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Trump awards medals to Voight, Krauss, others

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump on Thursday honored an Oscar-winning actor, a bluegrass-country singer, a conservative think tank and others with two of the most prestigious national awards in the arts and humanities.

It was the first time during his nearly three-year-old presidency that Trump has awarded the National Medal of Arts and National Humanities Medal.

Honorees included Jon Voight, one of the few Hollywood actors who is an outspoken backer of Trump. Voight, one of four winners of the National Medal of Arts, later accompanied Trump to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware to pay tribute to the remains of two U.S. service members who were killed in a helicopter crash in Afghanistan this week.

Trump has had a chilly relationship with a broad swath of Hollywood and the arts world, which have shunned him over his immigration policies, his Supreme Court picks and other issues.

The other recipients of the National Medal of Arts were Alison Krauss, a Grammy-winning bluegrass-country musician; Sharon Percy Rockefeller, the CEO of Washington’s flagship public television and radio stations; and the musicians of the U.S. military.

The National Humanities Medal recipients were Teresa Lozano Long, a Texas philanthropist; Patrick O’Connell, the chef and proprietor of the restaurant The Inn At Little Washington in Virginia; mystery writer James Patterson; and the Claremont Institute, a conservative think tank based in California.

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