Tom Hanks is disheartened by America’s presidential election — but the Oscar-winning actor is particularly dismayed by Republican hopeful Donald Trump.
Hanks was in Rome to accept the lifetime achievement award at the Rome Film Festival this week when he weighed in on U.S. politics with reporters ahead of the event, according to the Hollywood Reporter.
“It strikes me as ‘crapfest 2016,’” the two-time Oscar-winning actor told reporters, according to THR. “Every four years the circus comes to town in the United States. Every four years we decide who’s going to be the leader. Sometimes we’re in an era when it seems that the country is at a crossroads. It’s always at some form of crossroads. Oftentimes there is a fever pitch of fear and anxiety. Sometimes it’s warranted, and other times it’s manufactured.”
Despite the seemingly more-contentious-than-usual presidential race, Hanks said he has faith that the American people will make the right decision in November.
“I think without a doubt the world is going through something quite profound in which the future is shaky, in which the future is mysterious, in which great parts of the world are dealing with problems that seem as though they have no solution,” he said. “When America has faced those circumstances and times, we have never turned to a simplistic, self-involved gasbag of a candidate.”
Hanks went on to compare Trump to politicians like former Louisiana governor Huey Long, former Republican presidential nominee Wendell Wilkie and former Wisconsin senator Joseph McCarthy.
“There’s always been some version of the current nominee of the Republican Party that holds sway. But we never invest our future in them,” Hanks said, according to THR. “We have never done it, and we will not do it now.”
Hanks has previously predicted that Americans would never elect Trump president.
“I think that man will be president right about the time when spaceships come down filled with dinosaurs in red capes,” the Sully star told Sky News in an April interview.
While promoting his upcoming film Inferno in Italy earlier this week, Hanks blasted Trump over his appearance in an 11-year-old leaked Access Hollywood behind-the-scenes tape in which he jokes about women.
“I’m offended as a man,” he told the Press Association. “I’m not offended as a husband or a father. I’m offended as a guy.”
Follow Daniel Nussbaum on Twitter: @dznussbaum
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