In The Know

Tom Hanks on potential Trump return: ‘Journey to a more perfect union has missteps’

Tom Hanks says former President Trump winning a second term in the White House could indicate that America’s “journey to a more perfect union has missteps in it.”

“I think there’s always reason to be worried about the short term,” the “Saving Private Ryan” star told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour on Thursday, when asked if he worries about the country’s “commitment to democracy and freedom” if Trump wins in November.

“But I look at the longer term of what happened I think there’s 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,” Hanks, 67, said.

The Academy Award winner spoke with Amanpour in Normandy, France, as President Biden met with military veterans to mark the 80th anniversary of D-Day

“Over the long term, however, we inevitably made progress towards, I think, that more perfect union. And how does it come about? It comes about not because of somebody’s narrative of who was right, or who was a victim or not. It comes out of the slow melding of the truth to the actual practical life that we end up living,” Hanks said.


“It comes down to the good deed that is practiced with your neighbor,” the performer continued.

“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,” he said.

In 2022, Hanks narrated a video touting the Biden administration’s accomplishments in its first year, saying at the time that the country was “stronger than we were a year ago today.” He also hosted Biden’s prime-time inaugural TV special in 2021.