Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center reacted in two predictable ways to Meryl Streep's Golden Globes speech calling out Donald Trump.
First was to declare that she should not be listened to because she's a rich Hollywood liberal. For instance:
- Karen Townsend and Alexa Moutevelis Coombs huffed that Streep "delivered a dramatic, sanctimonious diatribe to the viewing audience and her fellow leftists in the audience" that featured "laundry list of perceived wrongs that must be righted by liberal Hollywood." They added: "Hey, Meryl, shut up and act."
- Dan Gainor pointed out that Streep is "a major Democrat funder -- giving $113,810 to Democrats since 2012" and "appeared at the DNC convention as part of a huge lineup of Hollywood celebrities."
- Scott Whitlock grumbled that "All three networks on Monday eagerly hyped liberal celebrities trashing Donald Trump at Sunday night’s Golden Globes awards."
- Matt Philbin harrumphed that Streep's speech was "just another instance of an entitled Hollywood gasbag using her position to speak whatever the opposite of truth to power is."
The second was a lame attempt to counter Streep's claim that Trump once maliciously mocked a disasbled reporter. Townsend and Coombs claimed Streep "accused Trump of mocking a disabled reporter for gestures he regularly uses." Whitlock dismissed the mocking as mere "comments and gestures Trump made about journalist Serge Kovaleski in 2016." Philbin insisted that the mocking was "something that didn’t happen" and that "the incident that gave Streep the genuine frowny face wasn’t itself genuine."
The evidence Townsend and Coombs and Philbin cited to deny the mocking was a post by an obscure pro-Trump blog purporting to offer "The Catholic Case for Donald Trump" insisting that Trump mocks everyone like that so it's totally OK.
In fact, as actual fact-checker Glenn Kessler of the Washington Post documents, Trump's claim that he did not know Kovaleski prior to the incident he mocked the reporter for -- pointing out that Trump's assertion that "thousands" of Muslims celebrated the fall of the World Trade Center on 9/11 lacked a factual basis -- was not credible, and "as the evidence shows, Trump clearly mocked Kovaleski."
The MRC's Curtis Houck later mocked the Associated Press for doing a fact-check on Trump's tweet-storm dismissal of Streep as "overrated." He said nothing about the fact-checks proving the MRC wrong about Trump's mocking of Kovaleski.
