Reason # 32: Film Buff
Why do we need to defeat Donald Trump and ensure that a Democrat occupies the White House?
We have been following Donald Trump’s business career in some detail and it is getting depressing, so let’s take a day off to consider Donald Trump and the arts. There are slim pickings. Trump does not appear to read at all, not even critical daily intelligence reports for POTUS. He does however have some interest in film. He had an early flop as a director, an acting role in Home Alone 2 and many other cameo appearances in film and TV. His work has been dishonored with a Raspberry Award for worst supporting actor in 1990’s “Ghosts Can’t Do It.”
Perhaps he felt the need to show off more of the creative facet of his character and lately he has been throwing some film references into his rambling, incoherent speeches, with multiple obscure references to a fictional serial killer that have perplexed political pundits. On multiple occasions, he has mentioned Hannibal Lecter, a fictional character created by Thomas Harris, first appearing in “Red Dragon” (Manhunter in film) and doing an encore in the award-winning “Silence of the Lambs”. What Mr. Trump appears to be referencing is the final scene of the film in which Lecter has followed his enemy to the Bahamas and explains the audience, in asides, during the film’s final scene, that he is going to join his prey for dinner that night. He plans to eat his liver. A little cannibalism humor.
Donald appears to intend his Hannibal Lecter mentions as a macabre witticism, but his listeners look puzzled and appear to titter nervously out of a cringing politeness. What on earth is he talking about?
Anezka Pichrtova presents her explanation of the film references in a 7/25/24 Newsweek article
https://www.newsweek.com/trump-explains-why-he-keeps…
She observes that the Hannibal Lecter joke appears in his diatribes immediately following references to Mexican immigrants crossing the U.S. border illegally after being released from insane asylums. Hannibal Lecter was confined in an insane asylum in the Harris Novels. She goes on to suggest that our ex-president is conflating “asylum”, a place of confinement for the criminally insane and “asylum’, protection offered to a political refugee. If she is correct, then the laugh is on Donald. In any case, Trump is either an inept comedian, a befuddled old man, a dunce or some combination of the three. Take your pick.
Are you seriously considering giving this addled man your vote? Please think again.
P.S. There is zero evidence that any person released from an insane asylum in Mexico has crossed the Mexican border.
Have a heart; use your mind, search your conscience, and vote for Democratic candidates – across the ballot – on November. 5th.
Please share this message with your friends and please, add your thoughts, to expand upon what are only brief sketches here.
Fred Grannis
August 20, 2024