In the Steven Spielberg-directed film The Post, Tom Hanks plays newspaper editor Ben Bradley, of the Washington Post. In a new interview with The Hollywood Reporter, the actor opens up about how the film reflects today’s political climate.

“Bradlee had this very specific, almost contrary view: that Washington, D.C., was not just this one-business town,” Tom said. “He viewed Washington as being not one of the most important cities in the world, [but] the most important city. He said: ‘You don’t get it. We’re covering the stories that are changing the world, regardless of what The New York Times puts in it.’ When he saw that The Times had this blockbuster of a story about how the American people had been lied to by trusted officials since before World War II, he was saying: ‘How come we’re not doing our jobs? Why the fuck don’t we have this story?’ And then, of course, the Nixon administration, the Justice Department, says: ‘If you print these papers, you’re going to be traitors,’ which complicated absolutely everything, because it happened in the week that the Washington Post went public. And who was going to be running it? Well, it turned out to be Katharine Graham, if she had the guts.”

When asked what troubled him about the way the press is treated today, Tom said:

“There used to be this concept, [as the later Senator] Daniel Moynihan used to say: ‘You’re entitled to your own opinions, but not your own facts.’ Facts are irrefutable. Well, it turns out people are saying: ‘No, facts are not irrefutable. We can decide whatever facts that we want, that we would like.’ Right now, without a doubt, there are people in power trying to — if not quash or stop the right to publication, [then at least] denigrate it to the point [where] they are saying there is no truth to it whatsoever. And there are stories out there that are the truth, [in] organs of the Fourth Estate like the New York Times and the Washington Post.” 

As far as if Donald Trump wanted the movie to be screened at the White House, Tom said: “I don’t think I would. Because I think that at some point — look, I didn’t think things were going to be this way last November.”

He added, “I would not have been able to imagine that we would be living in a country where neo-Nazis are doing torchlight parades in Charlottesville [Va.] and jokes about Pocahontas are being made in front of the Navajo code talkers. And individually we have to decide when we take to the ramparts. You don’t take to the ramparts necessarily right away, but you do have to start weighing things. You may think: ‘You know what? I think now is the time.’ 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.”