With Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump constantly finding himself in the media spotlight for making an offensive comment about somebody, it seems that most people are taking to heart the wise words said by the First Lady of the United States.
“When they go low, we go high.”
Award winning deaf actress Marlee Matlin found herself to be the target of the latest reports of Trump’s harsh comments and took the high road.
According to some sources, when Matlin competed on Celebrity Apprentice, Trump was reported to be rude to the actress just because she was deaf. The sources even claimed that Trump repeatedly called her the “R” word. Shortly after the Daily Beast article went out, Matlin took to Twitter and released a full statement about the comments.
“Recent media reports have circulated that Donald Trump allegedly referred me to as ‘retarded.’ The term is abhorrent and should never be used. The fact that we are talking about this during a very important moment in American history has upset me deeply,” wrote Matlin. “As a person who is Deaf, as a woman, as a mom, as a wife, as an actor, I have a voice. And I’m using that voice to make myself heard and vote.”
This is not Trump’s first ableist offense. Last year, when the candidate was on campaign at a South Carolina Rally, he publicly mocked disabled New York Times reporter Serge Kovaleski.
One of the anonymous sources to the Daily Beast even compared his treatment of the actress to the mockery Kovaleski experienced.
“In the boardroom, he would talk to her like she was ‘special,” stated the source. “He took her deafness as a some kind of [mental] handicap. She responded to him, she stood up for herself.”
The Trump campaign has not responded to the allegations or the comments made by Matlin.
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