Context...(courtesy of Phillip Bump)
Trump had just finished describing
President Biden as a moron, worse than the 10 worst presidents in U.S. history combined.
“We’re supposed to cherish the office of president,” Trump said. “You don’t do what he did to try and win votes” — that is, serve as president as your predecessor racks up criminal indictments. (Trump frames this as proactive targeting by Biden, of course, but it isn’t.) Then Trump pivoted to his need to win back the White House in November.
“The biggest thing we have is we have millions of people here that are criminals,” he said. “We really — I mean, they’re criminals.”
“Send them back!” someone in the crowd shouted.
“We’re supposed to cherish the office of president,” Trump said. “You don’t do what he did to try and win votes” — that is, serve as president as your predecessor racks up criminal indictments. (Trump frames this as proactive targeting by Biden, of course, but it isn’t.) Then Trump pivoted to his need to win back the White House in November.
“The biggest thing we have is we have millions of people here that are criminals,” he said. “We really — I mean, they’re criminals.”
“Send them back!” someone in the crowd shouted.
“Think of it: Venezuela just announced — and they had a new number was 67 now it’s 72 percent — 72 percent they’re down in crime because they took their gangs, their gang members, they took a lot of their criminals and they moved them into the United States of America,” Trump continued. “Jail populations all over the world are way down and these” — Trump searched for the best word for a moment — “
fools back there, the press, the fake news — they don’t want to report it.”
“They’re emptying out their mental institutions into the United States, our beautiful country,” he continued. “And now the prison populations all over the world are down. They don’t want to report that. The mental institution population is down because they’re taking people from insane asylums and from mental institution — you know what the difference is, right? An insane asylum is a mental institution on steroids.”
**....now, the even scarier part ***
“‘Silence of the Lamb,’” Trump said. “Has anyone ever seen ‘The Silence of the Lambs’?”
And here we go.
“The late, great Hannibal Lecter is a wonderful man,” Trump continued. “He oftentimes would have a friend for dinner. Remember the last scene? ‘Excuse me, I’m about to have a friend for dinner’ as this poor doctor walked by. ‘I’m about to have a friend for dinner.’ But Hannibal Lecter, congratulations. The late, great Hannibal Lecter.”
“We have people that are being released into our country that we don’t want in our country,” Trump said, again using the baseless verb “released” to imply that it was part of some intentional effort. “And they’re coming in totally unchecked, totally unvetted, and we can’t let this happen. They’re just destroying our country.”
Once again, from the crowd: “Send them back!”
“And we’re sitting back,” Trump continued, “and we better ***** well win this election ’cause if we don’t, our country is going to be doomed. It’s going to be doomed.”
So no, it was not a gaf. Nor did Trump mispeak. He quite intentionally (and strangely) references an evil character who is well known in American culture....to amp up the fear of illegal immigration.
Of course all the claims Trump made about emptying the jails etc are absolutely false.