WITH just 11 days to go until he becomes the 45th President of the United States of America, Donald Trump had big things on his mind.
It wasn’t North Korea’s claims to be able to fire an intercontinental ballistic missile “anytime and anywhere”, nor was it the political fallout of Ted Cruz meeting the President of Taiwan. It wasn’t even the warning shots fired at Iranian boats by a US Navy ship.
Nope, what was really taxing the “very good brain” of the next Commander-in-Chief was Meryl Streep’s speech at the Golden Globes.
Streep received the Cecil B DeMille, award effectively the lifetime achievement award at the ceremony, and used her speech to criticise Trump and the political climate in America. “There was one performance this year that stunned me,” she told the gathered stars.
“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. Someone he outranked in privilege, power and the capacity to fight back. It kind of broke my heart when I saw it. I still can’t get it out of my head because it wasn’t in a movie. It was real life.”
The actress was referring to an incident last November when, during the election campaign, Trump mocked the disability of New York Times reporter Serge F Kovaleski, who has arthrogryposis, a condition which visibly limits the functioning of his joints. The businessman claimed the reporter had edited a 16-year-old article on the 9/11 attacks to help Hillary Clinton (he hadn’t) and mimicked Kovaleski’s impairment.
Streep, who didn’t mention Trump by name, said his “instinct to humiliate” would filter “down into everybody’s life, because it kind of gives permission for other people to do the same thing”.
“Disrespect invites disrespect,” she added. “Violence incites violence. And when the powerful use their position to bully others, we all lose.”
The actress then offered her public support to the Committee to Protect Journalists, and called on the “principled press” to keep on holding power to account and “to call them on the carpet for every outrage”
Trump, who looks set to be the most thin-skinned president in America’s history, then attacked the actress, tweeting: “Meryl Streep, one of the most over-rated actresses in Hollywood, doesn’t know me but attacked me 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 ‘grovelling’ 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!”
For the record, the reporter never grovelled, and didn’t change his story. Trump had also met him at least a dozen times and was aware of the disability.
Over a four-decades-long career, Streep has been nominated for 30 Golden Globe awards and 19 Academy Awards, more than any other actor. She has won both awards multiple times, and received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2014.
In between his many unsuccessful business ventures, Trump appeared in Home Alone 2 and had a number of cameos in Sex and the City.
Meanwhile, British dramas won big in the awards with prizes for The Crown, and BBC drama The Night Manager, which brought successes for Tom Hiddleston, Hugh Laurie and Olivia Colman.
Hollywood musical La La Land broke the record for most prizes, winning seven Golden Globes.
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