SAEDNEWS: President Donald Trump backed West Point’s decision to cancel a planned ceremony honoring Tom Hanks, blasting the actor on Truth Social as “destructive” and “WOKE.” The spat — framed by Hanks’s public criticism of Mr. Trump and a West Point statement that the cancellation lets the academy “focus on its core mission”
West Point has called off a planned ceremony to present Tom Hanks with the Sylvanus Thayer Award, and President Donald Trump applauded the decision on Monday. In a Truth Social post, Trump called Hanks “destructive” and “WOKE,” and suggested the cancellation was an “important move.” The episode has quickly become another flashpoint in ongoing disputes over culture and recognition at the country’s premier military academy.
The Sylvanus Thayer Award is given to an “outstanding citizen” who did not attend the academy. Since its inception in the 1950s, honorees have included presidents and public figures such as Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Ronald Reagan, journalist Tom Brokaw, Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor and former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. Hanks had been slated to receive the prize in recognition of his advocacy for veterans and his portrayals of service members in films and television, including Saving Private Ryan, Band of Brothers, and Forrest Gump.
Retired Army Col. Mark Bieger, president and CEO of the West Point Association of Graduates, told faculty the ceremony was canceled to allow 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,” according to reporting in The Washington Post. The cancellation became a lightning rod for commentary across political and cultural lines.
Trump used the cancellation to widen the cultural frame. Posting on Truth Social, he called the move an “important” decision and attacked Hanks as “destructive, WOKE.” He went further, urging the Academy Awards and other awards bodies to “review their Standards and Practices in the name of Fairness and Justice,” warning that networks would see their “DEAD RATINGS SURGE!” The former president’s comments fused institutional critique with the familiar rhetoric of cultural grievance and ratings-era bombast.
Tom Hanks has publicly criticised Mr. Trump in recent years. In February, Hanks appeared on Saturday Night Live in a sketch in which he played a racist Trump supporter who refused to shake the hand of Black cast member Kenan Thompson — a moment that fed into the larger narrative of Hanks as an anti-Trump cultural figure. That record of critique, combined with longstanding public affection for Hanks’s portrayals of military life, made the planned honour both resonant and, for some, controversial.
The cancellation arrives amid a wider tug-of-war over cultural and curricular content at West Point. Earlier this year the academy removed books touching on diversity, equity and inclusion themes only after facing pressure; last month it also restored a controversial painting of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee that included the depiction of an enslaved man in the background. Those episodes — and this latest cancellation — sit within broader debates about the academy’s role and the limits of commemoration in a politically charged environment.
