- President-elect Donald Trump hit back at Meryl Streep calling her a 'Hillary lover'
- Streep slammed Trump during her Golden Globes speech on Sunday night
- Actress said the moment Trump mocked a disabled reporter 'broke her heart'
- Trump said he 'was not surprised' that he was criticized by 'liberal movie people'
Donald Trump has hit back at Meryl Streep calling her a 'Hillary lover' after her Golden Globes acceptance speech took aim at the president-elect.
Streep, who was honored with the Cecil B. DeMille lifetime achievement award on Sunday, slammed Trump in front of a room of stunned Hollywood stars.
She said the moment he mocked and humiliated a disabled reporter 'broke her heart' as Streep labelled it the year's most stunning performance.
Trump told the New York Times early Monday that he had not seen Streep's speech or the Golden Globes coverage.
But he said he was 'not surprised' that he was being criticized by 'liberal movie people'.
The president-elect said: 'I was never mocking anyone. I was calling into question a reporter who had gotten nervous because he had changed his story.
'People keep saying I intended to mock the reporter’s disability, as if Meryl Streep and others could read my mind, and I did no such thing.'
He added: 'And remember, Meryl Streep introduced Hillary Clinton at her convention, and a lot of these people supported Hillary.'
Streep, who spoke at the Democratic National Convention in support of Clinton last year, never mentioned Trump by name during her speech.
The president-elect came under fire in 2015 for mocking New York Times investigative reporter Serge Kovaleski by impersonating the journalist's physical handicap. It was an incident replayed frequently in campaign advertising last year.
'There was nothing good about it, but it did its job,' Streep said of the moment in her acceptance speech.
'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 in real life.
'It was that moment when a person asking to sit in the most respected seat in our country imitated a disabled reporter - someone he outranked in privilege, in power and in the capacity to fight back.
'That instinct to humiliate, when it's modeled by someone in a public platform, it filters down into everyone's life because it gives permission for others to do the same.
'Disrespect invites disrespect, violence incites violence. When the powerful use their position to bully others we all lose.'
Streep, who spoke at the Democratic National Convention, also called for the press to stand up to Trump and hold him to account going forward.
Trump had mocked Kovaleski at a rally in South Carolina for what he saw as the reporter stepping away from an article he wrote on the 9/11 attacks in The Washington Post.
'Now the poor guy, you ought to see this guy,' Trump said, drawing his wrists up close to his chest and flailing around. '"Ah, I don't know what I said! I don't remember!"'
Kovaleski has arthrogryposis, a congenital condition that has locked his right arm up against his chest in a similar position to the one Trump held. He claimed Trump was mocking his disability, while Trump denied at the time knowing who Kovaleski was.
Pro-Trump website Catholics 4 Trump claimed last year that the Republican had a long history of making similar gestures while mocking other people.
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