Meryl Streep Fires Back At Donald Trump's 'Overrated' Diss
Oscar-winning actress Meryl Streep is firing back at Donald Trump after the president called her "overrated" following her fiery Golden Globes speech, during which she took him to task for his stances on immigration and the press.
At the Human Rights Campaign's 2017 Greater New York gala dinner on Feb. 11, Streep didn't address Trump by name, but she clearly had a message for the commander in chief. "'Evil prospers when good men do nothing'... ain't that the truth," Streep said (via Entertainment Weekly). "We shouldn't be surprised that fundamentalists, of all stripes, everywhere, are exercised and fuming. We shouldn't be surprised that these profound changes come at a much steeper cost than it seems would lie true in the 20th century. We shouldn't be surprised if not everyone is totally down with it. But if we live through this precarious moment...if his catastrophic instinct to retaliate doesn't lead us to nuclear winter, we will have much to thank this president for because he will have woken us up to how fragile freedom really is...The whip of the Executive can, through a Twitter feed, lash and intimidate, punish and humiliate, delegitimize the press and imagined enemies with spasmodic regularity and easily provoked predictability." She added, "Yes, I am the most overrated, over-decorated, and currently, over-berated actress...of my generation. But that is why you invited me here! Right?"
She also responded to criticism about her Golden Globes speech, in which some felt she dissed football and slammed mixed martial arts, saying they weren't "the arts." Streep said, "I do like football...I have watched more football in 60 years than anybody here. But if you hear a woman in a restaurant say, 'My son is very interested in the arts,' she's not talking about football or mixed martial arts because they're just not the same thing," she said. "Some of us like football, some of us like the arts, many of us want both in our lives...I was making a joke, and Mike Nichols told me, 'If you have to explain the joke, Meryl, you're doomed.'"
"We have the right to live our lives, with God or without, as we choose. There is a prohibition against the establishment of a state religion in our Constitution, and we have the right to choose with whom we live, whom we love and who and what gets to interfere with our bodies," she said (via Variety). "If you think people got mad when they thought the government was coming after their guns, wait till they come and try to take away our happiness!"
Your move, POTUS.