Skip to content
Culture

“Hollywood Is Crawling With Outsiders”: Watch Meryl Streep’s Golden Globes Speech That Provoked Trump’s Latest Tantrum

The feeling will only become more familiar over the next four or eight years: You wake up, roll out of bed, and before you even have time for a cup of coffee, you learn from your phone or TV that your new president is sweaty with rage over some personal slight you weren’t even aware had happened. This time, the big dirty diaper boy has focused his whines in the direction of Meryl Streep, known to some as the best actress of her time, known to Donald as “Hillary flunky” and “one of the most over-rated actresses in Hollywood.”

Trump was upset because of a speech Streep gave when accepting her lifetime achievement award at the Golden Globes, during which she called out the far-flung hometowns of her fellow honorees to show that the entertainment industry, like so many others, depends on the work of immigrants. “Hollywood is crawling with outsiders and foreigners,” she said. “And if you kick them all out, you’ll have nothing to watch but football and mixed martial arts.” (For the record, there are plenty of football players and MMA fighters who were born abroad, too.)

The president-elect took particular exception to Streep’s recounting of the time he mocked the Pulitzer-winning reporter Serge Kovaleski, who has a condition called arthrogryposis, which limits his arm movements. According to Trump, he’d never met Kovaleski, and was not imitating his disability, but his “groveling.”

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/818419002548568064

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/818421066859167746

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/818422930157830144

He’s lying. We know he’s lying, because Kovaleski covered Trump closely when he worked for the New York Daily News, and his colleagues at the paper backed up his assertion that he and the future president were on a first-name basis. Looking at a photo of Kovaleski and Trump’s impression of him side-by-side, it’s clear that Little Donny knew exactly what he was doing. Meryl, and anyone, could easily tell.

Trump takes office in 11 days.