Trump Takes on Meryl Streep After Golden Globes Speech
And says getting border wall funds from Congress would speed project
Donald Trump began the final full week before he will be sworn in as the 45th president of the United States by responding to actress Meryl Streep’s criticism with harsh words after her Golden Globes rant.
The Hollywood legend, a Hillary Clinton supporter, used a six-minute acceptance speech at the annual awards dinner to take umbrage with the president-elect’s campaign style and often-sharp rhetoric.
“There was one performance this year that stunned me,” she said. “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 was that moment when the person asking to sit in the most respected seat in our country imitated a disabled reporter,” Streep added. “Someone he outranked in privilege, power and the capacity to fight back.”
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She was referring to Trump’s comments and gestures during a November 2015 campaign rally during which he appeared to copy the body movements of New York Times reporter Serge Kovaleski, who has a joint condition.
As he does just about anytime a celebrity or person of some fame criticizes him, the former reality television host struck back on Twitter.
Trump wrote that he never mocked Kovaleski, but he led his latest twitter barrage by calling Streep “one of the most over-rated actresses in Hollywood,” adding in his next post that the actress is a “Hillary flunky who lost big.”
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
What’s more, Trump went on to criticize Kovaleski.
The president-elect described his gesticulations as meant to portray the reporter as “‘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!”
“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
(It was not immediately clear why Trump put groveling in quotation marks, a practice he regularly uses around random words, even when it seems to defy grammar rules.)
In an early Monday morning interview with the New York Times, Trump said he is “not surprised” by such words from “liberal movie people.”
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Meantime, Trump was also tweeting Sunday evening.
He suggested that getting the funds from Congress to build his promised massive wall on the U.S.-Mexico border then making the Mexican government repay those billions of dollars would help get it erected faster.
“Dishonest media says Mexico won’t be paying for the wall if they pay a little later so the wall can be built more quickly. Media is fake!” Trump tweeted.
On Friday, Sean Spicer, set to become White House communications director and press secretary, told reporters it should not be news that his boss intends to ask U.S. lawmakers for the funds to construct the wall. But on the campaign trail for months and months, Trump boasted that he would make Mexico fund the project.