James Corden Sent 297 Copies Of ‘Philadelphia’ To Trump In An Effort To Get Him To Care About AIDS

With the looming Russia investigation, so many of the, shall we say, “garden variety” atrocities of the Trump administration tend to get swept under the rug. James Corden pointed out this fact on The Late Late Show Tuesday night, in addressing the news of how six of the 18 members of the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS reigned last week simply because the president “does not care” about AIDS. This is especially horrifying when you consider that 1.1 million Americans are currently living with HIV and AIDS, and as Corden pointed out, “nearly 60 percent are unable to access life saving medications.” And if the GOP’s healthcare act gets passed, that number is only going to skyrocket.

Corden went on to note that many people don’t know these statistics because HIV and AIDS is very much a stigma, and that he himself only learned about the disease growing up from the 1993 Tom Hanks film Philadelphia — which was one of the first mainstream Hollywood films to tackle the subject. It was watching that film that caused Corden himself to care about AIDS so he justifiably speculated that maybe — just maybe — Donald Trump doesn’t care about AIDS because he’s never seen the movie Philadelphia.

As such, he and his staff had 297 copies of Philadelphia sent to Trump (at Mar-a-Lago, not the White House, obviously, since that’s where the president spends the bulk of his time), which was not an arbitrary number but literally all of the copies they could buy off of the internet. (Apparently 25 year old AIDS dramas are not in hot demand on Amazon these days.)

It’s with any hope, Corden said, that watching Philadelphia will make Trump understand that “HIV and AIDS is something that [he] or any President of the United States, or any world leader for that matter, can never afford to ignore.” But just for good measure, Corden invites everybody else to feel free to send their copy of the movie to Trump, even helpfully providing an address. Hey, every bit counts!

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