Trump praises fictional serial killer Hannibal Lecter during rally speech
Ex-president calls Hopkins’ cannibalistic Lecter ‘late, great’ while condemning ‘people who are being released into our country’
Donald Trump on Saturday praised fictional serial killer Hannibal Lecter “as a wonderful man” before segueing into comments disparaging people who have immigrated into the US without permission.
The former president’s remarks to political rally-goers in Wildwood, New Jersey, as he challenges Joe Biden’s re-election in November were a not-so-subtle rhetorical bridge exalting Anthony Hopkins’ cannibalistic Lecter in Silence of the Lambs as “late [and] great” while simultaneously condemning “people who are being released into our country that we don’t want”.
Trump delivered his address to an estimated crowd of about 80,000 supporters under the shadow of the Great White roller coaster in a 1950s-kitsch seaside resort 90 miles (144.8km) south of Philadelphia.
The occasion served for Trump to renew his stated admiration for Lecter, as he’s done before, after the actor Mads Mikkleson – who previously portrayed Lecter in a television series – once described Trump as “a fresh wind for some people”.
The article didn't have the full quote, so here it is:
I think reading that is giving me dementia...
The brain worms are having a feast again.
It would be sad if an elderly family member started talking this way. The fact that a presidential nominee is talking like this, and yet the polls are close, is a bit mind boggling.
And they say dementia is not contagious…
What's giving me dementia is the fact that so many Americans want this guy to be president. Again.
I’m honestly baffled as to why a movie character would even come up in a political speech, much less this incoherently.
And yes, it’s a quote, it’s a funny line… why is he using it? It’s utterly silly. I’m also confused by the ‘late, great’ as if this was an actual person who had died, as opposed to a fictional character who hasn’t died in any book, movie or show I’m familiar with. And Anthony Hopkins is very much alive as well, as is writer Thomas Harris.
It doesn’t make any… goddamn… sense.
Please don’t elect this guy again.
Apparently this isn't the first time that he has related illegal immigrants to Hannibal. I'm not sure what he means by this - is he implying they're cannibals?
Heck, maybe he’s hoping Hannibal Lecter likes Mexican food, if you know what I mean.
God only knows what Trump’s thinking. Though he’s likely to be as confused as the rest of us mere mortals…
Well as a native English speaker, I didn't see how he's relating the two at all. He's just saying two unrelated things one after the other, with no segue. It's just braindead.
Maybe he's getting hungry while he's up there rambling and thinking he wants to eat them. Maybe someone told him about Swift's A Modest Proposal and he didn't realize it was satire, but maybe thought it was a good idea.
He was just watching the movie on the flight to the rally.
I'm thinking he's gone beyond RFK jr - he has brain worms and mercury poisoning. But also lead poisoning, possibly Adderall/cocaine abuse....
This is like early versions of LLMs hallucinating.
EDIT: I feel I need to apologize to LLMs for this comparison.
Here's the video. In context, it doesn't make a whole lot more sense than what's in the article. Here's a story that goes into the other more coherent things he said which are actually a good bit worse.
I don't know which one is actually worse.
A nostalgia themed glamourizing of brutality right next to "unwanted people". No explanation of how those two things connect, so all that stays is the association.
Kind of on a neuro-marketing like level of discours (just strenghtening your associations by creating emotions or atmosphere) he is mobilizing violence against immigrants. (And normalizing violence as a means of governing in general)
Yeah. I think as his dementia is getting more pronounced, his general admiration for people who kill you if you disagree with them is getting more explicit and weirdly specific and he's talking about it a lot more openly.
It's hard to tell even what the hell he means when he's talking about Hannibal Lecter. That's the only reason I say it's worse when he's talking about deporting protestors, because it's very clear what he means and it has more of a pathway to becoming reality. But I agree; my best guess when he talks about Hannibal Lecter and Al Capone is simply that he's playing it straight -- he admires someone who can casually talk about murdering other people, and aspires to be like that, because that means strength.
Does he... Does he just not know what referring to someone as "the late, great whatever" means? Does he just like the sound of the rhyme?
How do people in his audience come away from rallies like this one and go, "Yep, that's the guy who should be president"? Are they as brain-damaged as him?
Well apparently a lot of people didn't come to hear what he said, they left during the speech...
https://twitter.com/aliyareports/status/1789435508822561181
Never been to any political rally or event, but do people actually stay during the whole thing usually? People leave early during baseball games to beat the traffic, even if they like baseball or the match.
I've only been to one that was big. It seemed like most people were still in the venue at the end, and it was slow going on way getting out.
This is the nuclear speech all over again.
No this is somehow weirder. He seems to be confusing movies and real people, and possibly thinking it’s still the 1980s, when silence is the lambs was popular.
Like mid stage Alzheimer’s dementia.
You know, usually if I try hard I can kinda figure out how his rambling stream of consciousness verbal diarrhea got from one point to another. This is just...nonsense.
He's trying to say that the people coming into the country are dangerous criminals, but he's done the talking points so often by now that neither he nor his audience need the connective tissue between the ideas.
"Oh, now he's doing the Hannibal Lecter bit? Yeah, screw illegals or whatever."
They have their own coded language at this point where as Trump slips more and more into dementia they still understand what their adoptive hate spewing neo-Nazi grandpa dictator is talking about.
"And then the blargabaghehhhh...."
"Exactly. Fuck the blargabaghehhhh...."
Edit: I don't think I'll ever stop laughing when I see that clip, btw.
That seemed more like a drug orgasm then a brain fart
This is like when a band that has been doing a song for decades plays about thirty seconds of it and some of the best lyrics...a magamedley.
The fuck?
He must've just watched Silence of the Lambs on cable the night before. He always works the last thing he saw on TV into his speeches.
Gives me Chris Farley as an interviewer vibes.