Summary

• Former President and current candidate Donald Trump has been incorporating the classic serial killer film The Silence of the Lambs into his campaign.
• The choice to use the charming cannibal Hannibal Lecter as a mascot for border control seems strange, but Trump continues to insert pop culture into politics.
• Trump uses Hannibal Lecter as an example of the kind of people he believes other countries are intentionally sending as immigrants to the United States.

The Silence of the Lambs has weirdly become a fixture in U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump's rallies and speeches. Jonathan Demme's serial killer thriller starring Jodie Foster and Anthony Hopkins might seem like an odd choice to accompany Trump on the campaign trail, but the Republican candidate and former President of the United States has been using it prodigiously the past few months in the anti-immigration parts of his speeches.

Hannibal Lecter, the imprisoned cannibal genius in The Silence of the Lambs, is probably an odd mascot for a conservative border control policy, but Trump has always been a quasi-Hollywood politician, a postmodern Ronald Reagan of sorts. He has starred in movies and TV shows, talking to Howard Stern, tweeting about Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson, and dancing with Jeffrey Epstein at clubs with young party animals. In his most recent rally, filmed in Wildwood, New Jersey, Trump incorporated Hannibal Lecter yet again:

"Silence of the Lambs! Has anyone ever seen The Silence of the Lambs? The late, great Hannibal Lecter! He's a wonderful man. He oftentimes would have a friend over 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."

Trump continued after a combination of awkward silence and distant chuckles. Read the entire transcript below to see the anti-immigration context of Trump's Hannibal Lecter reference, which has been made multiple times in the past few months. The Silence of the Lambs is certainly a timeless film. It's unclear why Trump refers to Hannibal Lecter as "the late, great," considering the character didn't die in The Silence of the Lambs or any film. It's also unclear what he thinks is "great" about Lecter, though Trump is likely using language in a less literal and definitional way than most people do.

Donald Trump's New Jersey Speech and The Silence of the Lambs

Here is the complete transcript of the section of Trump's speech, which begins at about the 34 minute point. You can see how he has been incorporating Hannibal Lecter into the idea of people from so-called 'insane aslyums' becoming immigrants into the United States (though there is no evidence of any country engaging in maliciously conscious behavior of releasing certain inmates and sending them specifically to the United States for immigration, for whatever reason). Trump began:

"The biggest thing we have is — we have millions of people here that are criminals. We really, I think they're criminals. Think of it: Venezuela just announced, and they had a new number, 67, now it's 72%. 72% they're down in crime, because they took their gangs, the gang members, they took a lot of their criminals, and they moved them into the United States of America."

"Jail populations all over the world are way down," continued Trump. "And these fools back there, the press, the fake news, they don't want to report it. You know why they're down? Because they're sending people in their jails into the United States, from Africa, from Asia, from all over the world. They're emptying out their jails into the United States. They're emptying out their mental institutions into the United States, our beautiful country, 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!" exclaimed Trump suddenly. "Has anyone ever seen The Silence of the Lambs? The late, great Hannibal Lecter! He's a wonderful man. He oftentimes would have a friend over 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."

Trump continued:

"We have people that have been released into our country that we don't want in our country, and they're coming in totally unchecked, totally unvetted. And we can't let this happen. They're destroying our country. And we're sitting back and we've let it happen. But We'll win this election because, if we don't, our country is going to be doomed."

At the moment, it is unclear if any high-IQ cannibals have entered the country from Mexico, Nigeria, Guatemala, Kenya, Syria, Lebanon, or elsewhere. Hopefully, border patrol is at least monitoring the dietary habits of the many people who cross the border, whether legally or illegally. Trump has yet to mention the possibly countless asylum seekers who have skinned kidnapped women in order to wear their flesh and dance to "Goodbye Horses," by Q Lazzarus. Watch this space for further updates.