Trump lashes out after Streep rebuke
Donald Trump lashed out yesterday at screen legend Meryl Streep, accusing her of being an overrated “flunky” of Hillary Clinton after the actress berated him at the Golden Globes ceremony. In what has become an early morning custom for the notoriously thin-skinned president-elect, Trump took to Twitter to settle scores with the three-time Oscar winner. “Meryl Streep, one of the most overrated actresses in Hollywood, doesn’t know me but attacked last night at the Golden Globes,” Trump wrote. “She is a Hillary flunky who lost big.”
Streep berated Trump for his divisive rhetoric as she received a lifetime achievement award at the Golden Globes on Sunday in Los Angeles. The 67-year-old fought to control her emotions as she received a standing ovation during her
acceptance speech for the Cecil B DeMille Award, handed out by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association. “You and all of us in this room, really, belong to the most vilified segments in American society right now. Think about it. Hollywood, foreigners and the press,” she said to her peers with a laugh, referencing Trump’s campaign that frequently disparaged immigrants and what he called biased media.
The US entertainment industry broadly supported Trump’s Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton, with many stars publicly endorsing her White House run. Streep trashed the incoming president for an infamous campaign speech during which he did a decidedly unflattering impression of disabled New York Times reporter Serge Kovaleski. “It was that moment when the person asking to sit in the most respected seat in our country imitated a disabled reporter - someone he outranked in privilege, power and the capacity to fight back. It kind of broke my heart when I saw it,” she said.
“I still can’t get it out of my head because it wasn’t in a movie. It was real life. And this instinct to humiliate, when it’s modeled by someone in the public platform, by someone powerful, it filters down into everybody’s life, because it kind of gives permission for other people to do the same thing. Disrespect invites disrespect. Violence incites violence,” she said. “When the powerful use their position to bully others, we all lose.”
Trump has denied mocking Kovaleski and again defended himself yesterday against Streep’s accusation. “For the 100th time, I never ‘mocked’ a disabled reporter (would never do that) but simply showed him ‘groveling’ when he totally changed a 16 year old story that he had written in order to make me look bad,” Trump said in a series of tweets. “Just more very dishonest media!” he added. Trump also told the New York Times in a brief telephone interview that he had not seen Streep’s speech but was “not surprised” to be criticized by “liberal movie people”.
Streep spoke out with less than two weeks to go until Trump’s inauguration. “Hollywood is crawling with outsiders and foreigners. If you kick ‘em all out, you’ll have nothing to watch but football and mixed martial arts, which are not the arts,” she said, holding back tears. She urged the “principled press to hold power to account, to call them on the carpet for every outrage,” to cheers from the floor.
Streep, considered among the best actresses of her generation, was presented with the DeMille award to mark a career which has seen her win eight Golden Globes and collect 29 nominations. She was nominated for best actress in a musical or comedy film at the glitzy ceremony at the Beverly Hilton Hotel for her performance in Stephen Frears’s “Florence Foster Jenkins” but lost out to Emma Stone.
The speech by Streep, who had a primetime speaking slot at last year’s Democratic National Convention praising Clinton’s “grit and grace”, quickly became the most-talked about moment of the Golden Globes. Global digital marketing company Amobee said it sparked some 627,000 Tweets in four hours. Not all the responses were complimentary. “This Meryl Streep speech is why Trump won. And if people in Hollywood don’t start recognizing why and how - you will help him get re-elected,” Meghan McCain, daughter of Republican Senator John McCain, wrote on Twitter.
“Why do you guys think we care what your political views are. Stick to what you do best and why we follow your account. For the acting and fashion. #enoughalready,” wrote Deb web 142 on the Instagram page of “Sex and the City” star Sarah Jessica Parker who had praised Streep. Shonda Rhimes, creator of hit TV shows “Scandal” and “Grey’s Anatomy”, was among Streep’s supporters. “How DARE Meryl exercise her right to free speech like that’s a thing we are allowed to do here in Ameri-wait... hmm,” Rhimes tweeted.
But Trump aide Kellyanne Conway said yesterday that Streep was misusing her platform. “I’m concerned that somebody with a platform like Meryl Streep is also, I think, inciting people’s worst instincts when she won’t get up there and say, ‘I didn’t like it, but let’s try to support him and see where we can find some common ground with him’,” Conway said on the “Fox & Friends” TV program yesterday.—