Trump Probably Knows What “Asylum” Means and Is Just Broadly Stupid

Diving into an ocean of unsubstantiated claims

Photo by Michael Ciaglo via Getty.

Trump says a lot of insane things about immigrants (the sentence “Trump says a lot of insane things about _______” is a Mad Lib with no wrong answer). Recently, one of his favorite riffs has been about illegal immigrants coming from insane asylums. Here he is at a rally last fall:

“They’ve allowed, I believe, 15 million people into the country from all of these different places like jails, mental institutions, and wait till you see what’s going to happen with all those people.”

That’s an absolutely bonkers things to say. There aren’t even 15 million illegal immigrants in the country (best estimates are around 11 million), much less 15 million who entered under Biden, much less 15 million who entered under Biden and came from jails or mental institutions. But when Trump talks about illegal immigration, he often mentions insane asylums, which, by the way, is the best answer we’re ever going to get to the question: “Why in God’s name is Trump talking about Hannibal Lecter?” The connection seems to be: When Trump riffs about insane asylums, his brain says “you know something that’s kind of related to that,” so he proceeds to talk about The Silence of the Lambs for the next five minutes.

Trump’s fixation on insane asylums has led some people to believe that Trump thinks that “seeking asylum” has something to do with insane asylums. This is not the craziest theory I’ve ever heard (though to be fair, the bar for “craziest theory I’ve ever heard” keeps getting raised at an alarming rate). Trump is to ignorance what Yo Yo Ma is to the cello, and it’s clear that he has no fucking idea what he’s talking about on this topic, so…yeah, I’m willing to believe that he might think “seeking asylum” means “seeking a better institution in which to wear a straightjacket and eat your own shit”. Let’s look at the evidence and see if we can identify some semblance of higher function beneath Trump’s mangled train wrecks of syntax.