James Corden got creative in his pursuit to educate Donald Trump on HIV and AIDS: he sent the president 297 copies of “Philadelphia,” the 1993 Oscar winner starring Tom Hanks as a man who was fired from his law firm for having AIDS.
Upset with the news that six members of the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS resigned, Corden told his “Late Late Show” audience on Tuesday, “They resigned because as they put it, they said Donald Trump simply does not care about HIV and AIDS — and he doesn’t.”
“Most of what I know or when I started to learn or first hear about HIV and AIDS, I learned from the movie ‘Philadelphia,’” Corden said. “It was the first I had seen anything about this disease on television, and as I learned more, I started to care about it and I was thinking to that, I was thinking maybe that’s the problem here. Maybe Donald Trump doesn’t care because he’s never seen ‘Philadelphia.’ In fact, I’m almost certain that’s probably what it is.”
When attempts to send the film to Trump at the White House failed, Corden’s crew instead shipped the copies off to Mar-a-Lago, the resort Trump has called the “Winter White House.”
Corden said they sent 297 copies, to be exact, because it was “the most we could buy.”
“On the internet, we got 21 from Amazon, we got 210 from Barnes & Noble, we got 50 from another Barnes & Noble, we got 50 from another Barnes & Noble — oh, sorry, 16 from another Barnes & Noble. And where we could, we even spent the extra 14 cents per copy so the president could enjoy it on Blu-ray.”
The comedian also urged his viewers to send their “Philadelphia” copies to Trump.
“We hope that if Trump watches Philadelphia, he’ll understand two things: One, Tom Hanks definitely deserved that Oscar, and No. 2, we hope that he’ll realize that HIV and AIDS is something that you or any president of the United States, or any world leader for that matter, can never afford to ignore.”