Lee's Oscars Speech Is 'a Racist Hit on Your President,' Trump Says

Lee opened his speech, after winning best adapted screenplay for “BlacKkKlansman,” by discussing slavery and his family’s experiences of it.

“I give praise to our ancestors, who have built this country into what it is today along with the genocide of the native people,” he said.

“The 2020 presidential election is around the corner,” Lee said. “Let’s all mobilize. Let’s all be on the right side of history. Make the moral choice between love versus hate.”

Lee did not mention the president in his speech, but that call to action seems to have angered him.

“Be nice if Spike Lee could read his notes, or better yet not have to use notes at all, when doing his racist hit on your President,” Trump said in a tweet in the early hours of Monday.

The president’s policies had “done more for African Americans (Criminal Justice Reform, Lowest Unemployment numbers in History, Tax Cuts, etc.) than almost any other Pres!” the president added.

Trump did not dwell on the issue for long. Shortly afterward he tweeted about “oil prices getting too high,” and a forthcoming meeting with Kim Jong Un, the leader of North Korea (“With complete Denuclearization, North Korea will rapidly become an Economic Powerhouse,” he wrote).

Theo Dumont, Lee’s publicist, said the director would not be commenting on Trump’s tweet.

“BlacKkKlansman” is based on the story of Ron Stallworth, a black police officer who infiltrated the Ku Klux Klan. In interviews around its release, Lee said he wanted to draw a link between the Klan and events today.

“We had to connect David Duke to Agent Orange,” he told The New York Times, using his own term for the president.

At the end of “BlacKkKlansman,” Lee included footage of the 2017 white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, that descended into violence when protesters clashed with counterprotesters. He then showed footage of Trump saying there was blame on “both sides” for those events.

When “Green Book” won best picture at the ceremony Sunday, Lee made a disgusted gesture and started walking out of the theater as “Green Book” producers gave their speeches. Backstage, when asked by reporters about the coronation of “Green Book,” which detractors complain has a retrograde view of race, Lee replied, “No comment.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.