The Late Great Who Exactly?

 

Why does Donald Trump keep going on about 'the late, great, Hannibal Lecter'?

None of the Hannibal Lecter novels feature his death. Neither do any of the film adaptations. Even the Hannibal TV show leaves his end somewhat ambiguous. Of the actors who have played Lecter, only one, Gaspard Ulliel, has died - and given that he played the role in the now largely (and rightly) forgotten Hannibal Rising it seems unlikely that he can be the person Trump is thinking of.

(We can't discount it entirely, however: he did play Yves Saint Laurent in a biopic of the fashion designer, which, Wikipedia reports, 'turned him into a gay icon', so there's at least a non-zero chance that America's Fruitiest President might have seen him in that and checked out his other work.)

For some reason I keep thinking Anthony Hopkins has retired from acting, and for a while I thought this was what Trump was referring to, but then I saw him in the ads for that new Amazon gladiator show and realised that, no, it can't be that either. And Lecter's creator, Thomas Harris, is still with us. 

So why the Hell does he not just keep referring to Hannibal Lecter, but specifically keeps describing him as someone who's dead? 

Maybe He's Just a Fucking Idiot

You're unlikely to ever go wrong starting from this assumption in any assessment of Trump and his behaviour, and there are a number of vectors along which his idiocy could be manifesting here. He's the oldest candidate to ever run for President, and only his most ardent Stans wouldn't admit that when you compare him on the stump now to the man he was even four years ago, you can see that a step has been lost. Maybe he just can't remember the plots of movies that well anymore, especially given his habit of fast-forwarding through the boring bits. He might be under the impression that we definitely, unambiguously see Hannibal die in one of the adaptations. Or he might think Anthony Hopkins is dead. Or maybe Brian Cox? He played Hannibal in Manhunter (the thinking person's Lecter movie), and he also played the Rupert Murdoch analogue in Succession, who died towards the end of that show's final season. You can see why Trump might feel drawn to watching a show about a foul-mouthed tycoon with a family full of horrifically awful and self-centred children, but honestly it's hard to see him persevering with the show all the way. And besides, in one of his bizarre rambles Trump says 'Lecter' - whoever he's thinking of when he says that - was very complimentary about him, while Cox has made no secret about his lack of good feeling toward Donnie Dumbo. 

Who knows? Maybe he just doesn't actually know what 'late' means in this context. 

So yeah, as always with Trump, stupidity is a distinct possibility. 

Maybe He's Misremembering a Stephen Colbert Skit

This is really a special case of the above theory, but I mention it because I only became aware of the above video while searching for the Vic Berger supercut at the top of this post. The skit itself is a particularly cringeworthy example of the kind of humour libs resorted to to deal with their horror at Trump's election, and honestly you feel bad for Jodie Foster having to be involved in it, but it does feature an instance of someone playing the role of Dr Lecter saying something vaguely positive about Trump - specifically, that the two played golf together and enjoyed a longpig taco bowl 'and a nice diet coke' (I warned you it was cringe). While Colbert was critical throughout Trump's presidency, we do know that reign involved the White House television getting a heavier workout than it had under any other incumbent, and given that Trump was known to stay up until 4am tweeting invective against his haters, there's a good chance he had The Late Show on in the background for part of those sleepless, rage-filled nights (he just like me fr, fr). 

Maybe It's Misdirection

This possibility is even less funny than the Colbert sketch, but given that we know from reporting in Haaretz that Israel ordered the use of its Hannibal Directive on October 7th, is it possible that someone in Trump's circle is encouraging him to go out and ramble on about the fictional killer to try and game Google searches in the hope that fewer people will find out about the Israeli military's very real slaughtering of their own personnel and even civilians? If so it doesn't seem to have been very successful, but it would fit with a trend in politics for at least attempting to throw out chaff to confuse the curious, such as Boris Johnson's bizarre 'confession' to painting cases of wine to look like Routemaster buses (which many people believe was an attempt to push Johnson's association with the infamously dishonest 'Brexit bus' down the search results), or the recent rash of pieces by apparently overexcited British newspaper columnists about how they'd love to have an affair with Keir Starmer, whose timing seems very suspicious to those aware of certain rumours. 

Or Maybe It's Code? 

The thing that keeps nagging at me, though, is the idea that Trump isn't really referring to Hannibal Lecter at all: that, in fact, for his own sick amusement, he's revelling in talking about someone else entirely. I don't know why this possibility keeps pinging away in the back of my head, but it does. Who, though? That's the question. 

Let's consider the character of Hannibal Lecter: a figure wholly without conscience, who presents himself as a man of culture and a towering intellect, a well-connected patron of the arts who regards other people not as complex human beings but mere commodities to be consumed, who delights in corrupting others and sharing his predilections with his fellow avid fans. 

Now, who would Trump know who fits that description?