Kellyanne Conway brushed aside actress Meryl Streep’s Golden Globes stage condemnation of President-elect Donald Trump, calling Hollywood a “myopic place” that wanted Trump to lose.
“When you tune into the Golden Globes awards show, is it always appropriate to talk politics?” Conway, Trump’s campaign manager and soon-to-be senior White House adviser, said in an interview with CNN’s Chris Cuomo on “New Day” Monday.
“They can say what they want, but they have to be held to account,” Conway said. “Look, that is a very myopic place — that place, this network, frankly, all wanted the election to turn out a different way.”
Streep criticized Trump during an award acceptance speech Sunday night, lambasting his mocking of disabled New York Times reporter Serge Kovaleski. Trump flailed his arms in a way that mimicked Kovaleski’s disability while attacking the journalist for saying that Trump had mischaracterized his post-September 11, 2001 reporting on Muslims’ reaction to the terrorist attacks.
“It kind of broke my heart when I saw it, and I still can’t get it out of my head, because it wasn’t in a movie. It was real life,” Streep said.
Trump tweeted criticism of both Streep and Kovaleski on Monday morning.
Conway on Monday repeated Trump’s insistence that he wasn’t mocking the reporter’s disability and asked Cuomo, “Why can’t you give him the benefit of the doubt?”
Cuomo pushed back, saying that Trump was “doing a gesture that goes right to the guy’s vulnerability.” Conway responded that Cuomo was “giving oxygen to what Meryl Streep said.”
“You can’t give him the benefit of the doubt on this and he’s telling you what was in his heart?” Conway said. “You always want to go by what’s come out of his mouth rather than look at what’s in his heart.”
Conway also criticized Streep for failing to discuss a video in which four people broadcast their attack on a mentally disabled man — while yelling obscenities about “white people” and Donald Trump — live on Facebook.
“If she has a great platform and a worldwide audience at that moment, why not bring attention to that recent event?” Conway said.
