on a tirade about co-equal branches of government or upholding checks and balances was bound for disappointment. O’Brien, who was introduced as a “four-time Oscars watcher” by the night’s emcee, Nick Offerman, stuck to the self-deprecating and sublimely silly comedy that has been his trademark for more than thirty years.

In his opening monologue, he took a few shots at Jeff Bezos, but they were relatively gentle digs about Amazon’s unreliable package delivery. He vowed to keep the ceremony moving along at a brisk pace, then performed an intentionally bloated musical number called “I Won’t Waste Time,” which featured the sandworm from Dune II playing the piano.

But he took unmistakable aim at Trump with a crack about the night’s big winner Anora, a tense, tragic, and hilarious screwball comedy about a brash Brooklyn sex worker and her whirlwind romance with the son of a Russian oligarch.

“I guess Americans are excited to see somebody finally stand up to a powerful Russian,” O'Brien joked of the film, which won five Oscars, including best picture. (Writer-director Sean Baker won four Oscars in a single night, tying a record set by Walt Disney.)

Yet the bravest and most pointed political statement came from the filmmakers behind No Other Land, who made an urgent plea for peace while accepting the Oscar for best documentary feature. Made by a collective of Israeli and Palestinian filmmakers, No Other Land takes a powerful look at a West Bank village under occupation by the Israeli military. It does not have a theatrical distributor in the United States.

“We made this film, Palestinians and Israelis, because together, our voices are stronger,” said Israeli co-director Yuval Abraham, who called for an end to “the atrocious destruction of Gaza and its people,” and for the safe return of Israeli hostages, “brutally taken in the crime of October 7.” He acknowledged the unequal treatment faced by the film’s Palestinian co-director, Basel Adra, whom he described as “my brother.”

“We live in a regime where I am free under civilian law and Basel is under military laws that destroy his life and he cannot control. There is a different path, a political solution without ethnic supremacy, with national rights for both of our people. And I have to say, as I am here, the foreign policy in this country is helping to block this path. Why? Can't you see that we are intertwined? That my people can be truly safe if Basel's people are truly free and safe? There is another way. It's not too late.”

This year’s field of contenders included numerous films with strong political undertones, starting with “The Apprentice,” which stars Sebastian Stan as a young Donald Trump and Jeremy Strong as his mentor Roy Cohn. Both were nominated for Oscars for their performances, yet the film has not landed a streaming deal. (Viewers have to rent it.)

Anora is an antically funny, nuanced look at sex, money, and the wealth divide in which the one true villain is a Russian oligarch. The vivid fantasy musical Wicked has been widely interpreted as a fascist allegory. Set inside the Vatican, Conclave follows the scheming and manipulation that goes into the selection of a new pope as cardinals discuss the future of the Catholic Church. Emilia Pérez is a Spanish-language musical about a transgender cartel kingpin seeking redemption for her crimes. The horror film The Substance is a feminist allegory about body image and aging in a toxically misogynist culture. I’m Still Here follows a wife and activist as she copes with the forced disappearance of her husband, a dissident politician, under Brazil’s military dictatorship.

For now, at least, the industry remains interested in telling inclusive stories with trenchant social, historical and political themes. Which is not to suggest that Hollywood stars had nothing to say on Sunday night. Several winners embraced their historic wins. Zoe Saldaña, accepting the prize for best supporting actress for her turn as a disenchanted lawyer in Emilia Pérez, noted that she was the first American of Dominican descent to win an Oscar. “I am a proud child of immigrant parents with dreams and dignity and hardworking hands,” she said, through tears. Before presenting the award for best film editing, Daryl Hannah declared “Slava Ukraini,” prompting enthusiastic cheers from the audience at the Dolby Theater.

To put Sunday in context, it’s instructive to take a trip back to the 89th Academy Awards, held shortly after Trump took office in 2017. That ceremony, hosted by Jimmy Kimmel and held in the frantic weeks following the Muslim travel ban, was loaded with political commentary and pointed Trump jokes in a way that Sunday’s telecast was decidedly not. That ceremony brought us the notorious screw-up in which La-La Land was mistakenly declared best picture, when in fact Moonlight had won. The envelope debacle so perfectly captured the disorienting, “WTF-just-happened?” vibe of the early Trump years that it prompted semi-serious speculation that we were living in a computer simulation that had started malfunctioning on election night in 2016.

Eight years later, the entertainment business—and much of the world—is exhausted by the mere idea of another four years of Trump, who, as far as I could tell, wasn’t mentioned by name a single time during the lengthy broadcast. There is plenty of reason to worry about the chilling effect he is already having on the industry. For starters, the Oscars were broadcast on ABC, whose news division recently settled a defamation suit from Trump with an extortionate $15 million payout.

Viewed in this light, one could see Sunday night's Trump-free telecast as a cowardly abdication by Hollywood, which played such a huge part in resisting—and irritating—the president during his first term. Couldn’t producers have called up Jane Fonda to present an award?

But there’s another way to look at the evening: Trump was there, the orange-haired elephant in the room, reflected in the films that were honored and the messages relayed from the stage, even if he didn’t get the name check he most certainly desired. Maybe Hollywood has finally learned its lesson: for our president, a creature of the tabloid press, there’s nothing worse than being left out of the conversation entirely.

Meredith Blake is The Contrarian’s Culture Columnist