Donald Trump Gives Unhinged Shout-Out To “Great Actor” Hannibal Lecter At An Iowa Rally: “He Said On Television… ‘I Love Donald Trump’”

It must be spooky season, because Donald Trump certainly has horror movies on the brain.

According to Huff Post, the former president and current Republican candidate held a rally in Cedar Rapids, Iowa on Saturday (Oct. 7), where he critiqued open border policies and claimed that people were entering the country from “jails, prisons… mental institutions, and insane asylums,” which prompted a reference to The Silence of the Lambs.

“That Silence of the Lambs, you know what that is?” he asked his audience. “Has anyone seen Silence of the Lambs?”

He then proceeded to bring up the film’s terrifying antagonist, Dr. Hannibal Lecter, the cannibalistic serial killer who is also captured in the film’s sequel Hannibal.

However, as opposed to commending the work of actor Anthony Hopkins, who portrayed the character in both films, he shouted out Lecter himself.

“Hannibal Lecter, how great an actor was he?” he exclaimed. “You know why I like him? Because he said on television… ‘I love Donald Trump.’ So I love him. I love him. I love him. He said that a long time ago and once he said that, he was in my camp, I was in his camp. I don’t care if he was the worst actor, I’d say he was great to me.”

Critics on social media have weighed in on the slip-up on X (the platform formerly known as Twitter), writing “this can’t be real…” and “I think hannibal meant he’d love some Donald Trump.”

However, Trump’s feelings might not be mutual. When interviewed by The Guardian in 2018, Hopkins expressed that he didn’t care for Trump, or for any political candidate.

“I don’t vote because I don’t trust anyone,” he told the outlet. “We’ve never got it right, human beings. We are all a mess, and we’re very early in our evolution.”

As for other stars who have portrayed the infamous horror figure originally created by author Thomas Harris, Mads Mikkelsen (who played Hannibal Lecter in the NBC drama series Hannibal) told CBS News that the 2016 election was “scary,” and described Trump as “obviously not the classic politician.”

“I can definitely laugh at some of the stuff he says but I can also go, ‘Oh my God, did he say that?'” he added.

Brian Cox, who played Hannibal Lecter in the 1986 horror film Manhunter, previously compared the ruthless Roy family he led on Succession to the Trump family on CNN, and told Deadline that he felt “disappointment in the human experiment” with respect to Trump being elected in 2016.

“You go, how the f*ck can this country vote for such a f*cking asshole?” he asked.

The Silence of the Lambs and Hannibal are streaming on Max.