Put up or Shut up, Tom Hanks: Trump White House to Screen The Post

As absolutely everyone knows, our president has a deep and unconditional respect for the media. If there’s anything Donald John Trump is known for, other than taping his neckties together and eating steak wrong, it’s his love of journalism and the hard-working folks who are telling the stories. So it’s not surprising, nor is it in any way ironic, that the Trump White House will screen Steven Spielberg’s Pentagon Papers drama The Post.

Trump’s people have requested and been granted access to screen The Post at both 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. and Camp David, where Trump is scheduled to host a summit with top GOP lawmakers on Saturday and Sunday, per THR. Hollywood studios have traditionally provided such screening privileges for the president and White House staff for many years, and it remains to be seen whether the president himself will actually watch the movie. (He’s more of a Bloodsport guy, after all, and even that one strained his gnat-like attention span.)

The Post, of course, was made as a reminder of the critical importance of the First Amendment, and it stars two of Trump’s most high-profile Hollywood critics in Meryl Streep and Tom Hanks. Hanks recently went so far as to say that if the film were to screen at the White House, he would opt not to attend. “Individually we have to decide when we take to the ramparts,” Hanks said. “This is the moment where, in some ways, our personal choices are going to have to reflect our opinions. We have to start voting, actually, before the election. So, I would probably vote not to go.” It appears Hanks will now have a non-hypothetical choice to make: to the ramparts, or to the White House? We can only hope Hanks delivers the Trump snub that we as a society deserve.

Streep, too, has had beef with the Orange One of late. Last January, after winning the Cecil B. DeMille Award at the Golden Globes, Streep delivered a scathing anti-Trump speech without ever saying the man’s name. “Disrespect invites disrespect, violence incites violence,” she said. “And when the powerful use their position to bully others, we all lose.” Trump, predictably, responded with vitriol, calling Streep “overrated” and a “Hillary flunky” in a series of tweets, likely posted from his golden toilet. We took their feud very seriously.

Per 20th Century Fox’s synopsis, The Post dramatizes “the unlikely partnership between The Washington Post’s Katharine Graham (Streep), the first female publisher of a major American newspaper, and editor Ben Bradlee (Hanks), as they race to catch up with The New York Times to expose a massive cover-up of government secrets that spanned three decades and four U.S. Presidents. The two must overcome their differences as they risk their careers—and their very freedom—to help bring long-buried truths to light.” That sound you hear is Trump snoring.

The Post got its first taste of awards season acclaim in December, landing six Golden Globe nominations, including a nod for Best Picture, Drama. The film has earned an impressive $2 million in limited release, a figure that will likely balloon when the film goes wide on Jan. 12.

You can read Paste’s review of The Post right here and watch a trailer here.