Meryl Streep slammed President-elect Donald Trump at the Golden Globes on Sunday night, claiming that Trump mocked a reporter for having a disability with a hand motion during a speech. Trump responded on Twitter, “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 Hillary flunky who lost big. 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. Just more very dishonest media!”
Guns N’ Roses frontman Axl Rose is now weighing in on Twitter, “The Hollywood Reporter: Q: ‘any actress you love?’ A: ‘…Meryl Streep is excellent; she’s a fine person, too,’ Trump 2015.” Rose and Guns N’ Roses invited fans on stage to destroy a Trump pinata in Mexico last year.
Trump used the same hand motion to mock Republican rival Ted Cruz, who does not have a disability.
The Hollywood Reporter: Q: "any actress you love?" A: "…Meryl Streep is excellent; she's a fine person, too," Trump 2015
— Axl Rose (@axlrose) January 10, 2017
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4604reEqk0&feature=youtu.be
Streep said during her speech, “But there was one performance this year that stunned me. It sank its hooks in my heart, not because it was good, it was — there’s nothing good about it. But it was effective and it did its job. It made its intended audience laugh and show their teeth.
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 and power and the capacity to fight back. It, it kind of broke my heart when I saw it and I still can’t get it out 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. When the powerful use their position to bully others, we all lose. OK, go on with that thing. OK, this brings me to the press. We need the principled press to hold power to account, to call them on the carpet for every outrage.
That’s why our founders enshrined the press and its freedoms in our constitution. So I only ask the famously well-heeled Hollywood foreign press and all of us in our community to join me in supporting the Committee to Protect Journalists, ’cause we’re going to need them going forward and they’ll need us to safeguard the truth.”
