Trump to award National Medal of Arts to actor Jon Voight [View all]

[highplainsdem]

Last edited Sun Nov 17, 2019, 10:39 PM - Edit history (1)

Source: https://thehill.com/blogs/in-the-know/in-the-know/

The White House announced on Sunday that President Trump will award actor Jon Voight the National Medal of Arts later this week.

Voight, one of Trump's most vocal Hollywood supporters, will be honored at a White House ceremony on Thursday for his "exceptional capacity as an actor to portray deeply complex characters," the White House said in a statement.

"Captivating audiences, he has given us insights into the richness of the human mind and heart," the statement said.

Voight, who won the Academy Award for best actor in 1978 for his role in "Coming Home," has called Trump the "greatest president since Abraham Lincoln."

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Read more: https://thehill.com/blogs/in-the-know/in-the-know/470864-trump-to-award-national-medal-of-arts-to-actor-jon-voight

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Voight is getting this award for his role as a Trump toady.

And he isn't acting.



Editing to add that Trump did not follow the normal procedures for these awards:

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2019/11/trumps-first-medal-arts-winners-include-jon-voight/601672/

Under Trump, the awards stopped: He passed up chances to hand out the medals in 2017 and 2018—the longest drought in the past 35 years. But now, I’m told, he’s poised to announce his first slate of winners later this month. It not only includes names that seem, in part, to be tailored to the president’s personal preferences—namely, the actor and MAGA enthusiast Jon Voight and all five U.S. military bands. But in choosing the winners, Trump appears to have ignored input from the committee that typically recommends artistic luminaries as candidates for the award.

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When members of the National Council on the Arts met late last month, however, they got a surprise: They learned that Trump had made his picks, and the winners would be formally announced in a matter of weeks. In choosing the recipients, though, Trump had bypassed recommendations the council had previously put forward, several council members told me. The members said that was a break from past practice and that presidents normally give the council’s recommendations more credence. When they looked at the names, some members objected to what they saw as partisan political considerations or a lack of diversity.

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Yet “there was alarm, and some surprise” at the meeting last month, one council member told me. “This was the first time that we had heard that there was going to be a medal award, and the decisions did not match our recommendations. That in itself was a new experience. We all immediately recognized that not only were recommendations not followed, but the kind of diversity we had striven for in the past in the various [artistic] disciplines had not been followed.”

The intent behind the president’s selections is unclear. But Voight, at least, is an effusive Trump loyalist who endorsed the president in 2016. In May, he tweeted a video message in which he said: “Let us stand with our president. Let us stand up for this truth: that President Trump is the greatest president since Abraham Lincoln.” Trump noticed the adulation. “Thank you so much, @JonVoight!” he tweeted in July.