@mcfate The later books describe Dr. Lecter as a child during World War II, though -- old enough to remember his little sister and her fate -- so he'd be at least 85 years old now, old enough for rumors of his death to be plausible.
But he'd be a more useful bogeyman if he might still be alive, so maybe the "late, great" business just something that sounded good at the moment and now TFG is stuck with it.
#politics
Not to mention he's doing the exact opposite of using him as a "boogeyman".
He's "GREAT".
@mcfate From my exhaustive research, a full five minutes, it looks like talking about refugees and asylum seekers triggered thoughts of Lecter, long held in an asylum, and he superimposed Lecter's psychopathy on immigrants.
As for being "stuck" with Lecter's demise, that's just me assuming he wants to keep his story straight. Not that it matters -- he could tell his fans Lecter rose from the dead and turned into a talking turnip and they'd buy it. Contempt for "facts" is part of his strategy.
He's made past statements indicating he knows what "asylum" is, outside of an institutional context.
Him being an ignoramus with a short-circuiting brain seems to have fewer moving parts. You seem to feel that there's a rational process going on within him somewhere, and I don't believe that at all.
@mcfate Irony, pal. He's an idiot, but he understands irony as well as any 11-year-old (which is why he sounds like one when he uses it).
Nah, Trump wouldn't understand irony if someone clobbered him in the face with an iron.
He doesn't even understand what SARCASM is, how's he going to understand irony?
@ImagineThat
No, it's him having a psychotic fugue. He "saw" Lecter saying, "I love Donald Trump" on television, and that's just hallucinatory.
If he mistakenly calls someone "dead", then he's "stuck with" INSISTING they're dead forever?
That's not what I'd call "sane", EITHER.