Throughout the 98th Oscars ceremony on Sunday, second-time host Conan O’Brien mocked AI’s threat to filmmaking, poked fun at Timothée Chalamet’s ballet and opera comments, and made indirect jabs at the president. It was our orange man against theirs.

While he made his best attempts to prod at the elephant in the room, the unavoidable realities of Trump 2.0 hung over the entire Dolby Theater in Los Angeles, where the Oscars are held annually.

Of course, there was actually a lot to celebrate. It was probably the strongest lineup of nominees in recent memory. Among other triumphs, Autumn Durald Arkapaw became the first ever woman to win Best Cinematography, and asked every woman in the theater to stand up in the night’s most formidable show of unity.

It’s rare for an awards season to be dominated by two juggernauts, and the ceremony finally closed the book on the months-long rivalry between Best Picture frontrunners “Sinners” and “One Battle After Another,” with the latter edging out for the award. In his speech, director Paul Thomas Anderson courteously commented that there was no “best” among the films nominated that night.

But despite historic wins, it was an evening marked by looming boogeymen. This ceremony recalled the 2018 ceremony hosted by Jimmy Kimmel, which followed the rise of the #MeToo movement, where Kimmel made jokes at Harvey Weinstein’s expense in a room statistically occupied by some future #MeToo-ees.

O’Brien had some funny, cutesy quips — like a remark about how “Hamnet” and “Bugonia” both sound like the names of “off-brand lunch meats,” or a visual gag that all the seat fillers were Michael B. Jordan, since he played a dual role in “Sinners.” But he seemed to be throwing softballs at Trump and was shy to center ongoing national issues, such as the war in Iran or ICE deportations.

Compare his monologue to how Nikki Glaser opened for the Golden Globes in January, and how she was much more comfortable touching on timely issues — like the Epstein files and the Warner Bros. bid — as well as dishing out actual roasts of nominees, because she used her natural likeability and upbeat tone as a carefully controlled fallback. O’Brien’s comedy persona, an idiotized version of himself whose punchlines are often self-deprecating, is less tailored to taking big swings at the powers that be.

The jokes that consistently landed best were the pre-taped segments, usually about the state of affairs in the commercial film industry. There was a silly one about reworking classic films into vertical videos — such as turning “12 Angry Men” into “Two Angry Men.” This may seem like beating the dead horse that is the failed mobile streaming service Quibi, until you realize the Disney+ app is rolling out its vertical video feature.

Kumail Nanjiani, a Pakistani American comedian and actor, had a similar bit about reducing feature-length films to short films, like turning “No Country for Old Men” into just “No County for Old Man.” These segments retroactively made the opening monologue shoutout to one of Netflix’s CEO’s, Ted Sarandos, who was in attendance, even richer in irony: the streaming service was recently outed for making its movies and shows repeat plot information so that viewers can keep up while using their phones. This itself was also parodied in a segment.

And as the Oscars are set to ditch cable in favor of exclusively streaming on YouTube by 2029, there was a great gag about Mr. Beast being the next Oscars host, which — for those who’ve seen “One Battle After Another” — implies the Academy is going to kill him.

Of course, there was still political messaging throughout the night, but a lot of it was from the presenters: Javier Bardem announced “no to war and free Palestine” before presenting Best International Feature; Will Arnett denounced AI ahead of Best Animated Short Film; and Kimmel made digs that Trump would be “mad his wife wasn’t nominated” for Best Documentary Feature Film, referencing the supreme cultural flop that was “Melania.”

The speeches themselves, however, could have been more substantial. For anyone who needs a reminder, this year’s Best Picture winner, “One Battle After Another,” is about the humanity behind revolutionary forces, with a message ultimately advocating for incremental change against impossible odds. That’s why it was somewhat disappointing to see that the film’s winners, and other speechmakers, scarcely addressed the political moment.

Maybe that’s to be expected. There’s something inherently tone-deaf about the Oscars, where a centi-millionaire troll like Kevin O’Leary is welcomed alongside Jafar Panahi, an Iranian filmmaker who regularly risks imprisonment in pursuit of his art, in a room full of people who don’t live normal lives.

It doesn’t have to be that way. Lest we forget, in 1973, Marlon Brando conscientiously declined the Best Actor award he won for “The Godfather.” He sent Native American rights activist and actress Sacheen Littlefeather in his place, who bravely promoted awareness about the ongoing Wounded Knee Occupation in front of the entire Academy — for which she was booed, blacklisted, and threatened.

Sean Penn’s absence this year has sketches of this. The three-time Oscar winner skipped his latest win for Best Supporting Actor, and was instead reported to be fostering diplomatic relations with Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Ukraine.

O’Brien did his best to reconcile the political instability of the outside world with the insider nature of awards shows, and closed his opening monologue with an acknowledgement: “Let us celebrate not because we think all is well, but because we work and hope for better in the days ahead.”

But by keeping Trump’s name out of their mouths, O’Brien — and the Oscars — underplay their massive hand. Just last month, Bad Bunny’s halftime performance channeled the similarly outsized viewership of the Super Bowl to successfully drive a message of much-needed political solidarity.

If anyone would know about censorship under Trump 2.0, it’s Kimmel, whose show was briefly cancelled by ABC — the very network platforming the Oscars — out of fear of the president’s retaliation. Perhaps he acknowledged the elephant in the room best: “As you know, there are some countries whose leaders don’t support free speech,” Kimmel said during the ceremony. “I’m not at liberty to say which.”