Tom Hanks has a message for Americans in the wake of Donald Trump’s surprising victory over Hillary Clinton: “We are going to be all right.”
“America has been in worse places than we are at right now,” Trump said while speaking at a tribute to his career at the Museum of Modern Art Film Benefit on Tuesday night. The crowd included Hanks’ wife Rita Wilson, Kate Capshaw, Steven Spielberg and Stephen Colbert.
“In my own lifetime, our streets were in chaos, our generations were fighting each other tooth and nail, and every dinner table ended up being as close to a fist fight as our families would allow,” Hanks said. “We have been in a place where we looked at our leaders and wondered what the hell were they thinking of? We’ve had moments with administrations and politicians and leaders and senators and governors where we asked ourselves, ‘Are they lying to us? Or do they really believe in this?’ That’s all right.”
“We are going to be all right, because we constantly get to tell the whole world who we are. We constantly get to define ourselves as Americans. We do have the greatest country in the world. We may move at a slow pace, but we do have the greatest country in the world, because we are always moving towards a more perfect Union,” Hanks said. “That journey never ceases. It never stops. Sometimes, like in a Bruce Springsteen song, one step forward, two steps back.”
He continued: “But we still, aggregately, move forward. We, who are a week into wondering what the hell just happened, will continue to move forward. We have to choose to do so. But we will move forward, because if we do not move forward, what is to be said about us?”
Other famous faces in attendance included Aaron Eckhart, Luke Evans, David Letterman, Damien Lewis, Steve Martin, Meg Ryan, Diane Sawyer, Christy Turlington, Emma Watson, Brian Williams and pilot Chesley Sullenberger, who Hanks portrayed in “Sully.”