News Bite: Meryl Streep on Trump: 'How Fragile Freedom Is'

Meryl Streep has some more words for Donald Trump.

After her speech criticizing him at the Golden Globes in January (without ever mentioning him by name), Streep is back again to warn the American people about the potential danger of his administration.

On Saturday, Streep delivered a speech at the Manhattan gala for the Human Rights Campaign, a nonprofit that advocates for LGBTQ equality, denouncing Trump once again:

"If we live through this precarious moment, if his 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. The whip of the executive, through a Twitter feed, can lash and intimidate, punish and humiliate, delegitimize the press and imagined enemies with spasmodic regularity and easily provoked predictability."

She also spoke about the backlash she's received since first denouncing Trump, saying:

"It’s terrifying to put the target on your forehead, and it sets you up for all sorts of attacks and armies of brownshirts and bots and worse. And the only way you can do it is if you feel you have to. You have to! You don’t have an option. You have to."

Streep has also attracted her share of defenders, including Viola Davis, newly named Best Supporting Actress at last night's BAFTA awards: "One of the things people have to know about this woman is that she is the most honorable, accessible human being you'd want to meet. I have never met anyone who has not been in her presence that she has not made feel like a star in their own lives. Very humble, very gracious human being."

Watch Streep's full speech here: