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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”.
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.