Former President Donald Trump cautioned his supporters in a macabre "joke" during a rally in Virginia against having dinner with fictional cannibal serial killer Hannibal Lecter, warning: "Don't do it."
Trump again took the opportunity during his campigan stop in Chesapeake to compare the gruesome killer, who enjoyed his victims with some fava beans and chianti, to immigrants streaming across the U.S. border. He mistakenly called the 1991 Oscar-winning film starring Anthony Hopkins the "Silence of the Lamb."
"They're coming from prisons and jails, mental institutions and insane asylums like 'Silence of the Lamb,'" he said of immigrants at the rally, though there is no evidence to support that claim.
Trump: Silence of the lamb. The late great Hannibal Lecter pic.twitter.com/Qp6cta0DjU
— Acyn (@Acyn) June 28, 2024
Trump made a similar comparison during a rally last month on the Jersey Shore where he also talked about the "late, great" Hannibal Lecter.
"Has anyone ever seen The Silence of the Lambs?" Trump asked the crowd in Wildwood then, getting the title of the movie right.
"The press always says, 'Why does he ramble about Silence of the Lamb?' The late, great Hannibal Lecter. He'd like to have you over for dinner. Did you ever? Don't do it," Trump warned.
"If he suggests, 'I'd like to have you for dinner,' don't go. But these are the people, these are the people that are coming into our country and they are coming in numbers that nobody can believe," he continued, again inserting immigrants into the bizarre comments.
Trump repeated his claim about migrants in his debate against Joe Biden Thursday, insisting that nations are emptying out "millions" from their prisons and mental institution to send to the U.S
CNN, PBS and the Poynter Insitute's Politifact responded with a fact check that there is no evidence of such a push (calling such a claim "ridiculous"), and that Immigration officials arrested a total of about 103,700 noncitizens with criminal convictions from fiscal years 2021 to 2024, according to federal data.
