President-Elect Trump Lashes Out at Meryl Streep After Golden Globes Speech
"Disrespect invites disrespect, violence incites violence," she said.
— -- Meryl Streep used a speech at the Golden Globes on Sunday to speak out against Donald Trump, singling out his apparent mockery of a disabled reporter in 2015 and prompting the incoming president to criticize the three-time Oscar-winning actress as "over-rated" and a "flunky" of Hillary Clinton.
Though she never mentioned Trump by name, she did refer to a moment when a "person asking to sit in the most respected seat in our country" gave an impression of a disabled reporter.
She noted that his "performance" broke her heart.
Trump has said he never mocked New York Times reporter Serge F. Kovaleski's disability. He has a congenital disorder.
"Disrespect invites disrespect, violence incites violence," Streep said. "And when the powerful use their position to bully others, we all lose."
Responding to the speech on Twitter today, Trump launched a scathing attack on Streep, calling her "one of the most over-rated actresses in Hollywood" and a "Hillary flunky who lost big."
Streep, who got standing ovations from the audience at the beginning and end of her speech, remarked that the organization behind the Golden Globe Awards, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, has three words in its name that "belong to the most vilified segments in American society right now."
She noted the diversity in the room and said, "Hollywood is crawling with outsiders and foreigners."
"The beautiful Ruth Negga was born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, raised in London — no, in Ireland, I do believe — and she's here nominated for playing a girl in small-town Virginia. Ryan Gosling, like all of the nicest people, is Canadian. And Dev Patel was born in Kenya, raised in London, and is here playing an Indian raised in Tasmania," she said.
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"So Hollywood is crawling with outsiders and foreigners. And if we kick them all out, you'll have nothing to watch but football and mixed martial arts, which are not the arts."
Streep, 67, also spoke about the need for the media to hold those in power "accountable."
"That's why our founders enshrined the press and its freedoms in the Constitution," she said, asking the acting community to support the Committee to Protect Journalists. "We're going to need them going forward, and they'll need us to safeguard the truth."
She closed by quoting Carrie Fisher, who died almost two weeks ago after suffering a cardiac arrest.
"As my friend the dear, departed Princess Leia said to me once, 'Take your broken heart, make it into art,'" Streep said.
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