Spike Lee compared Donald Trump to Hitler in an acceptance speech at an award show for film critics, adding that “the whole world is laughing at the United States.”
The director made his comments by receiving a special New York Film Critics Circle award for the short film New York, New York. The film was released in May 2020 and Lee described it as a “love letter to his people”.
Lee said the comments about Trump were recorded on January 6, the day of the Capitol violation, which he said was “a very sad day in the history of America”.
“We are living in a very serious moment in America,” said the director. “Your president, President Agent Orange, will go down in history with people like Hitler … all your boys, they are going to the wrong side of the story.”
Lee has a history of sparring with Trump, including calling him a “son of a bitch” because of Trump’s response to the 2017 protests in Charlotteville, during which activist Heather Heyer was murdered by white supremacist James Fields. Trump accused him of a “racist coup on his president” after Lee’s previous acceptance speech at the 2019 Oscars.