Few people can claim the kind of virtually universal appeal enjoyed by Oscar-winning actor Tom Hanks. (The sitting president certainly can’t.) Following a West Point Academy alumni group’s cancellation of an award ceremony honoring Hanks — a longtime advocate for veterans — Trump celebrated the snub, decrying the actor as “destructive, WOKE,” and unworthy of the honor.
“Our great West Point (getting greater all the time!) has smartly cancelled the Award Ceremony for actor Tom Hanks,” Trump wrote Monday on Truth Social. “We don’t need destructive, WOKE recipients getting our cherished American Awards!!! Hopefully the Academy Awards, and other Fake Award Shows, will review their Standards and Practices in the name of Fairness and Justice.”
West Point’s alumni association announced to members that Hanks would not be receiving its Sylvanus Thayer Award — which honors non-alumni who embody the academy’s motto of “duty, honor, country” — in an email obtained by The Washington Post on Saturday.
“This decision allows the Academy to continue its focus on its core mission of preparing cadets to lead, fight, and win as officers in the world’s most lethal force, the United States Army,” wrote the West Point Association of Graduates president, retired Army Col. Mark Bieger.
Does the decision make sense? No. The award has been bestowed on former Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush, Hank’s Forrest Gump co-star Gary Sinise, Ross Perot, and Henry Kissinger. In effect, the award has been given to a sprawling array of political and cultural figures, and has had no measurable impact on the warfighting ability of the American military.
Why single out Hanks? The actor has ostensibly liberal politics, and has appeared in Saturday Night Live sketches that parody Trump’s supporters, angering some of his base. QAnon conspiracy adherents have spread baseless claims that Hanks and other celebrities were involved in a secret child-sex-abuse ring. In February, MAGA billionaire and former Trump administration official Elon Musk promoted a post from a conservative activist accusing Hanks of being a “pedo.”
But the issue isn’t really Hanks, whose coffee company “Hanx for the Troops” donates 100 percent of its profit to nonprofits supporting veterans and their families; it’s the president and this administration.
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Over the first year of Trump’s second term, West Point has become a focal point of the White House’s crusade to purge the nation of “woke” boogeymen. Fox News weekend host turned Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has led a purge of the school’s faculty and administration — as well as the school’s curriculum and policies — aimed at fulfilling Trump’s demands that American military academies “are prohibited from promoting, advancing, or otherwise inculcating the following un-American, divisive, discriminatory, radical, extremist, and irrational theories,” including that “America’s founding documents are racist or sexist; and ‘gender ideology.’”
Somehow, the presence of Hanks, dubbed “America’s Dad” by his legions of fans at home and abroad, runs counter to the administration’s political priorities.
From Rolling Stone US