During an interview that aired on Thursday with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour, actor Tom Hanks was asked for his thoughts on a second term for former President Donald Trump.
Hanks said there were “short-term” concerns but had a long-term view of the possibility.
Partial transcript as follows:
AMANPOUR: On this day, President Biden is also obviously giving his big speeches and it’ll all be in the cloak of democracy, that’s what we’re defending.
HANKS: I like that, the cloak of democracy, sure.
AMANPOUR: Yes. And without mentioning, you know, Donald Trump, he will talk about the stakes for America and for the world. Finally, do you worry about the United States in case there — in terms of its commitment to democracy and freedom and everything these people died for, if there’s another Trump presidency?
HANKS: I think there’s always a reason to be worried about the short-term, but I look at the longer-term of what this — what happened. I think there is an ongoing — look, our Constitution says, we, the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, that journey to a more perfect union has missteps in it. And we know. We — I can catalogue them as much as you can, and you’re a professional journalist, and I’m just a guy that makes movies and reads books.
AMANPOUR: And a historian.
HANKS: And — OK. And a lay historian, I’ll take that too. Over the long- term, however, we inevitably make progress towards, I think, that more perfect union. That’s what it was. And how does it come about? It comes about because — not because of somebody’s narrative of who is right or who is a victim or not, it comes out of the slow melding of the truth to the actual practical life that we end up living. It comes down to the good deed that is practiced with your neighbor, with your local merchants. And I will always have faith that the United States of America and the western societies that have adopted more or less the same sort of democracy cannot help but turn towards what is right.
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