After renowned primatologist and environmental activist Jane Goodall died at the age of 91 on Wednesday, a video of remarks she made in a 2022 MSNBC interview during which she compared then-former President Donald Trump to a "male chimpanzee" resurfaced.
Goodall was the world's foremost expert on chimpanzees. She is best known for her 60-year study of social and family interactions of wild chimpanzees since she first went to Gombe Stream National Park in Tanzania in 1960, where she witnessed human-like behaviors amongst chimpanzees, including armed conflict.
Speaking on The Beat with Ari Melber, Goodall said Trump's behavior is not unlike the kind "a male chimpanzee will show when he is competing for dominance with another.”
Goodall made the observation after Melber played her a montage that showed Trump stalking behind Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton during a 2016 debate, hugging and kissing the American flag and calling himself a “perfect physical specimen.”
When asked for her opinion on Trump's behavior, Goodall said:
“I see the same sort of behavior as a male chimpanzee will show when he is competing for dominance with another.”
“They’re upright, they swagger, they project themselves as really more large and aggressive than they may actually be in order to intimidate their rivals."
You can hear what she said in the video below.
Goodall's observation was pretty accurate, people thought, and they couldn't resist trolling Trump in response.
Goodall's observation about Trump showed that her opinion has not changed significantly since 2016, when she told The Atlantic that Trump's boorish antics "remind me of male chimpanzees and their dominance rituals."
Noting that male chimpanzees seek to "rise in the dominance hierarchy" by "stamping," "slapping the ground," "dragging branches," and even "throwing rocks," Goodall added that an individual "is likely to rise in the hierarchy" and "maintain that position" the more performative their display.
Considering she once told ABC News she was surprised, when she was younger, to discover "how like us" chimpanzees are, she was definitely on to something here.
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