Trump Explains Real Reason Why He Keeps Talking About Hannibal Lecter

Former President Donald Trump gave an explanation for why he continues to bring up Hannibal Lecter—the fictional serial killer played by Anthony Hopkins in The Silence of the Lambs —at his rallies. “You know when I go Hannibal Lecter, you know what I am talking about,” Trump told the crowd in a bizarre town hall in Oaks, Pennsylvania, on Monday. He expressed anger at the media for highlighting the reference to the fictional character. “It’s a way of demeaning, they say ‘Hannibal Lecter, why would you mention Hannibal Lecter?’ Well you know why—because he was a sick puppy, and we have sick puppies coming into our country. Trump said he was referring to his frequent claim that migrants crossing the southern border were coming from “mental institutions and insane asylums.” “I figure that’s better than wasting a lot of words, you just say, ‘Hannibal Lecter, we don’t want him,’” he added. Trump has made this claim before, including during his debate with Vice President Kamala Harris , but there is no publicly available data backing it up. He added of the Lecter reference: “I do it for a lot of reasons, but I do it because we are allowing some very bad people into our country, and they’re coming as terrorists,” Trump said, quickly moving on to bragging about the endorsement he received from the Border Patrol union last weekend.

Read more at The Daily Beast.