'Insane' Donald Trump Praises Silence of the Lambs' Hannibal Lecter as a 'Wonderful Man' in Bizarre Speech: Watch
May 12 2024, Published 2:00 p.m. ET
What is going on? During Donald Trump's Wildwood, N.J., rally on Saturday, May 11, the ex-president went off on a bizarre tangent about Hannibal Lecter, the serial killer from the 1991 movie Silence of the Lambs, featuring Anthony Hopkins as Lecter and Jodie Foster as Clarice Starling, a top student at the FBI's training academy.
“They’re emptying out their mental institutions into the United States, our beautiful country,” Trump said. “And now the prison populations all over the world are down. They don’t want to report that the mental institution population is down because they’re taking people from insane asylums and from mental institutions. You know what the difference is, right? An insane asylum is a mental institution on steroids.”
“Silence of the Lambs. Has anyone ever seen The Silence of the Lambs? The late, great Hannibal Lecter is a wonderful man. He oftentimes would have a friend for dinner. Remember the last scene? 'Excuse me. I’m about to have a friend for dinner,' as this poor doctor walked by. ‘I’m about to have a friend for dinner.’ But Hannibal Lecter. Congratulations. The late, great Hannibal Lecter," he continued.
Needless to say, people were very confused how the movie and the rally were connected. One person wrote, "Imagine if Joe Biden said Hannibal Lecter is a wonderful man? The media continues to normalize Donald Trump, who is insane," while another person pointed out how multiple gaffes, stating, "At a New Jersey rally, Donald Trump made repeated reference to 'the late, great Hannibal Lecter' and confused Jimmy Carter with Jimmy Connors — forcing a difficult conversation about Biden’s age and mental acuity."
A third person added, "Can someone explain to me why Donald Trump is praising Hannibal Lector during his campaign stop? This is the guy you want us to believe is the better option over President Joe Biden and his administration? No one from Trump’s former administration will even work with him.…and the rest are serving jail sentences."
As OK! previously reported, Trump, 77, seemed to have trouble getting out some words during his speech. "All done by Biden. Carried out by [inaudible], all being done by him. Carried out by radical Democrats..." he told the crowd in a clip posted to X, formerly known as Twitter, however, most people couldn't understand the point he was trying to get across.
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Though Trump claims he's all there mentally, a top doctor thinks otherwise.
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"Unlike normal aging, which is characterized by forgetting names or words, Trump repeatedly shows something very different: confusion about reality," Dr. Lance Dodes, a supervising analyst emeritus of the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute and retired Harvard Medical School professor, said in a statement, referring to Trump confusing Barack Obama with Joe Biden.
"If he were to become president he would have to be immediately removed from office via the 25th Amendment as dangerously unable to fulfill the responsibilities of office," Dodes added.