So long as the country’s in a crisis over fake news, here’s a fact check the national media desperately need: It’s a fact that President-elect Trump, during the campaign, mocked a reporter who happens to have a physical impairment. It’s fake news, however, that he mocked the reporter because of his affliction.
We’re made to relive this episode now thanks to Meryl Streep’s weeping last weekend over the now two-month-old election results.
“[T]here was one performance this year that stunned me,” she said. (She was referring to Trump, not Mariah Carey on New Year’s Eve).
She went on later, “It was that moment when the person asking to sit in the most respected seat in our country imitated a disabled reporter.”
Streep was recalling Trump, who, during a rally in late 2015, accused New York Times reporter Serge Kovaleski of backtracking on his own reporting. Trump had previously cited past work by Kovaleski to back up a claim that Muslims were seen in New Jersey cheering for the Sept. 11 attacks.
There remains no strong evidence that any large number of people were seen doing that, but Kovaleski had included the rumor in a report he authored from when he was a journalist at the Washington Post.
In her speech, Streep said Trump had mocked Kovaleski for his impairment, which has crippled his arms and hands. “Someone [that Trump] outranked in privilege, power and the capacity to fight back,” she said. “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.”
It’s a myth the news media love to reminisce on, partially because it reminds them of a simpler time when Trump was certain to lose the election.
Streep became a hero among journalists.
Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson said Streep’s speech “took a two-by-four to Trump’s fragile ego.”
“The incident to which [Streep] referred actually took place … when candidate Trump mocked New York Times reporter Serge Kovaleski, who has a medical condition that limits the motion of his arms,” Robinson said. “While denouncing Kovaleski, whom I have known for years, Trump gestured similarly to the way the reporter does.”
The Daily Beast lauded Streep’s “riveting” speech, citing her attack on Trump for “callously mock-imitat[ing]” Kovaleski.
After the speech, Trump defended himself on Twitter and said he “never ‘mocked’ a disabled reporter” and that he “simply showed him ‘groveling’…”
A colleague of Eugene Robinson’s at the Post, media writer Callum Borchers, said Trump’s “defense simply isn’t believable.”
Roger Cohen at the New York Times rained approval on Streep for having “singled out [Trump’s] cruelty, as expressed in Trump’s mocking imitation during the campaign of a reporter with a disability.”
None of this is true.
As everyone has seen by now, Trump in late 2015 referred to Kovaleski’s backtracking at one of his rallies, saying, “[The report was] written by a nice guy; now, the poor guy, you got to see this guy…”
Trump then started jerking his arms around and, in a mocking tone, said, “Ah, I don’t know what I said! Ah, I don’t remember!”
If Trump’s purpose was to mock-imitate Kovaleski, anyone watching would have never known it; and not just because no one would know who Kovaleski is, if the media hadn’t manufactured a controversy.
The media would have everyone believe Kovaleski has Parkinson’s disease or at least Restless Leg Syndrome.
Anyone can search “Serge Kovaleski” on YouTube and see videos of the reporter. He doesn’t jerk his arms around, in fact, because his mobility is limited. He’s still.
A corpse would be doing a more accurate imitation.
By the way, Trump has mocked bank executives, Ted Cruz and the response President Obama’s generals give to questions about fighting the Islamic State and he used the exact same affect as he did for Kovaleski.
But the media ignore those because they didn’t depress Meryl Streep .
Eddie Scarry is a media reporter for the Washington Examiner. Thinking of submitting an op-ed to the Washington Examiner? Be sure to read our guidelines on submissions.
