Meryl Streep has come under fire in recent months for her former passionate endorsement of disgraced producer Harvey Weinstein, whom she once lauded as “God” at the Golden Globes in 2012. But that hasn’t deterred her from issuing another forceful public endorsement at the Golden Globes, this time for Oprah Winfrey, whom Streep says “doesn’t have a choice” but to run for president now.
“She launched a rocket tonight. I want her to run for president,” Streep told The Washington Post following the Golden Globes award ceremony Sunday night. “I don’t think she had any intention [of declaring]. But now she doesn’t have a choice.”
Streep also worked in another shot at the current president. “She runs a major company,” she said of Winfrey. “She could lead the country. Instead of leading the country down.”
Streep’s high praise for Winfrey following the media mogul’s acceptance speech for the Cecil B. DeMille Award at the Golden Globes contrasts sharply with the forceful condemnation of Trump Streep issued last year while accepting the same award.
Here’s a transcript of the section of the speech in which Streep unloaded on Trump, whose name she was careful not to utter.
There was one performance this year that stunned me. It sank its hooks in my heart. Not because it was good. There was nothing good about it. But it was effective and it did its job. It made its intended audience laugh and show their teeth. It was that moment when the person asking to sit in the most respected seat in our country imitated a disabled reporter, someone he outranked in privilege, power, and the capacity to fight back. It kind of broke my heart when I saw it. I still can’t get it out of my head because it wasn’t in a movie. It was real life.
And 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. And the powerful use their position to bully others, we all lose.