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Tom Hanks Blasts Trump For Attacking The Media

Tom Hanks Blasts Trump For Attacking The Media

Oscar-winning actor Tom Hanks decried President Donald Trump’s relentless attacks on the media on Saturday.

Trump's attempts to delegitimize mainstream media will only raise the stock of “agenda-filled” outlets, Hanks told CNN’s “Axe Files.”

“They’re throwing dirt and oil into a bucket of water so that it all becomes undrinkable after a while,” Hanks said.

Hanks, who will star in the upcoming movie “The Post” about the publication of the Pentagon Papers, described Trump’s attacks as “something more subtle and more insidious” than shutting down the press.

“I think it has fingerprints from other …[totalitarian] governments ... who’ve said, ‘We can’t shut them down because that will cause outrage, but we can denigrate them, we can call them names, we can tell people those are not the facts,’ that’s what he’s saying.”

“We are not the United States of America without the First Amendment,” Hanks added.

Prior to the election, Hanks said he didn’t think Americans would ever elect a man like Trump. Now, he noted ruefully, Trump’s victory was about as likely as neo-Nazis holding “torchlight parades in Charlottesville, and [that] Pocahontas jokes will be said in front of the Navajo code-talkers. That would have been just as hellacious in imagination, I think, as what we have.”

Check out the full interview above.

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This article exists as part of the online archive for HuffPost India, which closed in 2020. Some features are no longer enabled. If you have questions or concerns about this article, please contact indiasupport@huffpost.com.