Thursday, June 25, 2026

Tom Cruise Turned Down Trump Offer of Kennedy Center Honor, Citing Work Conflict, But He’s Not Shooting Anything in December

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Tom Cruise didn’t want to be part of Donald Trump’s Kennedy Center travesty.

The Washington Post says Cruise turned down Trump’s offer of an honor, citing scheduling conflicts.

But the Kennedy Center event is usually the first week in December. Cruise has nothing in production set for that time. He will have finished “Broadsword,” and maybe in pre-production for “Top Gun 3.”

Even if he were in a shoot, a two day jaunt to Washington, DC would be nothing for globe-trotting Cruise. And nothing is required besides just showing up. Others would have done tributes to him.

Cruise may not be the only potential honoree to decline being involved in Trump’s crapfest. That’s the likeliest reason the list of honorees is so dreadful. Who would say yes other than a small group of right wingers? Better yet, who will appear in the presentation? And who will be in the audience? The mind boggles.

Cruise can easily wait it out until 2029, when he would definitely be candidate for a Kennedy Center honor. Who knows what his personal beliefs are? But as a savvy box office man, he’s wise enough to know that doing anything to support Trump would turn off a chunk of his audience.

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Roger Friedman
Roger Friedman
Roger Friedman is the founder and editor-in-chief of Showbiz411. He wrote the FOX411 column on FoxNews.com from 1999 to 2009, where he covered Michael Jackson, and previously wrote the "Intelligencer" column at New York magazine in the mid-1990s, where he covered the O.J. Simpson trial. He also edited Fame magazine. His bylines have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, the New York Daily News, the New York Post, Vogue, Details, and the Miami Herald. He is a voting member of the Critics Choice Awards (Film and Television branches), and his movie reviews are tracked by Rotten Tomatoes. With D.A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus, he co-produced the 2002 documentary "Only the Strong Survive," which screened at Directors' Fortnight at the Cannes Film Festival.

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