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Suffice to say, President Donald Trump is not a fan of “Parasite.”
While the South Korean satire about class inequality has earned more than $165 million at the U.S. box office and made history earlier this month at the Oscars, Trump bashed it Thursday during a campaign rally in Colorado.
“The winner is… a movie from South Korea! What the hell was that all about?”
“We got enough problems with South Korea with trade,” Trump said. “On top of that, they give them best movie of the year? Was it good? I don’t know. Let’s get ‘Gone With the Wind.’ Can we get ‘Gone With the Wind’ back, please?”
“Gone With the Wind” did win the Oscar for best picture in 1940, and it just happens to be one of Trump’s all-time favorite movies. “It has stood the test of time,” he told Movieline in 2012. “The scope of the storytelling is tremendous.”
Neon, the American film company that distributed “Parasite,” swiped back at Trump on Twitter, joking that he couldn’t read the subtitles.
As for his beef with South Korea, CNN reported Thursday that the U.S. faces an April deadline to reach a new deal with South Korea on sharing the cost of U.S. troops there. South Korea currently contributes about $1 billion a year, but Trump has called for a raise to nearly $5 billion a year. Failure to reach a new deal could cause thousands of Koreans to be furloughed from their jobs on U.S. military bases, and could undermine the common defense against North Korea.
In 2017, Trump harshly criticized the existing U.S. trade deal with South Korea, calling it “horrible” and blaming it for expanding the U.S. trade deficit. But in March 2018, the Trump administration and South Korea agreed to amend their free-trade deal, with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin calling it “an absolute win-win.”
