'Overrated Actress' Meryl Streep on Trump: 'We're Not Going Back to the Bad Old Days'

Meryl Streep used her time at the lectern during Saturday night's Human Rights Campaign fundraiser to paint President Trump as a thin-skinned demagogue.

Receiving the LGBTQ org's Ally for Equality Award, Streep said, "If you think people got mad when they thought the government was coming after their guns, wait until they come and try to take away our happiness."

She went on to say, as she teared up, "We're not going to go back to the bad old days of ignorance and oppression and hiding who we are. We owe it to the people who have died for our rights, and who have died before they even got their own."

Underscoring what she sees as the danger of Trump's time in power, she said, "If we live through this precarious moment. If [Trump's] catastrophic instinct to retaliate doesn't lead us to nuclear winter, we will have much to thank our current leader for. He will have woken us up to how fragile freedom is."

Streep also referred to Trump's put-down of her as an "overrated actress," noting, "I am the most overrated and most over-decorated and currently — currently — I am the most over-berated actor... of my generation."