Most people tend to stop and think a bit before making an overstatement.
But not Tom Hanks. At the National Archives Foundation Gala this weekend, he told his audience that Trump’s call to Sgt. La David Johnson’s widow was “one of the biggest cock-ups on the planet earth.” Ironically, Hanks’ previous statements were about history and its importance. Would Hanks rank Trump’s statements with the Holocaust or with Russian dictator Stalin’s steady elimination of 17 million people?
According to CNN, Hanks addressed his audience on the subject of history: “People are upset about what’s going on today. They’re furious, they’re frustrated, they’re worked up. If you’re concerned about what’s going on today, read history and figure out what to do because it’s all right there.”
The actor also spoke about the Constitution, calling it “the only self-correcting, open-ended document anywhere on the planet Earth that keeps us going, that keeps saying that we’re going to learn how to do that one thing we’ve already sort of done, we’re going to become better and better and better.” Safe to say that Hanks isn’t an originalist. Thankfully, he won’t be appointed to the Supreme Court anytime soon.
Despite all his grandiose ideas about history, Hanks clearly didn’t see the irony when he switched from discussing history as a whole to discussing Donald Trump. “I’m only knowing what I read in the newspapers and what have you, and it just seems like it’s one of the biggest cock-ups on the planet Earth, if you ask me,” he told CNN. “This is a tragedy of the utmost consequence and it goes much longer beyond who’s going to come out on top of the news story. I think it’s very sad.” Does it measure up with the Armenian genocide as a tragedy of the utmost consequence?
What’s really sad is Hanks’ understanding of history, if he thinks that this overanalyzed media boxing match is the biggest “cock-up” on planet Earth.
