The Forrest Gump actor, 69, voices a number of historical characters in the new six-part PBS series from Ken Burns, Sarah Botstein and David Schmidt.<\/p>\n
Deadline<\/a> reports that while speaking at the New York premiere on Thursday night, Hanks argued that \u201cit\u2019s a very basic kind of thought process\u201d that establishes \u201cthe only narrative that is acceptable\u201d is \u201cmade by the people in power who want to guarantee themselves to be in power.\u201d<\/p>\n He added: \u201cWe know better. And you do not get that unless you understand the conversation that we\u2019ve had about slavery.\u201d<\/p>\n While Hanks did not mention Trump by name<\/a> at the event, he did use the opportunity to argue that an understanding of how much progress America has made is what makes the country great.<\/p>\n \u201cLook how often, and by often I mean 51% of the time \u2013 49% you\u2019re wrong, but 51% of the time we steered toward the right way of making a more perfect union,\u201d said Hanks. \u201cAnd that describes how far we have come! I\u2019m a proud American \u2026 that comes out without a doubt when you look at history with enough dispassion to understand, we did not know better then, but we do now.\u201d<\/p>\n Also speaking at the event, Burns added that American history benefits from an understanding of the violence involved in the founding of the country. \u201cNothing is diminished by showing the violence,\u201d he said. \u201cThose ideas, those big ideas are not diminished by telling the story. How are you so threatened by knowing that part of the story?\u201d<\/p>\n Last month, President Trump launched an attack on how history is taught in the United States, claiming that museums are \u201cwoke.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n Trump continued on his social media site Truth Social: \u201cThe Smithsonian is OUT OF CONTROL, where everything discussed is how horrible our Country is, how bad Slavery was, and how unaccomplished the downtrodden have been \u2014 Nothing about Success, nothing about Brightness, nothing about the Future.\u201d<\/p>\n A couple of weeks before he attacked the Smithsonian, President Trump removed funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting which helped pay for PBS.<\/a> The organization has since announced it has been forced to shut down.<\/p>\n![\"Tom](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Trump-West-Point-Hanks-l4maf1r1.jpeg\")
Tom Hanks lends his voice to the new Ken Burns series \u2018The American Revolution\u2019 (Invision\/AP)<\/p>\n