Trump celebrates West Point alumni group cancelling award ceremony to honour Tom Hanks

Tom Hanks arrives at the 15th Governors Awards Nov. 17, 2024, at The Ray Dolby Ballroom in Los Angeles. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP, File)

WASHINGTON — U.S. President Donald Trump celebrated news on Monday that an alumni group from West Point cancelled an award ceremony set to honor Tom Hanks, with the president calling the famous actor “destructive” and “WOKE.”

Hanks was scheduled to receive the 2025 Sylvanus Thayer Award on Sept. 25, but the U.S. Military Academy’s alumni association cancelled the ceremony last week, according to news reports.

“Important move!” Trump said in a post on his social media network Monday. “We don’t need destructive, WOKE recipients getting our cherished American Awards!!! Hopefully the Academy Awards, and other Fake Award Shows, will review their Standards and Practices in the name of Fairness and Justice.”

West Point, its alumni association and a representative for Hanks did not immediately respond to messages and calls seeking comment Monday.

It comes as Trump has moved to direct the ideology and leadership of higher education institutes and the military in his second term, seeking to assert control with a mix of executive orders and threats of legal action and withholding funds.

This summer, the Army secretary directed West Point to review its hiring practices, bar outside groups from choosing employees and remove a newly announced hire who led the nation’s cybersecurity agency under then-President Joe Biden.

Earlier this year, West Point disbanded a dozen cadet clubs centered on ethnicity, gender, race and sexuality in response to the Trump administration’s push to eliminate diversity programs throughout government. The school also rehung a painting of Gen. Robert E. Lee dressed in his Confederate uniform in the library as the Trump administration has pushed to restore Confederate names and monuments that have been removed in recent years.

The Sylvanus Thayer Award award is named for an early superintendent of the military academy who is known as the “Father of West Point.” It has been given out every year since 1958 “to an outstanding citizen of the United States whose service and accomplishments in the national interest exemplify personal devotion to the ideals expressed in West Point’s motto: ‘Duty, Honor, Country,’” according to the West Point Association of Graduates.

“Tom Hanks has done more for the positive portrayal of the American service member, more for the caring of the American veteran, their caregivers and their family, and more for the American space program and all branches of government than many other Americans,” association board chairman Robert McDonald said in a June press release about the award.

Retired Army Col. Mark Bieger, president and chief executive officer of the association, wrote in an email Friday that the decision to call off the award ceremony “allows 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 The Washington Post, which was first to report on the cancellation.

Last year’s recipient was former President Barack Obama.

Hanks is among Hollywood’s most politically active celebrities, donating to support a slew of Democratic politicians and progressive causes. He vocally endorsed Obama, Hillary Clinton and Biden in their presidential bids and signed an open letter endorsing Kamala Harris last year.

He’s also gone to work for the Democrats. In 2012, he narrated a short documentary, “The Road We’ve Traveled,” for Obama’s reelection campaign.

To fete Biden’s inauguration in 2021, Hanks hosted a 90-minute prime-time television special, “Celebrating America.”

A year later, he narrated a two-minute ad spot from the Biden Inaugural Committee touting the accomplishments of the president’s first term. He also served as a celebrity co-chair for When We All Vote, a nonpartisan civic engagement organization founded by former first lady Michelle Obama to boost voter outreach.

And for the better part of the past decade, Hanks has made no secret of his disapproval of Trump and the president’s policies. He called the then-Republican candidate a “self-involved gasbag” during an on-stage interview in 2016. After Trump took office, Hanks said during an American Civil Liberties Union fundraiser that actions like the attempted travel ban for Muslim-majority countries represented a “brand of tragedy.”

During Biden’s inauguration, he spoke of “deep divisions and a troubling rancor in our land” and warned against attempts to twist the truth by those entrusted with public service during a 2023 Harvard commencement speech. Just this past year, he stoked the ire of Trump supporters after depicting a caricature of one during the 50th anniversary special of “Saturday Night Live.”

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Associated Press writers Konstantin Toropin in Washington and Jocelyn Noveck and Mallika Sen in New York contributed to this report.

Michelle L. Price, The Associated Press