Meryl-Streep-doubles-Donald-Trump-criticism.
Meryl Streep doubled down on her criticism of Donald Trump on Saturday with another biting speech in which she claimed to have been attacked by 'brownshirts and bots' for speaking out against him.
In a play on his description of her as the 'most overrated actress' in Hollywood, she told the audience at a gala for the LGBT group Human Rights Campaign that she had also become the most 'berated' star of her time for speaking out against him.
'I am the most overrated and the most over-decorated and currently, I am the most over-berated actress, who likes football, of my generation.'
The actress said she had no choice but to speak out against him at the Golden Globes but that she had been targeted for doing so.
'It's terrifying to put the target on your forehead and it sets you up for all sorts of attacks and armies of brownshirts and bots and worse, and the only way you can do it is if you feel you have to. You have to! You don't have an option. You have to.'
Brownshirts is the colloquial collective name used to describe the Sturmabteilung, an early branch of Nazi militia.
Meryl Streep pays tribute to LGBTQ pioneers and those on the front lines of fighting for civil rights. pic.twitter.com/J6PdfbVTDm
— Raymond Braun (@raymondbraun) February 12, 2017
It's not clear whether Streep's use of the word was directed at the president himself or of the many social media users who lashed out against her Golden Globes speech in which she accused Trump of inciting violence and disrespect.
She hooked her argument to his campaign trail imitation of a disabled New York Times reporter which she said was cruel and mocking. Trump maintains that he was not making fun of the journalist's disability.
'Terrifying': The actress said she felt she 'had to' use her Golden Globes speech in January to share her political views but that it daunted her
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'Terrifying': The actress said she felt she 'had to' use her Golden Globes speech in January to share her political views but that it daunted her
In an extension of the scathing January speech, on Saturday Streep said she'd have liked to have stayed at home and 'loaded the dishwasher' but that she felt compelled to speak out because of her platform.
"'Evil prospers when good men do nothing"… ain’t that the truth.
'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.
'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.'
She said the country had been shown 'how the authority of the executive, in the hands of a self-dealer, can be wielded against the people, and the Constitution and the Bill of Rights...the whip of the executive can, through a Twitter feed, lash and intimidate, punish and humiliate, delegitimize the press and all of the imagined enemies with spasmodic regularity and easily provoked predictability.'
To finish off her fiery attack on Trump's first few weeks in power, she said: 'All of us have the human right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
'If you think people were mad when they thought the government was coming after their guns, wait until you see when they try to take away our happiness.'
Streep, 67, was accepting the National Ally for Equality Award when she delivered the blistering attack.
Her Golden Globes speech divided the country in January.
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