Donald Trump is the “crypt keeper for the 1980s,” a Trump biographer said. Trump has mentioned Lecter while making baseless claims about immigrants.
By Marianne LeVine and Clara Ence Morse, The Washington PostHannibal Lecter is a cannibalistic serial killer, a lover of fava beans and a nice chianti, fictional - and now, a regular feature in Donald Trump’s speeches.
In Wildwood, N.J., on May 11, he told the crowd: “The late, great Hannibal Lecter. He’s a wonderful man. … Remember the last scene?” Trump went on to say: “We have people that are being released into our country that we don’t want in our country.” Yet the references to Lecter reveal something else about Trump: the era in which he rose to fame and his previous time as a celebrity. A Trump rally is a sort of time capsule, a frozen-in-amber moment from an earlier era - the 1980s - when Trump ruled the New York City clubs and tabloids and first graced the cover of Time magazine.His self-curated rally playlists include hits like “Y.M.C.A.” and “Gloria” . The fit of his suits and the length of his ties scream 1980s.
Trump’s Hannibal Lecter obsession fits perfectly in this mold. Thomas Harris’s novel “The Silence of the Lambs,” which the film is based on, hit bookstore shelves around the same time as Trump’s 1987 book, “Trump: The Art of the Deal.” The movie, which starred Jodie Foster as FBI cadet Clarice Starling and Anthony Hopkins as Lecter, came out in 1991 and became the first and only horror film to win the Academy Award for best picture.
The Lecter mentions are a way for Trump to continue “upping the ante” from his previous descriptions of migrants, said Gwenda Blair, another Trump biographer. It’s “not just criminals, rapists, which Trump has already used starting in 2015 … but let’s get cannibal in the mix.” Several people close to the Trump campaign said they did not know the backstory for Trump’s fixation on Lecter and had never asked. His speeches also seem to have perplexed Hopkins, the Welsh actor who won an Oscar for playing Lecter. In an interview with Deadline, Hopkins observed: “Hannibal, that’s a long time ago, that movie. God, that was over 30 years ago. I’m shocked and appalled what you’ve told me about Trump.
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