Meryl Streep was presented with the Golden Globes’s Cecil B. DeMille Lifetime Achievement award in a scene-stealing introduction by Viola Davis Sunday. In a long speech, Streep spoke out for “the most vilified segments in American society right now” and praised her colleagues for their “compassionate” performances. Then she singled out “one performance that stunned me”—when Donald Trump imitated a disabled New York Times reporter in the middle of a campaign rally.
“It kind of broke my heart, and I still can’t get it out of my head because it wasn’t in a movie. It was in real life,” she said. “This instinct to humiliate, when it’s modeled by someone in the public platform, by someone powerful, it filters down into everybody’s life, because it kind of gives permission for other people to do the same thing. Disrespect invites disrespect. Violence incites violence. When the powerful use their position to bully others, we all lose.”