Why is Donald Trump so obsessed with Hannibal Lecter?

If the rumours are true, and Donald Trump really is becoming increasingly displeased with his choice of running mate, JD Vance, then it can only be a matter of time before he replaces him. And when he does, there is only one figure that he can possibly choose. A figure with a clinical mind. A figure with a sharkish ruthlessness. The figure who haunts Trump’s every waking thought. The overwhelming object of his obsession. That’s right: Trump’s next VP pick has to be the late, great Hannibal Lecter.

Related: The Silence of the Lambs at 30: a landmark thriller of horror and humanity

Trump mentioned Hannibal Lecter again last night , during a rally in North Carolina. During a rambling tangent about immigrants, Trump said: “They’re coming from everywhere. They’re coming from all over the world, from prisons and jails, and mental institutions and insane asylums. You know, they go crazy when I say, ‘The late great Hannibal Lecter,’ OK? They say, ‘Why would he mention Hannibal Lecter? He must be cognitively in trouble.’ No no no, these are real stories. Hannibal Lecter from Silence of the Lamb [sic]. He’s a lovely man. He’d love to have you for dinner.”

If that sounds familiar, it’s because Trump said more or less the same thing during his speech at the Republican national convention last week . And several times before that, stretching all the way back to May. Indeed, Lecter has become as immovable a part of Trump’s campaign as the poem The Snake was back in 2016 . Only that made sense because, as a poem, The Snake is a collection of words that possesses a basic legibility. Whereas the Hannibal thing literally cannot be described as that at all.

Trump’s unending Hannibal references are so overwhelmingly confusing that it has sent the internet running to the hills in search of something, anything, that might explain why the next potential president of the world’s biggest superpower keeps repeating the same baffling non-sequitur every time he gets near a microphone. People even approached Anthony Hopkins in an effort to get to the bottom of it. And without luck, because all Hopkins could manage in response was a brief (if understandable) “I’m shocked and appalled”.

So, then. What on earth is going on? Let’s try to get to the bottom of this by going through the prevalent theories.

Trump is conflating the terms ‘mental asylum’ with ‘asylum seeker’

According to TikTok user MrsMisanthrope2 , Trump only evokes Hannibal Lecter in public whenever he has been discussing immigrants. Immigrants seek asylum. And where do we first meet Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs? That’s right, in an insane asylum. The theory goes that Donald Trump believes the word “asylum” only has one definition, and that everyone who seeks asylum is automatically by definition insane. This could also be reinforced by the fact that, in 2001’s Hannibal, Lecter lives in Florence and is therefore an immigrant. But this can’t be right, can it? Donald Trump cannot be that stupid, can he? Can he?

Trump thinks Hannibal Lecter is a real person

Donald Trump’s odd phrasing when he mentions Lecter has baffled some, not least because it’s never made explicitly clear whether Trump thinks that Lecter is alive or not. The repeated use of the line “the late, great Hannibal Lecter” seems to suggest he might be unable to discern fiction from reality. To make matters worse, Hannibal Lecter isn’t actually dead. He remained alive through all the Silence of the Lambs prequels, and basically won in Hannibal, and even though the final episode of the Hannibal TV show ended with Lecter toppling off a cliff into the sea, his fate was left deliberately vague. But he can’t think Lecter is real, because once he mentioned that he was a character from a movie. So what is it?

It’s just a joke

Notice that Trump never mentions Lecter without saying something along the lines of “He’d love to have you for dinner”. Could this be the reason for all the references? Could it simply be that it means he gets an easy laugh from a crowd of simpletons with an old gag? What’s more, a gag that is so thumpingly unoriginal that Hannibal Lecter literally says it out loud during The Silence of the Lambs? If that’s the case, this is highly upsetting and Trump should consider paraphrasing a different overused line from a film. Maybe he could spike his speeches by saying “May the Force be with you”, or “We’re gonna need a bigger boat” or “I could’ve been somebody, instead of a bum, which is what I am”.

Trump is playing 4D chess with us

Maybe, though, this is all just a distraction. Maybe Trump is a political genius who knows that a newspaper of note like the Guardian will waste hundreds of words every time he mentions Hannibal Lecter, allowing him all the cover he needs to enact Project 2025 on an unwitting nation. Perhaps this is his equivalent of that time Boris Johnson said he painted wooden buses as a hobby, only more sophisticated because it has inspired debate rather than head-slapping disappointment. Perhaps invoking the name of a man from a film from 33 years ago is all part of his evil plan to destabilise all of democracy as we know it. But surely that can’t be it either.

Trump keeps unlocking Captain America-style supersoldiers to do his bidding every time he mentions Lecter

Which leaves just one explanation. “The late great Hannibal Lecter, he’s a lovely man, he’d love to have you for dinner,” is actually a trigger sequence for an army of insurrectionist sleeper agents who have been brainwashed by Russian scientists, and once they’ve heard him say it 35 times they’ll burn Washington to the ground. This is almost certainly the case, and may God have mercy on all our souls.

• This article was amended on 26 July 2024. Trump was originally quoted as saying The Silence of the Lambs but he said The Silence of the Lamb