Jane Goodall spent her life studying primates. She died at 91 this week—peacefully, while on a U.S. speaking tour—but her sharp observations are still echoing, especially one that just won’t stay buried: her comparison of Donald Trump’s behavior to male chimpanzees fighting for dominance.
After the news of Goodall’s passing broke Wednesday, social media lit up with a resurfaced clip from a 2022 MSNBC interview with Ari Melber. In the video, Goodall watches a montage of Trump’s exaggerated gestures, hand-waving, posturing—then calmly, surgically cuts through the noise.
“I see the same sort of behavior as a male chimpanzee will show when he is competing for dominance with another,” Goodall said. “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.”
It’s the kind of quote that stops you in your scroll.
The footage, now going viral again, hits differently in the wake of her death. It’s not just about Trump—it’s about how easily spectacle passes for strength, and how primal instincts still shape modern power.
Goodall wasn’t new to this line of critique. She first made the comparison back in 2016, during Trump’s initial campaign. At the time, she told The Atlantic that Trump’s rallies and outbursts “remind me of male chimpanzees and their dominance rituals.”
“In order to impress rivals, males seeking to rise in the dominance hierarchy perform spectacular displays: stamping, slapping the ground, dragging branches, throwing rocks,” she said. “The more vigorous and imaginative the display, the faster the individual is likely to rise in the hierarchy, and the longer he is likely to maintain that position.”
In a political era often defined by bluster over substance, Goodall’s comments cut to the bone. She wasn’t being flippant. She was doing what she always did—observing behavior through the lens of evolutionary science, even when the subject wore a red tie and commanded a stage instead of a jungle.
Goodall spent decades showing the world that chimps aren’t so different from us. Maybe the more jarring truth she revealed in her later years was that we’re not so different from chimps, either—especially when power is on the line.
Her passing leaves a massive void. But her clarity, even when aimed at powerful figures, endures.
Watch the clip below:
Jane Goodall on Donald Trump: “I see the same sort of behavior as a male chimpanzee will show when he’s competing for dominance with another.” pic.twitter.com/x5iziQZtPO
— PatriotTakes 🇺🇸 (@patriottakes) October 1, 2025
