Donald Trump loves reading articles about himself, and obviously doesn’t mind misquoting them. In a surreal scene akin to something David Lynch might have directed himself, the hyperactive president announced to a crowd that Lynch’s career is “over”.

This bizarre segway was a part of a speech that touched on everything from facelifts to North Korea. He then quoted a Guardian interview that Breitbart recirculated, in which the 72-year-old filmmaker said that Trump’s presidency will be historic.

“He could go down as one of the greatest presidents in history because he has disrupted the thing so much. No one is able to counter this guy in an intelligent way,” said Lynch.

The article added that he thinks Trump is not doing a good job himself, but is opening up a space where other outsiders might.

Veering into Yoda-Trump sentence structure, he continued: “Our so-called leaders can’t take the country forward, can’t get anything done. Like children, they are. Trump has shown all this.”

Even if Trump appears eager to interpret this as praise, the full interview shows that Lynch barely knows his arse from his elbow – politically speaking. “I am not really a political person, but I really like the freedom to do what you want to do,” after he revealed he actually voted for Bernie Sanders.

Though Lynch’s iconic filmography isn’t ever explicitly political, he does delve into the darkness that lies within American life – think the opening of Blue Velvet, which pans from a cute suburban house scene to show bugs pulsating underneath the manicured green lawn, or detonation of the atomic bomb that brings about the evil force that is Twin Peaks’ Bob.

Despite a lot of news reports, the rest of the quotes from Trump appear to be largely embellished, there isn’t one line in the original profile interview where the director says he believes that “Trump may have been the right choice,’ after all”. 

Nevertheless, the president rounded off the anecdote by predicting the demise of Lynch’s career. “There’s David Lynch. Enjoy it because his career in Hollywood is officially over.”