“Disrespect invites disrespect. Violence incites violence. And when the powerful use their position to bully others, we all lose."
Meryl Streep was honoured at the Golden Globes with the Cecil B. Demille Award and she used the opportunity to speak out against Donald Trump.
Streep, who holds the record for the most Academy Award nominations of any actor, used her acceptance speech to criticise Trump's controversial stance on immigration and his apparent mocking of New York Times reporter Serge Kovaleski, who has a physical disability.
In case you haven't seen it, here's the moment that took place at a Trump rally in South Carolina.
After facing the inevitable backlash from this display, Trump denied that he was mocking Kovaleski.
He said in a statement: "I have no idea who Serge Kovaleski is, what he looks like or his level of intelligence. I merely mimicked what I thought would be a flustered reporter trying to get out of a statement he made long ago."
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/669994161911779329
In her speech, Streep depicted the President-elect as a bully and a grotesque caricature while strongly advocating the need for social inclusion and an more protection for the rights of journalists.
Regarding the press, she had this to say "We need a principled press to hold power to account, to call them (Trump) 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, because we’re going to need them going forward, and they’ll need us to safeguard the truth."
Since the speech was made,
The New York Times have reported that Trump has labelled Streep as “a Hillary lover” and that he was "not surprised” that he had come under attack from “liberal movie people.”
Here's Streep's speech in full.
