Jeffrey Lord, a former member of the Ronald Reagan administration, said Monday on CNN that Meryl Streep's dig at Donald Trump during her acceptance speech at the Golden Globes was something the "real world" wasn't taking seriously.
"No, I don't agree," Lord told CNN's "Erin Burnett OutFront," as reported by Mediaite, when asked if he agreed with the White House's assessment Streep's remarks Sunday night were "thoughtful and carefully considered."
"You know, the thing is, Erin, we've been at this now for decades: Hollywood personality A, B, or C stands up and says this kind of thing. No one out here in the real world takes them seriously."
Streep called out Trump for appearing to mock a disabled The New York Times reporter in 2015. She also called for America to support a free press.
"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 kinda gives permission for other people to do the same thing," she said. "Disrespect invites disrespect, violence incites violence. And when the powerful use their position to bully others, we all lose."
Lord, a political commentator on CNN, said if Hollywood celebrities "really meant what they said," then they would have given Reagan the Oscar humanitarian award for ending the Cold War.
"I mean, they weren't going to give it to him because, of course, he was a conservative," Lord said. "This is their bent. This is what they do. And from a purely political context, I would add, all this does is help Donald Trump."
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