Last night during the 2017 Golden Globe Awards, prolific actress Meryl Streep gave a stunning speech while receiving the Cecil B. DeMille award for Lifetime Achievement. During the speech she specifically called out President-elect Donald Trump for his horrific mocking of disabled reporter Serge Kovaleski, who has a congenital condition affecting the joints. She said in the speech, “But there was one performance this year that stunned me. It sank its hooks in my heart. Not because it was good — there was nothing good about it — but it was effective and did its job. It was that moment, when the person asking to sit in the most respected seat in our country imitated a disabled reporter — someone he out-ranked in privilege, power, and the capacity to fight back. It kind of broke my heart when I saw it, and I still can’t get it out of my head because it wasn’t in a movie; it was in real life. 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. When the powerful use their position to bully others, we all lose.”
Meryl Streep: “When the powerful use their position to bully others, we all lose” https://t.co/P8j4hbb8RL #GoldenGlobes pic.twitter.com/h0vcms9W0j
— Hollywood Reporter (@THR) January 9, 2017
Of course, the President-elect did not take to kindly to Streep calling him out. At 6:30 am this morning, he took to Twitter in an attempt to lambast her comments, despite the fact that he only 11-days away from taking office so he surely has more important things to do. In the tweets, Trump called Streep, “overrated” and a “Hillary flunky”.
Meryl Streep, one of the most over-rated actresses in Hollywood, doesn’t know me but attacked last night at the Golden Globes. She is a…..
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 9, 2017
Hillary flunky who lost big. For the 100th time, I never “mocked” a disabled reporter (would never do that) but simply showed him…….
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 9, 2017
“groveling” when he totally changed a 16 year old story that he had written in order to make me look bad. Just more very dishonest media!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 9, 2017
During Trump’s entire campaign his has insulted and offended nearly anyone who isn’t a straight, privileged white male. Post-election, we have hoped that he would change some of his offensive and horrific rhetoric but it seems that is not the case. We highly doubt that this is the last we will hear from Trump regarding Meryl Streep’s riveting speech asking for basic human decency.
