During today’s White House press briefing, in among questions about President Donald Trump’s new travel ban, the federal budget, Syria and other issues, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer was asked whether Trump will be watching the Oscars on Sunday night and how he will react if there is “a Meryl Streep kind of moment.”
Noting the rash of anti-Trump speeches that have dominated trophy shows this awards season, syndicated columnist Debra Saunders asked Spicer, “Why do you think this happens?”
“Why do I think what happens?” Spicer asked, trying hard not to laugh, in which he was more successful than the reporters in the room.
“Actresses and actors like Meryl Streep,” Saunders explained.
“I have no idea. It’s a free country. I think Hollywood is known for being rather far to the left in its opinions,” Spicer explained patiently.
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“I got to be honest with you, I think the president will be hosting the Governors Ball that night,” Spicer said.
Different Governors Ball.
“The First Lady has put a lot of time into this event that’s going to occur, and welcoming our nation’s governors to the capital. I have a feeling that’s where the President and First lady are going to be focused, on Sunday night, so we’ll go from there.”
Of course Trump also had not watched Streeps’s acceptance speech at the Golden Globe Awards either, but it got his undies in a bunch nonetheless, as Saunders referenced. Accepting the Cecil B. DeMille Award, Streep gave what would have been the best political speech of the White House race, except it was delivered two months too late. Streep did not talk about her career but instead about “the one performance this year that stunned me, sank its hooks into my heart.” Describing a Trump campaign-rally imitation of New York Times reporter Serge Kovalevski’s disability (Trump has denied he was imitating the reporter), Streep said, “It kind of broke my heart when I saw it and I still can’t get it out my head because it wasn’t in a movie, it was real life.”
Streep is a “Hillary lover,” Trump told the New York Times that night, in a post-Globes interview. He called her one of the “liberal movie people” who have deliberately misconstrued what was his intention when he imitated the reporter. And, because a good head of steam is a terrible thing to waste Trump then took to Twitter to call Streep “one of the most over-rated actresses in Hollywood,” and a “Hillary flunky.”