Meryl Streep is a “Hillary lover” and one of the “liberal movie people” who have deliberately misconstrued what was his intention when he imitated a physically challenged New York Times reporter at a rally speech during his campaign, Donald Trump said after tonight’s Golden Globe Awards ceremony, in an interview with the New York Times.
Trump said he had not seen Streep’s speech as she accepted the Hollywood Foreign Press Association’s Cecil B DeMille Award, or any of the other remarks made about him during the awards ceremony broadcast on NBC, but was “not surprised” to have been attacked by “liberal movie people,” NYT reported.
Accepting the Hollywood Foreign Press Association’s Cecil B DeMille Award, Streep never mentioned the president-elect by name; instead saying, “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 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,” she continued, referencing the November 2015 speech in which Trump twisted his arms in imitation of a New York Times reporter who had written an article in 2001, when working for the Washington Post, about law enforcement authorities detaining and questioning people who allegedly had been seen celebrating the September 11 attacks.
“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 real life,” Streep said.
The NYT reported Trump “flatly denied” he had intended to mock Serge F. Kovaleski.
“People keep saying I intended to mock the reporter’s disability, as if Meryl Streep and others could read my mind, and I did no such thing,” the newspaper quoted Trump saying. To which, he reportedly added, “And remember, Meryl Streep introduced Hillary Clinton at her convention, and a lot of these people supported Hillary.”
According to NYT, Trump, whose team reportedly has had trouble lining up Hollywood A-listers to perform at his inauguration, expressed confidence “plenty of movie and entertainment stars” would turn out for the occasion. By way of supporting that claim, Trump reportedly said, “all the dress shops are sold out in Washington. It’s hard to find a great dress for this inauguration.” NYT did not report that it had asked Trump what was the source of that statistic.
