Why on earth did Donald Trump call Hannibal Lecter a “wonderful man”?
Donald Trump has a soft spot for villains. Vladimir Putin. Kim Jong Un. Elon Musk. Kanye West. All of these nasty little men have earned his praise over the years for one atrocity or another, be it on a stage in front of a much smaller crowd than he claims or in an all-caps, grammar-free social media post at 3am. He’s a man’s man, you could say, and he isn’t afraid to be openly affectionate towards the worst of them as long as everyone knows it’s purely platonic.
It was only a matter of time, then, for this real-life villain to proclaim his love for a fictional one. For far too long (no one can say exactly how long), Trump has been somewhat obsessed with Hannibal Lecter. As a brief reminder, Hannibal Lecter is the cannibalistic serial killer who Anthony Hopkins played in Jonathan Demme’s 1991 film The Silence of the Lambs (or, as Trump calls it, ‘Silence of the Lamb’). He murders calmly and remorselessly and enjoys eating the liver of his victims alongside some fava beans and a glass of chianti (but don’t we all?).
If you don’t remember Lecter, you probably haven’t seen the film, because anyone who has seen it is condemned to nightmares for the rest of their lives. Trump, being a suspected sociopath himself, might be the exception, because he does not seem susceptible to those nightmares. In fact, he thinks Lecter is a decent all-around chap. In a 2024 campaign speech, he labelled the infamous cannibal a “wonderful man” and “a very important force.”
You will no doubt be wondering what on earth the context could have been. The correct wording here is ‘contexts,’ actually, because he’s brought Mr Lecter up on numerous occasions. The reason is that Trump likes to compare Central American immigrants to the psychologist-turned-serial killer, saying that Lecter isn’t actually a fictional character because “We have many of them that came across the border.” In fact, he’ll go as far as to say that the countries south of the US border are actually “emptying mental institutions and insane asylums” into the States.
The reason Trump was praising ‘The late, great Hannibal Lecter’ (as far as the books and films are concerned, Lecter is very much alive, albeit fictionally) and calling him a ‘wonderful man’ is that he thinks his many comparisons between the cannibal and immigrants won him the election. Most people with a pulse would disagree.
It is also quite possible that Trump had no idea who he was referencing when he first started talking about Lecter. The reality star has a habit of referencing people who he knows nothing about, so it wouldn’t be particularly surprising. Way back in 2017, for example, Trump seemed to think that the pioneering 19th-century abolitionist Frederick Douglass was still alive, calling him “an example of somebody who’s done an amazing job and is being recognised more and more.”
In general, it’s safe to assume that Trump doesn’t know what he’s talking about, although knowingly praising a serial killer would be pretty on-brand.
