Donald Trump in a wide-ranging speech touted his line about Hannibal Lecter as helping him win the election, promised to “figure out” what's “going on” with autism and “stop the transgender lunacy,” and claimed he isn't intimidated by Elon Musk.
Trump's remarks — his first rally-style event since he won the presidency — came on Sunday during a speech at Turning Point Action's AmeriFest in Phoenix.
Hannibal Lecter
Trump brought back one of his favorite lines from the campaign trail, saying that he doesn't want Hannibal Lecter — a fictional character from Silence of the Lambs — to come across US borders. And he boasted that that particular talking point helped him win the election.
“Are they stupid?” Trump said after talking about how people questioned his reasons for mentioning Lecter. “The fact is, we don't want Hannibal Lecter — you know what that is, Silence of the Lambs — we don't want Hannibal Lecter, Dr. Hannibal Lecter in our country, do we? You know what happened when they went to the voting booth or, unfortunately, they signed their mail in ballot. But we got by it. We gotta change all that stuff. So when they went into that booth or they signed that ballot, they said, 'Hmmm, Hannibal Lecter, that's a bad guy. We don't want him here.' … I used him because that's a very good example.”
Trump used Lecter to demonize immigrants who come across the border undocumented in a desperate search for safety and a new life in the US While Trump frequently blames immigrants for crime rates and claims they drain government resources, that is far from the truth. The National Institute of Justice recently reported that “undocumented immigrants are arrested at less than half the rate of native-born US citizens for violent and drug crimes and a quarter the rate of native-born citizens for property crimes.” Undocumented immigrants also pay a significant amount in taxes — $75.6 billion total in 2022 — despite not being able to reap many of the federal and state benefits available to citizens.
Autism
Trump, who has recently pushed the long-debunked and discredited theory that there is a link between vaccines and autism, said that he and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — the anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist he nominated to lead Health and Human Services — will “figure out” what is “going on” with autism.
“I've decided, look, something is going on here,” Trump said. “When you look at autism from like 25 years ago and you look at it now, something is going on, and I nominated Robert F. Kennedy Jr.”
The crowd cheered.
“Think of this. Twenty five years ago, autism — one in 10,000 children — today it's one in 36 children. Is something wrong? I think so,” Trump continued. “And Robert and I are going to figure it out. Have you ever seen numbers like this? Something's wrong.”
In an interview on Meet the Press Earlier this month, Trump said when discussing autism, “I mean, something is going on. I don't know if it's vaccines. Maybe it's chlorine in the water, right? You know, people are looking at a lot of different things.”
One reason autism diagnoses are on the rise is better awareness and improved diagnostic criteria for “autism spectrum disorder” (ASD), which includes a wide variety of symptoms and levels of severity. Numerous studies have shown there is no such link between vaccines and autism. As the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention wrote on their website, “Many studies have looked at whether there is a relationship between vaccines and ASD. To date, the studies continue to show that vaccines are not associated with ASD.”
The most well-known study that purported to show a correlation between vaccines and autism was retracted. Its author also lost his medical license due to ethical violations and performing unnecessary and invasive medical procedures on children.
Transgender Issues
Trump once again stood on hate when he attacked transgender individuals — both children and adults.
“With the stroke of my pen on day one we are going to stop the transgender lunacy, and I will sign executive orders to end child sexual mutilation, get transgender out of the military and out of our elementary schools, middle schools, and high schools, ” Trump said.
As president, Trump revoked Obama-era protections for transgender health care, protections that President Joe Biden reinstated in 2021. He also engaged in hateful rhetoric toward trans people throughout the 2024 presidential campaign, including running anti-trans ads in swing states across the country . In 2023, he vowed to launch a government probe investigating whether trans “ideology” causes mass shootings despite zero evidence.
Once again, Trump's beliefs run against the consensus of the scientific community. Twenty-one leading medical organizations recognize gender dysphoria as well as the various treatments for it.
Elon Musk
Trump disclosed one reason for his close friendship with Musk: he claims doesn't feel threatened by the billionaire. Because Musk was born in South Africa, he is disqualified from running for president, per the Constitution. Musk is slated to lead the new Department of Government Efficiency with fellow billionaire Vivek Ramaswamy.
“No, he's not taking the presidency,” Trump said, responding to the “President Musk” narrative pushed by Democrats that the billionaire has an undue influence over him.
“The new [hoax] is: 'President Trump has handed over the presidency to Elon Musk,'” Trump continued. “No, no, that's not happening. But Elon's done an amazing job. Don't we want smart people we can rely on? Don't we want that?”
“He's not gonna be president, that I can tell you. And I'm safe. Do you know why? He can't be, he wasn't born in this country,” Trump added, laughing.
But Musk does have a mega influence over the Republican Party. He killed the recent spending bill that was supposed to pass Congress, leading both parties to engage in a last-minute scramble to put together a temporary spending package Musk and Trump found palatable, narrowly avoiding a government shutdown.
“No bills should be passed [by] Congress until Jan 20, when @realDonaldTrump takes office. It is not. Zero,” Musk wrote on
