Every year, the 93 members of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA) bestow Golden Globe awards to recognize excellence in television and film, both inside and outside the United States.

And on Sunday, January 8, the presenters honored actress Meryl Streep with the Cecil B Demille lifetime achievement Award.

Since 1979, she’s been nominated for more Academy Awards than any other actor–15 nominations for Best Actress and four for Best Supporting Actress.

She won Best Supporting Actress in 1980 for Kramer vs. Kramer, Best Actress in 1983 for Sophie’s Choice and again in 2012 for The Iron Lady.

But when Streep appeared to accept her latest award, she had a nomination of her own to present: One for a performance that “broke my heart.”

Meryl Streep at the Golden Globes

It had come in real life, not a movie.  And the performer she nominated was Donald Trump, for his mockery of a disabled New York Times reporter in 2015.

The reporter, Serge Kovaleski, suffers from arthrogryposis, a congenital condition that restricts the movement of the muscles in his arms.

Since declaring his Presidential candidacy on June 16, Trump had attacked the patriotism of America’s Islamic population. He claimed that he had seen Muslims in New Jersey celebrating the collapse of the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001.

To prove this, Trump cited a September 18, 2001 article written by Kovaleski when he was a reporter for The Washington Post.

In this, Kovaleski wrote that police “detained and questioned a number of people who were allegedly seen celebrating the attacks and holding tailgate-style parties.”

After Trump mentioned the story, Kovaleski said that the key word in it was “allegedly,” adding that there were no credible reports of such celebrations.

At a South Carolina rally on November 24, 2015, Trump claimed that Kovaleski was backing away from his article.

To mock Kovaleski, he flopped his right arm around with his hand held at an odd angle while imitating the reporter: “Now, the poor guy, you’ve got to see this guy: ‘Uhh, I don’t know what I said. Uhh, I don’t remember,’ he’s going like ‘I don’t remember. Maybe that’s what I said.'”

Click here: Donald Trump mocks disabled New York Times reporter – Donald Trump mocks reporter with disability – YouTube

Attacked for mocking Kovaleski’s disability, Trump claimed: “Serge Kovaleski must think a lot of himself if he thinks I remember him from decades ago–if I ever met him at all, which I doubt I did.”

Trump mocking Kovaleski, left; Kovaleski, right

But Kovaleski quickly contradicted Trump: He had covered Trump as a reporter for the New York Daily News and had met him face-to-face on at least a dozen occasions.

So Meryl Streep knew what she was talking about when she said:

“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.  When the powerful use their position to bully others, we all lose.”

Kelleyanne Conway served as Trump’s mouthpiece during the 2016 Presidential campaign. She continues in that rule as he prepares to take office as President on January 20.

And she was thoroughly upset with Streep’s remarks.

Appearing on Right-wing Fox and Friends the next morning, she said: “We have to now form a government, and I’m concerned that somebody with a platform like Meryl Streep is also, I think, inciting people’s worst instincts.

“When she won’t get up there and say, ‘I don’t like it, but let’s try to support him and see where we can find some common ground with him, which [Trump] has actually done from moment one.”  

What common ground she didn’t say. Agreeing on mocking the disabled?

Not to be outdone in “inciting people’s worst instincts,” President-elect Trump quickly took to Twitter–his preferred mode of communication.

Since Twitter allows only 140 characters, Trump couldn’t say all he wanted in one tweet. So it took three:

Meryl Streep, one of the most over-rated actresses in Hollywood, doesn’t know me but attacked last night at the Golden Globes. She is a…..

Hillary flunky who lost big. For the 100th time, I never “mocked” a disabled reporter (would never do that) but simply showed him…….

“groveling” when he totally changed a 16 year old story that he had written in order to make me look bad. Just more very dishonest media!

In 2015–before she insulted him–Trump told The Hollywood Reporter: “Julia Roberts is terrific, and many others. Meryl Streep is excellent; she’s a fine person, too.”