Trump’s fixation on predators and prey
Donald Trump would seem an odd choice to be the savior of household pets.
Breaking with tradition, Trump didn’t keep a pet at the White House. “I wouldn’t mind having one, honestly, but I don’t have any time,” he said at a rally while still president.
He has often used the word “dog” as an insult. The ISIS leader killed by U.S. forces in 2019 “died like a dog.” Arianna Huffington was “a dog,” he tweeted, as was his former administration aide, Omarosa Manigault Newman.
Yet at the debate Tuesday night, Trump warned that something horrific is happening in Springfield, Ohio. Immigrants are “eating the pets of the people who live there,” he said.
There’s no evidence the claim is true. But it suited Trump’s purpose, directing suspicion toward migrants he says threaten everyday Americans.
Jarring though the story sounded, it’s emblematic of Trump’s fixation during the campaign with tales of unwitting innocents being … well, being eaten.
Sharks eating people
Start with sharks. The oceanic predators have long been on Trump’s mind. A story he’s told on the trail involves a woeful choice between being electrocuted by a sinking boat’s battery or getting devoured by a shark swimming nearby. Trump shares that he’d avoid the shark at any cost.
“By the way, a lot of shark attacks lately, do you notice that? Lot of sharks,” he said at a rally in Las Vegas in June. “I watched some guys justifying it today: ‘Well they weren’t really that angry, they bit off the young lady’s leg because of the fact that they were not hungry but they misunderstood who she was.’ ”
Trump was thinking about sharks again the following week during a campaign stop along Lake Michigan, assuring residents they were fortunate to be living there rather than near ocean waters that are home to sharks. (One study shows that in the U.S., a country with more than 340 million people, there were 36 cases of unprovoked shark bites last year, down from 41 in 2022).
“Look at that beautiful lake,” Trump said. “What’s better: This, or sitting on the Pacific or the Atlantic, which has sharks? You don’t have sharks. That’s a big advantage. I’ll take the one without the sharks.”
People eating people
It’s been more than three decades since terrified movie-goers got their first look at Hannibal Lecter, the cannibalistic serial killer in “Silence of the Lambs.”
Trump hasn’t forgotten the fictional Dr. Lecter.
He invokes “The late, great, Hannibal Lecter” on the campaign trail as an example of the sorts of people who’ve crossed illegally into the U.S. and whom he’d deport if he wins.
“He’d like to have you over for dinner,” he said to laughter at a rally in Chesapeake, Virginia earlier this year. “Don’t do it. If he suggests, I’d like to have you for dinner, don’t go. But these are the people that are coming into our country.”
Whether the audience gets the joke is unclear. The median age in the U.S. is about 39, meaning most Americans weren’t nearly old enough to even see the horror film when it came out. Vice President Kamala Harris needled Trump during the debate by invoking the Lecter references and saying people are leaving his rallies early out of “boredom.”
People eating pets
It’s conceivable that Trump is merely drawing upon familiar cultural touchstones. He came of age during the 1970s, when the movie “Jaws” riveted the nation and spawned a fear of shark attacks.
He may not have pets, but he certainly grasps that people love their dogs and cats and would recoil at hearing they’re being killed for food.
Trump’s tendency is to associate “targets of his ire” with “scenes of terror,” said Joseph Pierre, a professor of psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco.
“For example, his ongoing criticism of green energy involves recurrent claims about wind turbines killing ‘all the birds,’ ‘driving whales crazy’ so that they’re washing ashore or causing cancer in people,” Pierre told NBC News. “So, the shark vs. electrocution story--although seemingly extemporaneous--seemed to be in the service of pairing electric vehicles--in this case boats--with yet another ghastly outcome.”
Trump’s focus on flesh-eating predators and unsuspecting prey reveals something else about his psyche, said John Gartner, a psychologist and host of the podcast, “Shrinking Trump.”
His father had impressed upon him that he needed to be a “killer” and a “king.” Trump imbibed the idea that being a victim was a fate to avoid. Becoming “the apex predator” was for Trump “the number one objective,” helping to explain his fascination with both sharks and Hannibal Lecter, Gartner said.
“In the mind of a predator, the worst thing that can happen is you can become prey,” he said. And so, in Trump’s mind, electrocution sounds preferable to dying in the clutches of a Great White.
“And it connects the dots to the ‘late, great Hannibal Lecter.’ ” Gartner continued. “He’s someone who consumes people. He abused their trust and consumed them.”
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com