Counselor to the President Kellyanne Conway criticized Meryl Streep on Monday for claiming Trump had mocked a disabled reporter while saying nothing about the livestreamed torture of a disabled young man as the assailants shouted “fuck white people” and “fuck Donald Trump.”
Streep used her speech at Sunday night’s Golden Globes to complain about widespread distrust of the press and President-elect Donald Trump: “All of us in this room really belong to the most vilified segments in American society right now,” Streep, whose estimated net worth stands at $75 million, said.
Streep also claimed Trump had mocked a disabled reporter, saying it “broke her heart.”
“There was nothing good about it, but it did its job. 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 in real life,” she said. “That instinct to humiliate when it’s modeled by someone in a public platform, it filters down into everyone’s life because it gives permission for others to do the same. Disrespect invites disrespect; violence incites violence.”
Of course, the media’s repeated insistences that “Trump mocked a disabled reporter” are not honest.
During a 2015 rally, Trump did an impression of a flustered person, in this case New York Times reporter Serge Kovaleski, when he flapped his arms and pretended to act agitated. He has done the same, flustered impression of able-bodied people as he did of Kovaleski, whose wrists are “locked in place” due to a rare, congenital disorder. During the same speech, Trump also did the impression again while talking about an Army general’s thoughts on ISIS. Videos of Trump mocking himself, Republican primary rivals such as Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, and others while waving his arms around are easy to find, yet the media pretends they don’t exist.
Trump, who once sent his own plane to get a child with a rare breathing disorder medical help in New York and has supported charities that assist paralyzed veterans and children with epilepsy, adamantly says he did not make fun of someone for having a disability.
And Streep had nothing to say about the alleged hate crimes committed against the disabled Chicago torture victim, Conway said Monday on Fox News.
“My initial reaction is, I’m glad Meryl Streep has such a passion for the disabled, because I didn’t hear her weigh in, and I didn’t even hear her use her platform last night… to give the shoutout to the mentally-challenged boy who last week was tortured live on Facebook for half an hour, by four young African-American adults who were screaming racial and anti-Trump expletives and forcing him to put his head in toilet water,” Conway said.
“So I’d like to hear from her today, if she wants to come and continue her platform on behalf of the disabled,” she continued. “And Donald Trump is absolutely right. He has debunked this so many times.”
“The election is over. She lost,” Conway added. “And he is absolutely right about something else, too. Everybody in that audience, with very few exceptions, was of a single myopic mind of how they wanted the election to go, and how they expected the election to go. They lost.”
“And I really wish she would have stood up last night and said, ‘I didn’t like the election results but he is our president and we’re going to support him.’ But this is Hollywood. I think where there is self-pity, a lot more self-awareness would do them some charm. Talking about how vilified poor Hollywood is, in their gazillion-dollar gowns,” she said.