Meryl Streep, Trump’s Attack On A Reporter’s Disability, And Reality

MATT GERTZ/Media Matters

On November 25, 2015, during a speech before thousands of supporters in South Carolina, Donald Trump mocked the disability of New York Times reporter Serge Kovaleski.

This is not a controversial statement, or one up for debate. It is a reflection of reality.

Here’s the video. The despicable attack came as Trump was attempting to rebut Kovaleski’s work debunking Trump’s false claim that he saw “thousands” of Americans cheering the destruction of the World Trade Center. You can see Trump holding his right hand at an angle while flailing about in cruel mimicry of Kovaleski, who has arthrogryposis, which limits the functioning of his joints.

Following criticism of his vicious attack on Kovaleski, Trump claimed he had not been mocking the reporter’s disability. He lied. Part of his defense was that he had never met Kovaleski and didn’t know what he looked like. That was false. Here’s PolitiFact’s ruling that his denials were false. Here’s The Washington PostFactChecker’s.

This is not in question. So why is The New York Times itself helping Trump redefine reality?

During a speech at The Golden Globes on Sunday, Meryl Streep criticized the “instinct to humiliate” on display during Trump’s attack on Kovaleski. The Times’ Patrick Healy called Trump up for his reaction, then authored an article depicting the exchange as a she said/he said: Streep had called attention to a speech in which Trump was “seeming to mock” its reporter and Trump had “flatly denied” the claim.

The Times knows better. When Trump first attacked Kovaleski in July 2015, the paper responded, “We’re outraged that he would ridicule the physical appearance of one of our reporters.”

This is what Trump and his allies do. When Trump says something that exposes a real vulnerability, they outright lie about what he said and why. Trump lies habitually, so unwinding the rationale behind any particular falsehood is difficult. But the result is a news environment in which facts become unstable, reality is constantly under attack, and both journalists and news consumers are unable to process new information within a coherent collective framework.

If the paper of record won’t stand up for the truth about an attack on one of its own reporters, I have to question whether the Times will be able to do so regarding key issues of policy and politics. And that’s a real concern as the next administration unfolds.

Kellyanne Conway: Ignore what Trump actually says and ‘look at what’s in his heart’

Zack Ford/Think Progress

Receiving a lifetime achievement award Sunday night at the Golden Globes, actress Meryl Streep expressed her concern about President-elect Donald Trump, focusing in on the moment during the campaign in which he mocked a reporter’s disability. Doing damage control Monday morning, Trump senior adviser Kellyanne Conway pleaded that people ignore Trump’s words and the video of Trump obviously mocking the reporter, and instead look at “his heart.”

“You can’t give him the benefit of the doubt on this and he’s telling you what was in his heart?” Conway asked CNN’s Chris Cuomo. “You always want to go by what’s come out of his mouth rather than look at what’s in his heart.”

Just an hour earlier, Conway had been on Fox and Friends, attacking Meryl Streep for “inciting people’s worst instincts.” Streep gave an eloquent speech about rejecting bullying and encouraged everyone to feel empathy for others.

Whether Trump was intending to mock the reporter in the infamous clip has been well litigated, but the evidence in support of Trump’s after-the-fact claims are not particularly believable.

In the speech from November of 2015, Trump was defending his bizarre claim that thousands of Muslims were celebrating in New Jersey on 9/11. He attacked New York Times reporter Serge Kovaleski, who he knew enough to call a “nice guy,” for standing by his recollection of his own 9/11 reporting at the time of the tragedy.

In his gestures mocking Kovaleski — “you gotta see this guy,” he said — he clearly kept his right hand in a hooked position to mock the way the reporter’s arthrogryposis limits the flexibility in his arms. Trump later explained that he couldn’t possibly have been mocking his disability because, “despite having one of the all-time great memories, I certainly do not remember him.” Trump did not apologize.

But Kovaleski challenged both claims in his statement, highlighting that he had interviewed Trump as many as a dozen times throughout his career, including in his office in Trump Tower. “Donald and I were on a first-name basis for years,” he explained to the Times.

Conway’s argument is that no matter what Trump might do or say that is actually wrong or objectionable, it doesn’t matter so long as people believe he meant well. Streep, on the other hand, must be held accountable for promoting division by not standing by the President-elect.