This Substack has considered a number of questions surrounding Donald Trump’s MAGA (Make America Great Again) movement: Is it an insult to Trump voters, to say that MAGA is a cult?  Does it matter if MAGA is a personality cult? Can eight themes of Chinese communist brainwashing tell us something about Trump’s movement? If you haven’t yet read these, the answers were No, Yes and Yes!

In this article, let’s look at one useful profile of a cult leader to help understand how Trump may fit this behavioral pattern. Janja Lalich’s book, Take Your Life Back: Recovering from Cults and Abusive Relationships, outlines 15 cult leader characteristics based on checklists developed by researchers Cleckey & Hare, leaders in the study of psychopaths. Note that Lalich’s book, now in its third edition, was originally co-authored in 1994 with Madeleine Landau Tobias, meaning that these characteristics weren’t written specifically to fit Trump, no matter how similar they may seem at times.

Lalich uses the terms “sociopath” and “cult leader” interchangeably, and uses the pronoun “he” to acknowledge that most cult leaders are men (Lalich, p. 17). She adds these caveats:

We are not suggesting that all cult leaders are sociopaths, but rather that some exhibit many sociopathic behavioral characteristics. Nor are we proposing that you use this checklist to make a diagnosis. Instead, we offer this checklist as a tool to help you identify and demystify traits you may have noticed in your leader…

We have excerpted some of the characteristics for clarity and brevity. For a full reading of these traits, read Take Your Life Back. Excerpts are used by permission of The Lalich Center on Cults and Coercion.

Let’s begin…

1. Glibness and Superficial Charm

Glibness is a hallmark of sociopaths. They tend to use language effortlessly to beguile, confuse, and convince. They are captivating storytellers. They exude self-confidence and can spin a web that intrigues others and pulls them into the sociopath's life. Most of all, they are persuasive. Frequently they have the capacity to destroy their detractors verbally or disarm them emotionally.

Author and reporter Maggie Haberman describes the 1980’s US national media learning what New York media already knew about Donald Trump:  “…there was something magnetic about Trump. It wasn’t simply that his instinct for colorful drama made for good copy.  He was mesmerizing to watch, his speech was fast and cocky and self-assured, with the ability to be both funny and cutting, both charming and derisive, often in the same sentence.” Haberman, p. 92.

Stephanie Grisham recalls being charmed as a campaign staffer in her initial face-to-face meeting with Trump, as she exited a restroom that the presidential candidate needed to use:  “Then, with a spark in his eye and a kind smile, he said, ‘Look, I’m not too proud to use this bathroom even if it is a ladies’ room. It can be our secret’ …my perception of him that day was that he made an awkward moment bearable” (Grisham, p. 14). Later, Grisham would join the White House staff (2017-21), ultimately holding key roles including press secretary, and saying, “My early impressions were positive. Trump could be funny and charming when he wanted to be…” (Grisham, p. 189).

More examples of Trump’s persuasion and use of language:

• During Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign, his rally speeches often extended to well over an hour.

• Trump uses words and short phrases repeatedly, sometimes giving the phrases a special in-group meaning such as “fake news,” while creating disparaging, memorable nicknames for his political and legal opponents (see Loading the Language).
  

2. Manipulative and Conning

Sociopaths do not recognize the individuality or rights of others, which makes any and all self-serving behaviors permissible. This type of person is adept at the “psychopathic maneuver,” identified by psychiatrist Ethel Person as interpersonal manipulation “based on charm. The manipulator appears to be helpful, charming, even ingratiating, or seductive, but is covertly hostile, domineering.... [The victim] is perceived as an aggressor, competitor, or merely as an instrument to be used....” In other words, there are no checks on a sociopath's behavior—anything goes.

The sociopath divides the world into suckers, sinners, and himself.…

Maggie Haberman writes about the contrast between “the ‘Good’ Trump” and “‘Bad’ Trump” evident to people who met him in the White House, saying “He is charismatic and can be charming, and in those initial encounters, he would ask people questions about themselves, zeroing in on them, giving them the sense that they were the only person in the room.

“But even those who rationalized staying close to him acknowledged that a ‘Bad’ Trump always revealed himself… He was interested primarily in money, dominance, power, bullying and himself” (Haberman, p. 3).

Some examples of Donald Trump appearing to manipulate or con people:

• Trump’s businesses have been involved in thousands of lawsuits, many of them for non-payment of invoices, according to a newspaper investigation.

• Trump settled a class action suit with students who said they were duped by Trump University’s promises to teach them the secrets of the real estate industry.

• The Trump Foundation was ordered to shut down in 2018 for instances of misusing the charitable organization to promote Trump’s political and business interests.

• Another article from early in Trump’s political career talked about the difference between a typical politician and a con artist, and how Trump could end up being the latter.
  

3. Grandiose Sense of Self

The sociopathic cult leader enjoys tremendous feelings of entitlement. He believes everything is owed to him as a right. Preoccupied with his own fantasies, he must always be the center of attention. He presents himself as the Ultimate One: enlightened, a vehicle of God, a genius, the leader of humankind, and sometimes even the most humble of humble. He has an insatiable need for adulation and attendance. His grandiosity may also be a defense against inner emptiness, depression, and feelings of insignificance.

Stephanie Grisham described the moment during Donald Trump’s first presidential transition, when Mitt Romney publicly interviewed for a job as Trump’s Secretary of State at a New York Restaurant. 

“Everyone was stressed and annoyed and hot and miserable. Well, almost everyone… The president-elect loved it all… He was basking in his glory, the center of attention, center of politics, center of the world” (Grisham, p. 21).

Grisham realized that Romney was invited to dinner just to demonstrate Trump’s dominance before rejecting Romney, and came to feel that this was “cruel” and “wrong.”

Years later, Trump asked then-press secretary Grisham to release a quote criticizing former chief of staff Gen. John Kelly:

“He proceeded to dictate a quote to me… He finally decided that I should say, ‘I worked with John Kelly, and he was totally unequipped to handle the genius of our great president.’

“….It wasn’t lost on me how weird it was for someone to call himself a ‘genius,’ as Trump did on more than one occasion (‘a very stable genius’)” (Ibid, pp. 238-239).

Paranoia often accompanies the grandiosity, reinforcing the sequestering of the group and the need for protection against a perceived hostile environment. In this way, he creates an us-versus-them mentality.

Examples of Trump paranoia:

• Trump has proclaimed that “the Deep State” was out to interfere with his presidential administration.

• Trump has claimed that investigations, impeachments and indictments of him were all part of a “witch hunt” to harm him.

4. Pathological Lying

Sociopaths lie coolly and easily, even when it is apparent that they are being untruthful. It is almost impossible for them to be consistently truthful about either a major or minor issue. They lie for no apparent reason, even when it would seem easier and safer to tell the truth….

Donald Trump is truth-challenged. The Washington Post counted 30,000 Trump falsehoods during his first presidential administration. Trump lied about the rain at his first inauguration even though his lie could easily be refuted (see Thought Reform in Trump’s Maga – Introduction). Staffer Stephanie Grisham said that, when working for Trump, “Casual dishonesty filtered through the White House as though it were in the air-conditioning system” (Grisham, p. 138).

Another form of lying common among cult leaders is known as pseudologica fantastica, which is an extension of pathological lying. Leaders tend to create a complex belief system, often about their own powers and abilities, in which they themselves sometimes get caught up. Psychiatrist Scott Snyder writes: "It is often difficult to determine whether the lies are an actual delusional distortion of reality or are expressed with the conscious or unconscious intent to deceive.”

Trump often seems caught up in beliefs about his special abilities. He has claimed that “nobody knows more” than him on myriad subjects. He has asserted that all world leaders fear and respect him, and that he could have prevented world events from happening if he was president at the time, including recent Ukraine and Middle Eastern wars.

After the press learned that Trump had pressured Ukraine’s president Zelensky to investigate political opponent Joe Biden (which would lead to Trump’s first impeachment), he pushed staff to release a transcript of the call. Stephanie Grisham said Trump wanted it “sent out immediately because he had done nothing wrong. It was around that time that he convinced himself he had made a ‘perfect phone call.’ I was so used to watching him spin whatever he wanted to be true into reality that it didn't catch me off guard at all. He was always innocent of every accusation, always unfairly targeted, unfairly treated” (Grisham, p. 226).

These manipulators are rarely original thinkers. Plagiarists and thieves, they seldom credit the true originators of their ideas. They are extremely convincing, forceful in the expression of their views, and talented at passing lie detector tests. For them, objective truth does not exist—truth is whatever will help them achieve their needs….

Interestingly, Trump’s slogan “Make America Great Again” first appeared as part of a Ronald Reagan campaign slogan, “Let’s Make America Great Again.” Bill Clinton also used the phrase for his own campaign launch twenty-five years before Trump announced his 2016 campaign using the MAGA slogan.

5. Lack of Remorse, Shame, and Guilt

At the core of the sociopath is a deep-seated rage, which is split off (i.e., psychologically separated from the rest of the self) and repressed. Some researchers theorize that this is caused by feeling abandoned in infancy or early childhood. Whatever the emotional or psychological source, sociopaths see those around them as objects, targets, or opportunities, not as people. They do not have friends; sociopaths have victims and accomplices—and the latter frequently end up as victims. For sociopaths, the ends always justify the means, and there is no place for feelings of remorse, shame, or guilt. Sociopathic cult leaders feel justified in all their actions because they consider themselves the ultimate moral arbiter. Nothing gets in their way.

Donald Trump’s niece Mary claims that his mother’s health problems, starting when he was two, created a void in Trump’s life. She writes that the situation was worsened by his father being a “high functioning sociopath,” negatively impacting Donald’s emotional and psychological development (M. Trump, pp. 21-28).

When fining Trump’s real estate company $350+ million for fraud, a New York judge declared that Trump's and his allies’ “complete lack of contrition and remorse borders on pathological…”

6. Shallow Emotions

….Hiding behind the “mask of sanity," the sociopathic cult leader exposes feelings only insofar as they serve an ulterior motive. He can witness or order acts of utter brutality without experiencing a shred of emotion. He casts himself in a role of total control, which he plays to the hilt. What is most promised in cults -peace, joy, enlightenment, love, and security—are goals that are forever out of the leader's reach, and thus also the followers. Because the leader is not genuine, neither are his promises.

Donald Trump became famous to many Americans on NBC’s reality TV show The Apprentice as a man firmly in charge, who told contestants they were fired at the climax of each weekly episode. Although it’s difficult to know what feelings a public figure experiences, Trump may have a limited emotional range:

• A writer for Psychology Today writes that Trump’s public emotions center around anger, hubristic pride, humiliation, disgust, and paranoia.

• At an early 2016 political rally in Iowa, Trump asked the crowd to violently intervene if someone tried to throw tomatoes: “if you see somebody getting ready to throw a tomato, knock the crap out of ‘em, would you, seriously? OK? Just, knock the hell – I promise you, I will pay for the legal fees – I promise.”

• Trump seems to like portraying himself as a strong, almost invulnerable person, such as when he announced the death of a terrorist leader by saying he “died like a dog.”
  

7. Incapacity for Love

Although he may refer to himself, for example, as the "living embodiment of God's love," the leader is tragically flawed because he is unable to give or receive love. Love substitutes are given instead….

Donald Trump has used the word love in peculiar ways:

• Trump has described January 6^th, the day some of his followers attacked the US Capitol, as a “day of love.”

• A fundraising message from Trump’s 2024 campaign exclaimed, “You really do love me!” and told potential supporters that he “loved” them.

Trump’s niece says that because of the dysfunction in his family of origin, Trump didn’t receive loving comfort while growing up:

“…his ego is a fragile thing that must be bolstered every moment because he knows deep down that he is nothing of what he claims to be. He knows he has never been loved” (M. Trump, p. 198).

The leader's tremendous need to be loved is accompanied by an equally strong disbelief in the love offered by his followers, which results in often unspeakably cruel and harsh testing of his devotees. Unconditional surrender is an absolute requirement….

Grisham describes several loyalty tests she saw in the White House, including Trump asking his first press secretary to lie about inaugural crowd sizes without evidence:

“Forcing Sean [Spicer] to claim that the inauguration crowd was bigger than Obama's, which I imagine Sean also knew was bullshit, was a test. Trump always wanted to see how far you would go to do his bidding; it was his way of measuring your loyalty” (Grisham, p. 33).

8. Need for Stimulation

Thrill-seeking behaviors, often skirting the letter or spirit of the law, are common among sociopaths….

Donald Trump’s court battles have shown his attempts to dance around the law:

• After bringing hundreds of classified documents to Florida following his first term in office, and being subpoenaed by the Justice Department to return missing documents, Trump ordered many of them moved so that they would not be found during a government search, as alleged in a federal indictment with 37 felony counts. 

• Trump repeatedly violated a gag order meant to protect judges, prosecutors, court staff and witnesses from harm and intimidation, resulting in fines.

Cult leaders live on the edge, constantly testing the beliefs of their followers, often with increasingly bizarre behaviors, punishments, and lies. Stimulation can also be had through unexpected, seemingly spontaneous outbursts, which typically take the form of verbal abuse and sometimes physical punishment. The sociopath has a cool indifference to things around him, yet his icy coldness can quickly turn into rages vented on those around him.

Stephanie Grisham writes about the Trump mood shifts she witnessed when she started to work in the West Wing of Trump’s White House:

“I also saw another side of the president... His mood could change on a dime, and his anger was swift, loud, jarring, vicious, and not always just… I was not prepared for the way he spoke to or yelled at people, which I know sounds crazy when you consider his Twitter account or even his interviews with the press. But when I began to see how his temper wasn't just for shock value or the cameras, I began to regret my decision to go to the West Wing” (Grisham, p. 195).

9. Callousness and Lack of Empathy

Sociopaths readily take advantage of others, expressing utter contempt for the feelings of others. Someone in distress is not important to them. Although intelligent, perceptive, and quite good at sizing people up, they make no real connections with others. They use their "people skills" to exploit, abuse, and wield power. Sociopathic cult leaders are unable to empathize with the pain of their victims.

Donald Trump’s lack of empathy seems apparent to many:

White House staffer Stephanie Grisham writes that “Trump’s fits of rage were swift, usually brief, but very intense. He had a capacity to find people’s weak spot, their vulnerability, and then turn it on them in an incredibly mean, savage and often effective way” (Grisham, p. 199). 

After the husband of US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was attacked in their home by a right-wing conspiracist with a hammer, fracturing his skull among other injuries; Trump later seemed to mock their home security.

Mary Trump wrote about her uncle’s lack of concern for the suffering of Americans as the Covid pandemic endured, saying “the press started to comment on Donald’s lack of empathy for those who have died and the families they leave behind. The simple fact is that Donald is fundamentally incapable of acknowledging the suffering of others….Perhaps most crucially, for Donald there is no value in empathy, no tangible upside in caring for other people” (M. Trump, pp. 209-210).

Cult victims engage in denial about this callousness because it’s so difficult to believe that someone they love so much could intentionally hurt them. It therefore becomes easier to rationalize the leader’s behavior as necessary for the general or individual good. The alternative for the devotee would be to face the sudden and overwhelming awareness of being victimized, deceived, and used. Such a realization would wound the person’s deepest sense of self, so as a means of self-protection, the person denies the abuse. When and if the devotee becomes aware of the exploitation, sometimes it feels as though a tremendous evil has been done.

Grisham writes about staffers’ denial of Trump’s flaws while working on his campaign – and her eventual realization that she thought he was abusive:

 “We had an imperfect leader at the top, and none of us wanted to see how imperfect he actually was... So we tied ourselves even more tightly to Trump and looked away. As I look back, it felt like a classic abuse relationship…” (Grisham, p. 8).

10. Poor Behavioral Controls and Impulsive Nature

Like small children, many sociopaths have difficulty regulating their emotions. Adults who have temper tantrums are frightening to be around. Rage and abuse, alternating with token expressions of love and approval, produce an addictive cycle for both abuser and abused (and a sense of hopelessness in the latter). This dynamic has also been recognized in relation to domestic abuse and the battering of women.

Stephanie Grisham describes the see-saw of approval and rage she saw coming from Trump in the White House:

“When he liked you, when he was pleased with you, he overwhelmed you with charm and generosity and even affection. And when something set him off or someone else did, he'd start screaming. His temper was terrifying. And it could be directed at anyone, whether he or she deserved it or not” (Grisham, p. 8).

The sociopathic cult leader acts out with some regularity-often privately, sometimes publicly—usually to the embarrassment and dismay of his followers and other observers. He may act out sexually, aggressively, or criminally, frequently with rage. Who could possibly control someone with no sense of personal boundaries or responsibility, who believes he is all powerful, omniscient, and entitled to every wish or whim? Generally, such aberrant behavior is a well-kept secret, known only to a few trusted disciples. The others see only perfection….

Former Trump Secretary of Defense Mark Esper (2019-2020) recalls Trump raging at senior leaders over Black Lives Matter demonstrations in cities:

“Trump became angrier and was now on his feet, yelling that no one was helping him, that ‘we look weak,’ and ‘the country looks weak.’

“‘You are losers!’ the president railed. ‘You are all fucking losers!’ This wasn't the first time I had heard him use this language, but not with this much anger, and never directed at people in a room with him, let alone toward [Attorney General William] Barr, [Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark] Milley, and me. He repeated the foul insults again, this time directing his venom at the vice president as well, who sat quietly, stone faced, in the chair at the far end of the semicircle closest to the Rose Garden….

“The president sat back down, still fuming, and turned to General Milley and asked why our soldiers couldn't shoot the protesters. ‘Can't you just shoot them. Just shoot them in the legs or something’” (Esper, p. 339).

Grisham relates a similar Trump rant over his desire to have a reporter removed from the press room:

“He became irate, and it's hard to describe his wrath. It was terrifying for me, for one. ‘You are weak!’ he yelled. ‘You are a loser! You are useless!’ …I did remember his saying I was ‘the only PR person who wasn't around to do things for him,’ ‘no one ever sticks up for me,’ and ‘I don't have a fucking PR person who can deal with these nasty reporters’" (Grisham, pp. 200-201).

11. Early Behavior Problems and Juvenile Delinquency

Sociopaths frequently have a history of behavioral and academic difficulties. They often get by academically, taking advantage of other students and teachers. Encounters with juvenile authorities are frequent. Equally prevalent are difficulties in peer relationships, developing and keeping friends, self-control, and managing aberrant behaviors, such as stealing, arson, and cruelty to others.

Donald Trump displayed early disciplinary problems:

• Trump claimed in a book that he punched a teacher: "In the second grade I actually gave a teacher a black eye - I punched my music teacher because I didn't think he knew anything about music and I almost got expelled.”

• Niece Mary Trump writes that Trump’s father put him in a military school because of discipline problems: “by 1959, Donald’s misbehavior – fighting, bullying, arguing with teachers – had gone too far. Kew-Forest [school] had reached its limits…. When one of [Donald’s father Fred’s] fellow board members at Kew-Forest recommended sending Donald to New York Military Academy as a way to rein him in, Fred went along with it” (M. Trump, p. 49).

12. Irresponsibility and Unreliability

Not concerned about the consequences of their behavior, sociopaths leave behind them the wreckage of other people's lives and dreams. They may be totally oblivious or indifferent to the devastation they inflict on others, which they regard as neither their problem nor their responsibility.

Donald Trump seems to show irresponsibility in matters affecting other people:

• Trump’s first public company to trade on his “DJT” initials, Trump Hotels and Casinos, reportedly cost investors millions while “the company greatly enriched Trump the businessman.”

• Several ex-Trump attorneys face legal consequences for their work for Trump, including Rudy Giuliani, who was disbarred, and Jenna Ellis, who was suspended from practicing law, both for their actions in disputing the 2020 election for Trump.

• 1.2 million Americans died of COVID, a half-million more than any other nation, after Trump called on Americans early in the pandemic to “Just stay calm. It will go away.”

• Defense Secretary Mark Esper said that at the White House, “Trump was actively resisting masks and mocking those who wore them. He was telling people the virus would simply ‘go away’” (Esper, p. 254). Eleven people tested positive for Covid after attending one White House event, including advisor Chris Christie who spent seven days in intensive care. Trump reportedly called Christie to make sure he wouldn’t be blamed for giving Christie the infection.

Sociopathic cult leaders rarely accept blame for their failures or mistakes. Scapegoating is common, and blame falls upon followers, those outside the group, a member's family, the government, Satan—anyone and everyone but themselves….

Trump staffer Stephanie Grisham wrote that “the Trump family was able to convince the world any problem was due to ‘everyone else’ and that they were never to blame… [long list of blamed staffers and officials omitted] it was always their fault, they were disloyal or seeking attention, profiting off the Trump name, incompetent, pathetic, or a loser” (Grisham, p. 53).

Grisham also predicted that she would be scapegoated for writing a book after five-plus years working for the Trumps:

“I will be called many names for writing this book. Traitor. Low-level staffer. Weak. Dishonest. Ineffective. A complete failure….

“I know all of this, because that is what we did to everyone else who decided to tell their truth or who stood up against things they thought were wrong” (Ibid., p. 2).

Note: See more examples of Trump’s blaming the people who oppose him in The Dispensing of Existence.

13. Promiscuous Sexual Behavior and Infidelity

Promiscuity, child sexual abuse, multiple relationships and marriages, rape, and sexual acting out of all sorts are behaviors frequently practiced by sociopathic cult leaders. Conversely there may be stringent sexual control of followers through such tactics as enforced celibacy, arranged marriages, forced breakups and divorces, removal of children from their parents, forced abortions, and mandated births. For sociopaths, sex is primarily a control and power issue….

Donald Trump’s promiscuous sexual behavior and infidelity have been widely discussed — sometimes by himself, before he was a political candidate:

• The Guardian published this timeline of unwanted Trump sexual advances or alleged sexual assault.

• A microphone for the TV show Access Hollywood captured Trump boasting about kissing, groping and attempting to have sex with women who were not his wife.

• A jury found Trump liable for sexually abusing E. Jean Carroll.

• Trump was convicted of falsifying business records to conceal a “hush-money” payment made to Stormy Daniels. The case also included testimony about payments to Karen McDougal, another woman with whom Trump allegedly had an affair during his 3^rd marriage.

• Note: there are no active lawsuits against Trump for child sexual abuse.

While Trump’s political movement does not control the sex lives of its supporters, he did appoint three pro-life judges who aided the US Supreme Court in overturning Roe vs. Wade. This five-decade-old decision of the Court had federally protected women’s access to abortion for unwanted pregnancies.

14 Lack of Realistic Life Plan and Parasitic Lifestyle

The sociopathic cult leader tends to move around a lot, making countless efforts at starting over while seeking fertile new ground to exploit. One day he may appear as a rock musician, the next as a messiah; one day a door-to-door salesman, the next as founder of a self- rejuvenation program; one day a college professor, the next as the new Lenin bringing revolution to America.

Donald Trump began his career in New York City real estate, before expanding into New Jersey Casinos, an airline, and many other ventures including politics:

• While Trump says has never declared personal bankruptcy, his businesses have had six corporate bankruptcies, affecting other people, including creditors. He has also been involved in thousands of lawsuits, and has had his charitable foundation disbanded (see 2. Manipulative and Conning).

• Over time, Trump focused less on new wholly-owned Trump properties that required large financial investments, and more on deals that licensed the use of his name. Products sold under the Trump brand included Trump Vodka, Trump Steaks, Trump Magazine, etc.

• Trump’s failed businesses and failed marriages (detailed in gossip columns) eroded Trump’s reputation before he became the star of The Apprentice, which helped him boost his personal brand.

• CBS reported that Trump was fired from The Apprentice following his disparaging comments about Mexicans at the launch of his first presidential campaign; Trump has denied being fired.

• Trump entered into politics after fanning a “birther” controversy that alleged then-President Barack Obama was not a US citizen. Trump twice has been elected President of the United States.

Maggie Haberman writes about Trump’s talent for self-reinvention:

“Trump had spent decades surviving one professional near-death experience after another, and after a lifetime of bluffing and charming and cajoling and strong-arming his way through challenging situations, he saw no need to change after winning the White House in 2016….He was unrivaled in his ability to reinvent himself just when he approached the brink of personal disaster, often owing to his own behavior” (Haberman, pp. 4-5).

The flip side of this erratic lifestyle is the all-encompassing promise for the future that the cult leader makes to his followers. Many groups claim as their goal world domination or salvation at the time of the Apocalypse. The leader is the first to proclaim the utopian nature of the group, which generally is a justification for irrational behavior and stringent controls. Often the leader's sense of entitlement is demonstrated by the contrast between his luxurious lifestyle and the impoverishment of his followers….

Trump promises his followers that with their support, he will “make America great again” (see Sacred Science: Thought Reform in Trump’s MAGA). Trump proclaimed he would solve America’s problems at 2016 Republican National Committee address, saying “only I can fix it.” His 2024 campaign again promised broadly, “Trump will fix it.”

Famous for his luxurious lifestyle, there is great disparity between Trump’s wealth and the finances of many of his supporters:

• Trump’s estimated net worth reaches over $5 billion, yet he has asked donors of all sizes to support his campaigns. One 2024 campaign message asked for a $15 donation but then defaulted donors into giving weekly donations (note: some Trump fundraising messages do ask recipients not to donate if they can’t afford it; Democrats may also use weekly upsells).

• Forbes reports that Trump in 2024 donated no money to his own re-election campaign, while his businesses received millions from the campaign for use of the Trump plane, Mar-a-Lago resort and Trump National Golf Club, and that $60 million was paid from Trump’s leadership PAC to cover legal fees.

15. Criminal or Entrepreneurial Versatility

Cult leaders change their image and that of the group as needed to avoid prosecution and litigation, to increase income, and to recruit a range of members. Cult leaders have an innate ability to attract followers who have the skills and connections that the leaders lack. The longevity of the group is dependent on the willingness of the leadership to adapt as needed to preserve the group. Frequently, when illegal or immoral activities are exposed to the public, cult leaders will relocate, sometimes taking all or some of their followers with them. They will keep a low profile, only to resurface later with a new name, a new front group, and perhaps a new twist on their story. 

Donald Trump continues to attract influential new supporters such as Elon Musk and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. who supported his 2024 campaign, and in return are expected to receive powerful roles in Trump’s government. 

Tump may not need to relocate to avoid punishment for crimes; he may achieve this simply by being re-elected. Sentencing for his convictions related to hush money payments has been indefinitely postponed. Special Counsel Jack Smith asked that federal charges against Trump related to possession of classified documents and 2020 election interference be dropped, citing the Justice Department’s stance that a sitting president cannot be charged with a crime.

References

Esper, Mark (2022). A Sacred Oath: Memoirs of a Secretary of Defense During Extraordinary Times, William Morrow.

Grisham, Stephanie (2021). I’ll Take Your Questions Now: What I saw at the Trump White House, Harper.

Haberman, Maggie (2022). Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America, Penguin Press.

Lalich, Janja (2023). Take Back Your Life: Recovering from Cults and Abusive Relationships, 3^rd Edition, The Lalich Center on Cults and Coercion.

Trump, Mary (2020). Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man, Simon & Schuster.

Related reading:

Take Your Life Back: Recovering from Cults and Abusive Relationships by Janja Lalich (includes relevant information about cult leaders including authoritarian power dynamics, the role of charisma, an overview of narcissism and traumatic narcissism).

Unfit for Office by George Conway (an Atlantic subscription may be needed)

The Cult of Trump by Steven Hassan (see Chapter Three: “The Cult Leader Profile”)

Thought Reform in Trump’s MAGA (on this site)

See bottom of this article for navigation to previous sections

We’ve compared the statements and actions of leaders in Donald Trump’s Make American Great Again (MAGA) movement with Robert Jay Lifton’s psychological themes documented in Chinese thought reform programs more than six decades ago. Some of the eight themes exhibit less strongly (e.g. Cult of Confession) while others manifest more intensely (e.g. Loading the Language, Doctrine over Person). Some MAGA leader actions strike multiple themes. For example, when Donald Trump called Rusty Bowers a “RINO coward” while endorsing his Republican primary opponent (see Loading the Language) we also could view him as effecting Dispensing of Existence. We pictured Trump at the start of this series standing before CIA employees, claiming the press lied about his inauguration crowds, and saying God stopped the rain; we can now see his speech evoking Lifton’s themes of Milieu Control, Mystical Manipulation and Doctrine over Person.

Revisiting Lifton’s statement on the overall impact of his motifs:

The more clearly an environment expresses these eight psychological themes, the greater its resemblance to ideological totalism; and the more it utilizes such totalist devices to change people, the greater its resemblance to thought reform (or “brainwashing”) (Lifton, p. 90 - parenthesis is Lifton’s). 

Going far beyond a typical political group’s use of slogans, working the press and rallying constituents to their cause, etc.,  the MAGA movement seems to use a multi-pronged program of influence.1

Answers to questions

Lifton’s themes demonstrate their usefulness toward understanding MAGA by helping to answer vexing questions about the movement. For example:

Why does Trump relentlessly attack the media? Maybe it’s not just because Trump has a combative nature, but because these attacks are essential to milieu control, and maintaining an environment where his supporters believe and follow mainly him.

Why do evangelicals as a group seem to support Trump politically regardless of his personal moral behavior? Maybe it’s not just because he supports the policy issues of the devout, but because the movement is using mystical manipulation to make him seem ordained by God.

Why does Trump use buzzwords and nicknames excessively, even for a politician? Perhaps they’re not deployed just as political slogans – and perhaps he doesn’t simply like mean nicknames – but he’s loading the language. 

Why are certain MAGA ideas so persistent in the group, despite contrary evidence?  Rather than assuming Trump’s message appeals to people with less education, we can show that MAGA creates an environment of doctrine over person where individual doubts could become overwhelmed by the movement’s momentum, when combined with the other psychological themes.

Why do MAGA supporters want a political “strongman” to lead the country? Maybe they don’t naturally prefer authoritarians, but leadership’s dispensing of existence creates an atmosphere of anxiety and the need to dispel it by supporting Trump. 

So, Lifton’s themes can deliver insights into Trump’s war on reality that today’s political pundits have not.

Lifton on Trump, MAGA, and thought reform

Considering Robert Jay Lifton is still living, it’s fair to ask what he thinks about Trump and MAGA.

Lifton says that Trump “couldn’t look more different from Chinese communist leadership in their ideological phase – he doesn’t have any ideology… But what he has in common with them is the attempt to own reality” (Hassan). Lifton adds that, “because of Trump and others around him, I see our society as suffering from a national reality disorder” (Ibid.).

It’s also important to consider Lifton’s caveats about thought reform. He disputes “an image of ‘brainwashing’ as an all-powerful, irresistible, unfathomable and magical method of achieving total control over the human mind. It is of course none of these things…” (Ibid., p. 17). So, neither the individual themes nor the overall program are irresistible. Rather, individuals may accumulate doubts and ultimately resist the program. Like Dorothy discovering “that man behind the curtain” at the end of The Wizard of Oz, understanding the methods Trump uses may help MAGAs to elude their influence. Donald Trump’s war on reality will ultimately be lost.

The case for empathy

Whatever terms we use for MAGA leadership’s influence program should lead us to feel more and not less empathy for targets of the program (i.e. MAGA supporters). If MAGAs have been subjected to a multi-pronged influence program without their consent, it makes little sense to blame them for following the movement.

America’s counter-cult community has historically avoided victim-blaming even while using terms like “thought reform,” “mind control,” “cult,” “undue influence,” etc. Counter-cult professionals have focused on the methods and deceptions of a group and its leadership, rather than flaws of followers. Ex-group members have been reassured that they joined based on the best information they had at the time, but that with better information they could make a different decision. When most ex-cult members, having been taken advantage of by manipulative leaders, are asked, “would you join the group today knowing what you know now?” the answer is consistently, “no.” 

Showing MAGA’s empathy is not just kind, but practical: The black-and-white thinking (see The Demand of Purity) of MAGA means that insulting followers is unlikely to persuade them, and may psychologically entrench them more deeply in the group.

Finally, just as America’s conservative political evolution led from The Tea Party to MAGA, most people who follow today’s MAGA will still be with us long after any current election, and probably long beyond the political career of Donald J. Trump. Empathy might help bridge some of the vast gaps in American’s divided politics. 

Navigation within this article series:

Thought Reform in Trump’s MAGA - Intro
Milieu Control in Trump's MAGA, Part 2
Mystical Manipulation in Trump's MAGA, Part 3
The Demand for Purity in Trump's MAGA, Part 4
The Cult of Confession in Trump’s MAGA, Part 5
Sacred Science in Trump’s MAGA, Part 6
Loading the Language in Trump’s MAGA, Part 7
Doctrine over Person in Trump’s MAGA, Part 8
The Dispensing of Existence in Trump’s MAGA, Part 9
Conclusion: Thought Reform in Trump’s MAGA, Part 10

References:

Lifton, Robert Jay (2019). Losing Reality: On Cult, Cultism, and the Mindset of Political and Religious Zealotry, The New Press.

Hassan, Steven. (2020, January 8). Robert Jay Lifton, M.D. Discusses Trump and His New book, Losing Reality… [Video]. YouTube.

In a familiar story now buttressed by legal documents, Donald Trump wanted Mike Pence to use his ceremonial role as Vice President (VP) to deny Joe Biden certification of the 2020 presidential election. In private conversations with Trump leading up to January 6, 2021, Pence resisted and “told him many times” that he did not believe he had the power not to certify. During a January 4 rally in Dalton, Georgia, Trump had said “I hope Mike Pence comes through for us… He’s a great guy. Of course, if he doesn’t come through I won’t like him quite as much.” Trump pressured Pence on social media and in a January 6 outdoor speech on Washington D.C.’s Elipse. That afternoon, when Pence was rushed to a secure location after a crowd of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol, a White House staffer “rushed to the dining room to inform [Trump] in hopes that [he] would take action to ensure Pence’s safety. Instead, after [staffer] delivered the news, [Trump] looked at him and said only, “So what?” After four-plus years as a loyal VP, to a MAGA mob and Trump himself, Mike Pence had seemingly lost the right to exist. 

Pence survived the Capitol attack, and after January 6 was unwilling to support Trump in another election. Nearly four years later, a newspaper published comments that Trump’s new VP running mate, JD Vance, had made about Trump in direct messages he initiated with a Deloitte employee. Vance had said that Trump “thoroughly failed to deliver” his economic agenda and “will probably lose” the then-upcoming 2020 election. Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr. reacted to the media story calling the reporter a “scumbag,” doxing the employee by revealing his name on social media and putting him at risk of job loss, while threatening Deloitte with loss of government contracts.

Both Trump Sr. and Jr. can be seen as acting out Robert Jay Lifton’s final psychological theme of thought reform called the dispensing of existence:

         The totalist environment draws a sharp line between those whose right to existence can be recognized, and those who possess no such right….

The dispensing of human existence is a flagrant expression of what the Greeks called hubris, of arrogant humans claiming to be God. Yet one underlying assumption makes this arrogance mandatory: the conviction that there is just one path to true existence, just one valid mode of being, and that all others are perforce invalid and false (Lifton, pp. 87, 88).

Elsewhere Lifton writes, “This principle is usually metaphorical” (in The Future of Immortality…). So, whether a movement tries to kill its non-supporters or tolerate their destruction, to threaten their lives or livelihoods, to dox them by revealing their identities, or to viciously insult them to signal their invalidity to movement loyalists, it can be said to be dispensing of existence.

Donald Trump is MAGA’s dispenser-in-chief, ironically after becoming a nationally celebrity for terminating The Apprentice reality TV show contestants – famously saying “you’re fired” in his Queens accent. People who publicly oppose Trump as a political figure are likely to be verbally and publicly attacked by him, whether they are top generals; judges, prosecutors and witnesses in cases against him; or former staff. If people cross Trump, the message of his retaliatory insult seems to be, they don’t have a right to exist in his mind. In some cases, by merely alleging a person has wronged him, Trump has signalled strongly enough that someone is unworthy of existence, that supporters have threatened them:

• Trump said General Mark Milley committed “an act so egregious that, in times gone by, the punishment would have been DEATH!” (Trump’s all caps). Milley’s offense? As Chair of Trump’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, he had assured a Chinese general that the US wasn’t on the verge of attacking China.

• When Trump’s Truth Social posts attacked New York Justices Juan Merchan and Arthur Engoron, who presided over Trump cases, supporters called for violence against the judges – including execution. 

• Trump has attacked prosecutors on social media including Fani Willis (Georgia election racketeering case against Trump) and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg (New York hush money case), causing them and other judges to need additional security.

• Trump has attacked witnesses in cases against him, including calling Michael Cohen and Stormy Daniels “sleaze bags.” 

• Trump called impeachment prosecutor, Representative Adam Schiff “one of the most disgusting human beings,” and called January 6th Committee chair Liz Cheney, a Republican who had voted to support Trump’s positions 93% of the time while in the House of Representatives, a “Low IQ War Hawk” when she endorsed Kamala Harris.

• Trump  threatened people that would hypothetically cheat in the 2024 election with “long prison term sentences,” a chilling warning from one who has previously made false claims of being cheated.

• Trump said that Presidential opponent Hilary Clinton and others should be locked up/jailed, as this video shows, even though he later gaslighted, denying saying it.

• Trump Called his former Chief of Staff John Kelly a “lowlife with a very small brain and a very big mouth” for confirming press reports Trump disparaged US service members and veterans.

• He said former White House communications director John Scaramucci was a “highly unstable ‘nut job.’”

• Trump encourages primary challenges against Republican politicians like Rusty Bowers who fail to capitulate to him (see Loading the Language), in many cases ending their political careers.

Besides following the leader’s cues regarding who has a right to exist or not, how might this dynamic in MAGA affect individuals? Lifton writes that the dispensing of existence can influence their recruitment, making them “likely to be drawn into a conversion experience” (e.g, in this case, to join MAGA). It can also enforce conformity to the group: “The totalist environment – even when it does not resort to physical abuse – thus stimulates in everyone a fear of extinction or annihilation…” leading to “a sense of total merger with the ideological movement” (p. 89).

The dispensing of existence, taken together with Lifton’s other psychological themes of thought reform, impel us to summarize their potential impact on MAGA and the American political system.

Navigation within this article series:

Thought Reform in Trump’s MAGA - Intro
Milieu Control in Trump's MAGA
Mystical Manipulation in Trump's MAGA
The Demand for Purity in Trump's MAGA
The Cult of Confession: Thought Reform in Trump’s MAGA, Part 5
Sacred Science: Thought Reform in Trump’s MAGA, Part 6
Loading the Language: Thought Reform in Trump’s MAGA, Part 7
Doctrine over Person: Thought Reform in Trump’s MAGA, Part 8
The Dispensing of Existence: Thought Reform in Trump’s MAGA, Part 9
Conclusion: Thought Reform in Trump’s MAGA, Part 10

References:

Lifton, Robert Jay (1987). The Future of Immortality and Other Essays for a Nuclear Age, The New Press.

Lifton, Robert Jay (2019). Losing Reality: On Cult, Cultism, and the Mindset of Political and Religious Zealotry, The New Press.

Smith, Jack (October 2, 2024). Government’s motion for immunity determinations, United States of America v. Donald J. Trump, Defendant.

Many Americans had strong reactions to the January 6th, 2021 attack on the US Capitol, but curiously, the response of Republicans, particularly MAGA supporters and politicians, has changed significantly over time. For something many people observed through their own eyes and ears, at least through the filter of the media, one would not expect a major change in opinion after the event.

Between March and September of 2021, Pew Research Center found that the portion of Republicans who felt that it was important to find and prosecute the Capitol rioters fell from 79%, nearly four out of five, to 57%, or a little over half. Between 2021 and 2024, CBS News found the portion of Republicans who approved of the actions of the people forcing their way into the Capitol had risen from 21% to 30%, and that people who identified as part of the MAGA movement were nearly twice as likely, (43%) to approve. It seems that the more time passed following the attack on the Capitol, the more Trump supporters agreed with it. 

Within a week of the January 6th attack, a Pew survey found that more than half of Republicans – 52% – said that Donald Trump bore either a lot, or some responsibility for the riot. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell spoke for those who strongly blamed Trump when he said the following month, “There is no question – none – that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of the day. No question about it. The people who stormed this building believed they were acting on the wishes, and instructions, of their president.”

But by 2024, Mitch McConnell and most Republican congresspeople – many of whom had been evacuated on January 6th to physically protect them from the MAGA mob – supported Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign. Republican 2024 primary voters gave Trump the overwhelming majority of delegates despite (fading) reservations about January 6th, and Donald Trump was once again the Republican Nominee for President. Why had there been such a shift in sentiment?

While it’s possible that new information had been learned about January 6th that made people feel more positive about the riot, and Trump’s role in it, it’s also possible that Robert Jay Lifton’s themes of thought reform outlined in other sections of this article have played a role toward changing minds. Perhaps a combination of disinformation/milieu control about January 6 and the 2020 election, loading the language (Stop the Steal, Witch Hunt, Unselect Committee), and a combination of Lifton themes have influenced people including our next one…  

Lifton’s theme of Doctrine over Person says that thought reform environments require people to sublimate their actual experience to the group’s black and white myth of reality. Writes Lifton:

…another characteristic feature of ideological totalism: the subordination of human experience to the claims of doctrine. This primacy of doctrine over person is evident in the continual shift between experience itself and the highly abstract interpretation of such experience….

For when the myth becomes fused with the totalist sacred science, the resulting "logic" can be so compelling and coercive that it simply replaces the realities of individual experience. Consequently, past historical events are retrospectively altered, wholly rewritten, or ignored, to make them consistent with the doctrinal logic…. 

Rather than modify the myth in accordance with experience, the will to orthodoxy requires instead that men be modified in order to reaffirm the myth (Lifton, pp. 83-84, 85).

The dynamic of doctrine over person encourages people to trust a movement more than their own perceptions of reality. Trump said as much in 2018 while speaking to a Veterans of Foreign Wars audience about news coverage of trade deals, telling them, “just remember, what you’re seeing and what you’re reading is not what’s happening.”  

MAGA Myths

Let’s look at attempts to reinterpret, rewrite, or ignore events in order to affirm MAGA myths:

• Myth that MAGA and it’s submovement Stop the Steal did not cause the January 6 riots: In October 2024, Trump shared a post on Truth Social blaming the government, without evidence, for orchestrating the Capitol attack, “January 6 will go down in history as the day the government staged a riot to cover up the fact that they certified a fraudulent election.” Readers may want to consult the feature-length documentary Fight Like Hell (WARNING: includes riot violence and violent language).

• Myth that the 2020 Presidential election was stolen:  No legal proof of decisive electoral fraud has been made in any state.  

• Myth of an overwhelmingly successful 45th Presidency: The official website of Trump’s first term in office claims several Trump achievements during the Covid Pandemic, but doesn’t mention America’s 1.2 million pandemic deaths, which according to worldwide statistics is a half-million more than the next closest country. The summary also doesn’t mention that Trump was twice impeached.

• Myth that Trump was an overwhelming self-made business success:  Trump boasts about being a great businessman, but has suffered six corporate bankruptcies. He claimed to have built his business from a $1 million loan he was obligated to repay to his father, but a newspaper investigation reported he received $413 million worth of financial benefit from his father (in 2018 dollars). 

An environment of doctrine over person may leave MAGA supporters holding to ideas not supported by evidence – or that are even contrary to their own personal experience and memory. The myth of MAGA and its goodness may leave followers unconcerned about the failings or inconsistencies surrounding the movement or its founder.  

Navigation within this article series:

Thought Reform in Trump’s MAGA - Intro
Milieu Control in Trump's MAGA, Part 2
Mystical Manipulation in Trump's MAGA, Part 3
The Demand for Purity in Trump's MAGA, Part 4
The Cult of Confession in Trump’s MAGA, Part 5
Sacred Science in Trump’s MAGA, Part 6
Loading the Language in Trump’s MAGA, Part 7
Doctrine over Person in Trump’s MAGA, Part 8
The Dispensing of Existence in Trump’s MAGA, Part 9
Conclusion: Thought Reform in Trump’s MAGA, Part 10

References:

Lifton, Robert Jay (2019). Losing Reality: On Cult, Cultism, and the Mindset of Political and Religious Zealotry, The New Press.

Arizona’s Rusty Bowers was a conservative Republican, taking pro-gun and pro-life stances, and supporting the completion of Donald Trump’s border wall and Trump’s 2020 re-election campaign. But Bowers had a problem. As state Speaker of the House, he was in charge of certifying the electors for Joe Biden 2020 victory in the Arizona Presidential election, and Trump and Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani wanted Bowers to swap in Trump electors. Bowers would not capitulate, Arizona’s electors were cast for Biden, and Bowers testified what had happened to a January 6th committee hearing. The week after the hearing, Trump endorsed Bower’s opponent in a 2022 State Senate primary that Bower would lose. Trump appeared at a rally for the opponent and called Bowers a “RINO coward.” 

Donald Trump did not invent the term “RINO” (Republican in Name Only), which conservatives had used for years to criticize politicians who disagreed with certain Republican positions. Trump had redefined the word for MAGA. Rusty Bowers told the Desert News, “nowadays [RINO] just means you don’t agree with Donald Trump.” When Dick Cheney, who for eight years was one of America’s most powerful and conservative Vice Presidents in history, endorsed Kamala Harris for President in 2024, Trump posted on Truth Social, “Dick Cheney is an irrelevant RINO…” One can wonder, if Dick Cheny isn’t a Republican, who is?

Trump’s use of RINO evokes Robert Jay Lifton’s theme of thought reform called loading the language:

The language of the totalist environment is characterized by the thought-terminating cliché. The most far-reaching and complex of human problems are compressed into brief, highly reductive, definitive-sounding phrases, easily memorized and easily expressed. These become the start and finish of any ideological analysis….

To be sure, this kind of language exists to some degree within any cultural or organizational group, and all systems of belief depend upon it. It is in part an expression of unity and exclusiveness: as Edward Sapir put it, “‘He talks like us’ is equivalent to saying 'He is one of us.’" The loading of language is much more extreme in ideological totalism, however, since the jargon expresses the claimed certitudes of the sacred science. Also involved is an underlying assumption that language-like all other human products—can be owned and operated by the Movement (Lifton, pp. 81, 82).

Trump’s campaigns have been fully aware of the power of language. Trump 2016 campaign chief executive Steve Bannon later said, “We got elected on Drain the Swamp, Lock her Up, Build the Wall…Anger and fear is what gets people to the polls” (Lewis, 2018). 

Loading the language in Trump’s movement

Here is a list of terms Trump has “loaded” for MAGA…

Fake News – any news that is not favorable to Donald Trump. This logic denies the possibility that Trump could himself create “fake” news (see Milieu Control). The phrase discourages supporters from seeking news from other sources. 

Stop the Steal – also, Stolen Election – like Fake News, these phrases assumes Trump has been wronged, without reflection.

Truth Social – the name of Trump’s social media platform is similar to the official newspaper of the Communist Party in the Soviet Union Pravda, which means “Truth” in Russian. 

Democrat Party - this term (predating Trump) for the opposing party evades positive associations people may have with the word “democratic.” 

Green New Scam - assumes a Green New Deal must be fraudulent.

Enemy of the People - declares the press is the adversary of Americans. See also The Enemy Within (in The Demand for Purity). 

Witch Hunt - any investigation or prosecution of potential wrongdoing by Trump. As one article said, this phrase bypasses discussion of Trump’s own conduct.

Unselect Committee – Trump called the United States House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, “The Unselect Committee of political Hacks & Thugs.” Labeling this group as bad discourages supporters from considering its findings about January 6th.

Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS) – a disorder supposedly affecting anyone who strongly opposes Trump. Explains away vehement opposition by blaming the opposer.

No collusion – Trump repeatedly said Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation found “no collusion.” Yet Mueller’s report says investigators were looking for conspiracy, not collusion (US Department of Justice, pp. 180-181), and still found 140+ Russian contacts with Trump and associates, six of whom were convicted in related cases.

Make America Great Again (see Sacred Science). 

More examples: Hoax, Deep State, Radical Left, Stable Genius, Patriots (see Purity of party in The Demand for Purity).

Trump nicknames

Trump also loaded the names of people he is critical of with negative associations via nicknames1…

Trump political opponents – Crooked Hillary, Low Energy Jeb (Bush), Crazy Nancy (Pelosi), Pocahontas (Elizabeth Warren), Comrade Kamala.

Investigators of Trump – Shifty Schiff (impeachment prosecutor Adam Shiff), Deranged Jack Smith (Special Counsel).

Expired nicknames (for people who won their way back into Trump’s favor)  – Sloppy Steve (Bannon), Little Marco Rubio, Lyin’ Ted Cruz.

Lifton describes the impact of loading the language:

For the individual person, the effect of the language of ideological totalism can be summed up in one word: constriction. One is, so to speak, linguistically deprived; and since language is so central to all human experience, one’s capacities for thinking and feeling are immensely narrowed (pp. 82-83).

While supporters may enjoy the feeling of connection with others who use similar language, it may also make them less likely to think outside of MAGA’s stark linguistic lines. 

Navigation within this article series:

Thought Reform in Trump’s MAGA - Intro
Milieu Control in Trump's MAGA, Part 2
Mystical Manipulation in Trump's MAGA, Part 3
The Demand for Purity in Trump's MAGA, Part 4
The Cult of Confession in Trump’s MAGA, Part 5
Sacred Science in Trump’s MAGA, Part 6
Loading the Language in Trump’s MAGA, Part 7
Doctrine over Person in Trump’s MAGA, Part 8
The Dispensing of Existence in Trump’s MAGA, Part 9
Conclusion: Thought Reform in Trump’s MAGA, Part 10

References:

Lewis, Michael (2018). Has Anyone Seen the President? [Audiobook], Simon & Schuster Audio.

Lifton, Robert Jay (2019). Losing Reality: On Cult, Cultism, and the Mindset of Political and Religious Zealotry, The New Press.

US Department of Justice (2019). Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller, III. Report On The Investigation Into Russian Interference In The 2016 Presidential Election, Part I of II.

This special 10-part article will be posted weekdays through November 1.

MAGA holds sacred its primary dogma, that the USA was once a “great” country but has lost greatness because of various factors that only Donald Trump as President can reverse. “Make America Great Again” is both the movement’s informal name, and its recurrent campaign slogan. That Trump’s presidential campaign has reused and repackaged this theme for nine-plus years, shows how essential it is to his movement.

Yet some implications of the name seem little discussed by the movement’s leaders: when exactly was America great? Was it great from 2017-21 – and if so was it the policies or the identity of the President that made it great? When America was great, for whom was it great (for everyone in America; for both natives and immigrants; for which ethnic, gender or religious groups), etc.?

Robert Jay Lifton’s next theme of thought reform is called sacred science:

The totalist milieu maintains an aura of sacredness around its basic dogma, holding it out as an ultimate moral vision for the ordering of human existence. This sacredness is evident in the prohibition (whether or not explicit) against the questioning of basic assumptions, and in the reverence that is demanded for the originators of the Word, the present bearers of the Word, and the Word itself. While thus transcending ordinary concerns of logic, however, the milieu at the same time makes an exaggerated claim of airtight logic, of absolute “scientific” precision (Lifton, p. 79).

MAGA’s sacred science is a nostalgic strain of American exceptionalism that revolves around Trump. If MAGA has one logical underpinning, it may be fundamentalism – the general idea that no matter what ails modern society (politically, spiritually, legally), the answers can best be found in the past. Thus the MAGA coalition includes political regressives, who literally seek to restore America to past greatness, spiritual fundamentalists who may seek moral guidance or justification by reverting to old-time versions of religion, and legal “originalists” as Trump’s Supreme Court appointees have all been categorized (at least when the approach supported their arguments).  

Otherwise, MAGA does not seek to justify itself scientifically. Rather, as Steven Hassan mentions in his book The Cult of Trump, Trump “regularly ignores and even denigrates science, [and] could be said to… [be] promoting a kind of ‘sacred anti-science’” (bold added). In lieu of science, MAGA instead seems guided by Donald Trump’s sacredly self-regarded intuition. This seems true when we consider some of the leader’s encounters with science:

• Trump has said he has a “a natural instinct for science,” ostensibly from having an MIT professor for an uncle (see The Demand for Purity’s “Purity of origin” section describing Trump’s genetics fixation).

• He has called climate change a hoax.

• He declared his dislike for green energy’s windmills, for reasons including that “(South Carolina's) windmills are causing whales to die in numbers never seen before.“ 

• As President for the first year of the Covid pandemic, Trump suggested dubious remedies including injecting bleach or using internal light, hydroxychloroquine, ivermectin. At times he discouraged Covid testing and wearing face masks that could curtail the spread of the disease – counter to recommendations of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Note: Trump did encourage scientific vaccine development via Operation Warp Speed).

Trump’s scientific lapses aside, his supporters may take comfort in the myths of MAGA, and hold them as sacred.

Navigation within this article series:

Thought Reform in Trump’s MAGA - Intro
Milieu Control in Trump's MAGA, Part 2
Mystical Manipulation in Trump's MAGA, Part 3
The Demand for Purity in Trump's MAGA, Part 4
The Cult of Confession in Trump’s MAGA, Part 5
Sacred Science in Trump’s MAGA, Part 6
Loading the Language in Trump’s MAGA, Part 7
Doctrine over Person in Trump’s MAGA, Part 8
The Dispensing of Existence in Trump’s MAGA, Part 9
Conclusion: Thought Reform in Trump’s MAGA, Part 10

References:

Hassan, Steven (2019, 2024). The Cult of Trump: A Leading Cult Expert Explains How the President Uses Mind Control, The New Press.

Lifton, Robert Jay (2019). Losing Reality: On Cults, Cultism, and the Mindset of Political and Religious Zealotry, The New Press.

This special 10-part article will be posted daily through November 1.

Robert Jay Lifton’s cult of confession theme from his study of communist Chinese brainwashing is difficult to literally apply to MAGA members, since it entailed the confession of individual secrets then used to alter subject’s behavior:

Closely related to the demand for absolute purity is an obsession with personal confession. Confession is carried beyond its ordinary religious, legal, and therapeutic expressions to the point of becoming a cult in itself. There is the demand that one confess to crimes one has not committed, to sinfulness that is artificially induced, in the name of a cure that is arbitrarily imposed… In totalist hands, confession becomes a means of exploiting, rather than offering solace for, these vulnerabilities (Lifton, p. 76).

But while typical MAGA members may not have a process to profess their individual failings to the movement, Republican leaders do seem to have forums for submitting to Trump and his MAGA-based power. Trump’s political team must defend indefensible statements, policies or actions, sometimes making command performances for an audience-of-one (Trump). Most Republican national figures must publicly support Trump’s positions and/or politically endorse him (see The Demand for Purity). This leads to public and potentially humiliating about-faces from many politicians who once opposed Trump before reversing their stance, including Senators (and former primary opponents) Lindsay Graham, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio and Trump Vice Presidential Candidate JD Vance. Other Republicans unwilling to capitulate to Trump have instead left politics. 

In a perhaps karmic reversal of Trump’s leadership cult of capitulation, many once-loyal allies now oppose him. 

Navigation within this article series:

Thought Reform in Trump’s MAGA - Intro
Milieu Control in Trump's MAGA, Part 2
Mystical Manipulation in Trump's MAGA, Part 3
The Demand for Purity in Trump's MAGA, Part 4
The Cult of Confession in Trump’s MAGA, Part 5
Sacred Science in Trump’s MAGA, Part 6
Loading the Language in Trump’s MAGA, Part 7
Doctrine over Person in Trump’s MAGA, Part 8
The Dispensing of Existence in Trump’s MAGA, Part 9
Conclusion: Thought Reform in Trump’s MAGA, Part 10

References:

Lifton, Robert Jay (2019). Losing Reality: On Cults, Cultism, and the Mindset of Political and Religious Zealotry, The New Press.

This special 10-part article will be posted weekdays through November 1.

On October 5, 2024, Donald Trump’s daughter in-law Lara Trump and co-chair of the Republican National Committee (RNC), spoke at a Trump campaign event in Butler, Pennsylvania, the site of an attempt on the former President’s life. Standing beside husband Eric, she said that the failed assassination was a divine miracle, repeating a GOP convention theme (see Mystical Manipulation in Trump’s MAGA). Then, she drew a sharp line through the Presidential race, declaring, “This is no longer a fight between Republican vs. Democrat, left vs. right, it is good vs. evil, and good is going to win this battle…”

Lara Trump's partisan bifurcation of good and evil recalls the demand for purity, another of Robert Jay Lifton’s themes of thought reform:

…the experiential world is sharply divided into the pure and the impure, into the absolutely good and the absolutely evil. The good and the pure are of course those ideas, feelings, and actions consistent with the totalist ideology and policy; anything else is apt to be relegated to the bad and the impure. Nothing human is immune from the flood of stern moral judgments. All “taints” and “poisons” that contribute to the existing state of impurity must be searched out and eliminated (Lifton, pp. 73).

The enemy within

Donald Trump in his 2024 campaign branded people – particularly Democrats who stand in his way – as enemies of America. Trump told a Fox News interviewer that America’s biggest election day security problem was “the enemy within” including “radical left lunatics.” In the same interview he responded to a question about undermining by government bureaucrats, saying, “we have two enemies, we have the outside enemy, and then we have the enemy from within. And the enemy from within in my opinion is more dangerous than China, Russia and all these countries…” In a subsequent interview, he branded specific Democratic politicians with the enemy label “We have a lot of bad people. But when you look at [Adam] ‘Shifty’ Schiff and some of the others, yeah, they are to me the enemy from within. I think Nancy Pelosi is an enemy from within.”

Purity of party

If opposing Democrats are enemies of Trump’s MAGA, non-supportive Republican politicians are an impurity for the GOP to sift out. Earlier in 2024 as a candidate for RNC chair, Lara Trump said on her Right View broadcast that Republican candidates for the upcoming election cycle needed to be pro-Trump and pro-MAGA, pronouncing, “Anyone who is not on board with seeing Donald Trump as the 47th President, and America-loving, patriots, all the way down the ticket, being supported by the RNC, is welcome to leave… There’s no one more loyal to Donald Trump and the Make America Great Again movement, than this person you’re looking at right here…”

Lara Trump seems to equate a Republican politician’s patriotic love for America with support for her father-in-law.

Purity of individuals

At the level of the individual, Lifton writes that people experiencing the demand for purity can apply the same black-and-white polarization to their own character, and as a result become more angry and intolerant of people outside their group:

One must look at those impurities as originating from outside influences – that is, from the every-threatening world beyond the closed, totalist ken [one's range of knowledge or sight]. Therefore one may seek to relieve oneself of some of one’s burden of guilt by denouncing, continuously and hostilely, these same outside influences. The more guilty one feels, the greater the hatred, and the more threatening the outside influences seem (Lifton, p. 75, parentheses added).

Purity of origin

As a tangent to Lifton’s “‘taints’ and ‘poisons’” that “must be searched out and eliminated,” Donald Trump publicly fixates on the purity of people’s origins, whether ethnic, national or genetic:

• He entered political life by claiming that then-President Barack Obama had not proven he was born in the United States and thus might not qualify to be president.

• Trump challenged the ethnic identity of Kamala Harris, telling a 2024 National Association of Black Journalists convention audience that at some point she had “turned black.”

• Trump launched his first Presidential campaign with a Trump Tower speech warning that Mexican immigration was bringing in drugs, crime and rapists. In the same speech he promised to “build a great, great wall on our southern border,” and said “I will have Mexico pay for that wall.”

• On Hugh Hewitt’s October 7, 2024 show, Trump claimed Kamala Harris had allowed thousands of murderers – and their genes – to enter the country, saying, “Many of them murdered far more than one person, and they’re now happily living in the United States. You know, now, a murderer – I believe this – it’s in their genes. And we got bad – a lot of bad genes in our country right now.”  

• Trump told a December 2023 New Hampshire Rally that illegal immigration is poisoning the blood of America: “You know, when they let – I think the real number is 15, 16 million people into our country – when they do that, we’ve got a lot of work to do. They’re poisoning the blood of our country, that’s what they’ve done.” 

• Trump’s fixation with genetic origins shows through in this exhaustive video summary of times Trump has connected others’ genes to their success. 

Trump’s demands for purity have helped produce a movement polarized against his Democratic enemies, a GOP organized to weed out his non-supporters, and supporters mobilized to act on his origin fixations.

Navigation within this article series:

Thought Reform in Trump’s MAGA - Intro
Milieu Control in Trump's MAGA, Part 2
Mystical Manipulation in Trump's MAGA, Part 3
The Demand for Purity in Trump's MAGA, Part 4
The Cult of Confession in Trump’s MAGA, Part 5
Sacred Science in Trump’s MAGA, Part 6
Loading the Language in Trump’s MAGA, Part 7
Doctrine over Person in Trump’s MAGA, Part 8
The Dispensing of Existence in Trump’s MAGA, Part 9
Conclusion: Thought Reform in Trump’s MAGA, Part 10

References:

Lifton, Robert Jay (2019). Losing Reality: On Cults, Cultism, and the Mindset of Political and Religious Zealotry, The New Press.

This special 10-part article will be posted weekdays through November 1.

On the final night of the 2024 Republican National Convention (RNC), the senior pastor of a Detroit church took the stage in prime time to speak about a purportedly fateful visit Donald Trump made to his church. On June 15, the day after celebrating his 78th birthday with supporters in West Palm Beach, Florida, Trump had attended a round table at Lorenzo Sewell’s 180 Church. 

One of the convention’s many religious speakers, Rev. Sewell acknowledged that Trump was a “sinner” and legally convicted, but the minister stirred the convention with a story invoking divine providence to connect Trump’s Detroit visit with a failed Trump assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania:

“What would you ask for your birthday? He asked for prayer. I believe that prayer is preventative and prayer is proactive. I believe that praying in the name of Jesus changes everything. And when we prayed for President Trump, only God knew that 30 days later, there would be a miracle by a millimeter. Only God knew that if we prayed for him during his birthday, there would be a miracle by a millimeter.”

“Did you know that Trump was shot on [at the time of] 6:11? And do you know that Ephesians Chapter number 6, Verse number 11 says “...be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power”? 

“….So all my friends back in Detroit who are Democrats, I want to ask you just one simple question. You can’t deny the power of God in this man’s life. You can’t deny that God protected him. You cannot deny that it was a millimeter miracle that was able to save this man’s life. Could it be that Jesus Christ preserved him for such a time as this?”  

Rev. Sewell supported his case with a misquoted Bible verse and manipulated facts. Ephesians 6:11 actually reads, “Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes.”1 Trump visited 180 Church after his birthday, though Sewell said it was Trump’s “birthday weekend.” And Sewell’s “millimeter miracle”  –  which did not prevent the death of the assassin and one audience member – happened 28 days, not 30 days, after Trump came to Detroit.

Later that evening at the RNC, Rev. Franklin Graham asked the convention to stand and “call upon the name of the God of heaven,” praying, “Thank you for saving the life of President Donald J. Trump. In his own words it was you, and you alone, who saved him.” Finally, Trump recounted the Butler assassination attempt in his keynote speech while wearing a rectangular patch over his right ear, declaring, “Many people say it was a providential event. It probably was.”

This article does not dispute that a higher power could have intervened in Butler to save Trump – or intervened to save those Presidents (or nominees) surviving other past assassination attempts. Rather, Trump’s and some supporters’ assertion that God must have intervened, and therefore Trump should be supported politically, evokes Lifton’s 2nd theme of thought reform, mystical manipulation:

The inevitable next step after milieu control is extensive personal manipulation. This manipulation assumes a no-holds-barred character, and uses every possible device at the milieu’s command, no matter how bizarre or painful. Initiated from above, it seeks to provoke specific patterns of behavior and emotion in such a way that these will appear to have arisen spontaneously from within the environment. This element of planned spontaneity, directed as it is by an ostensibly omniscient group, must assume, for the manipulated, a near-mystical quality.

…they created a mystical aura around the manipulating institutions – the Party, the Government, the Organization. They are the agents “chosen” (by history, by God, or by some other supernatural force) to carry out the “mystical imperative…”  (Lifton, p. 71).

Trump claiming God stopped the rain for his inauguration speech, as documented in the intro section of this article, could be seen as mystical manipulation. Trump’s mystical imperative is to fix what’s wrong with America – at the 2016 Republican National Convention he claimed “I alone can fix it.” The planned spontaneity of Trump’s 2024 campaign includes cases of MAGA leaders mystically interpreting past occurrences like Butler, as well as deceptively orchestrating events so as to appear spontaneous:

• A campaign-organized October 2024 Pennsylvania “town hall” had two former Republican political candidates pose as regular voters and ask Trump questions critical of Democrats. One questioner, who appeared on stage next to Trump, still has her own campaign website. 

• An October 2024 campaign rally headed by Trump running mate JD Vance included more than a dozen people wearing "auto workers for Trump" shirts, but six of them told The Detroit News they were not actually auto workers.

• Trump appeared in Scranton, Pennsylvania standing in front of supporters holding “Scranton firefighters for Trump” signs, but the local fire chief and union chief reported not recognizing them.

• Trump made a highly publicized visit to a McDonalds in October 2024, acting briefly as a restaurant worker, but the restaurant was closed for his appearance, and “customers” did not order, but received whatever food Trump handed them, according to a newspaper report. 

• A long but entertaining video by Roland Martin fact checks Trump’s aforementioned appearance at Sewell’s 180 Church, finding that only a fraction of the people at Trump’s roundtable were black – contrary to a campaign advocate calling it “a black church” – that some attendees may have been paid actors in Martin’s opinion, and that Trump made dishonest claims there about his achievements for black people.

• Ten days prior to the January 2024 Iowa Republican Caucus, the first state to cast votes for presidential nominees, Trump shared a video called “God Made Trump” to his Truth Social account. The video paraphrased American radio broadcaster Paul Harvey’s 1978 speech “So God Made a Farmer,” patterned after the Bible’s Genesis story to add an 8th day of creation. 

The mystical manipulation of MAGA may result in people supporting Trump politically as a matter of unquestioning faith – regardless of his behavior. Other followers may be influenced by seemingly spontaneous outpourings of support for Trump that succeed in winning their own backing.

Navigation within this article:

Thought Reform in Trump’s MAGA - Intro
Milieu Control in Trump's MAGA, Part 2
Mystical Manipulation in Trump's MAGA, Part 3
The Demand for Purity in Trump's MAGA, Part 4
The Cult of Confession in Trump’s MAGA, Part 5
Sacred Science in Trump’s MAGA, Part 6
Loading the Language in Trump’s MAGA, Part 7
Doctrine over Person in Trump’s MAGA, Part 8
The Dispensing of Existence in Trump’s MAGA, Part 9
Conclusion: Thought Reform in Trump’s MAGA, Part 10

References:

Lifton, Robert Jay (2019). Losing Reality: On Cults, Cultism, and the Mindset of Political and Religious Zealotry, The New Press.

This special 10-part article will be posted weekdays through November 1.

60 Minutes TV correspondent Leslie Stahl recalled a 2016 conversation with then-Republican Presidential Nominee Donald Trump. She had asked Trump why he kept attacking the press. "He said, 'You know why I do it? I do it to discredit you all and demean you all so when you write negative stories about me, no one will believe you.'” His candid reply tells us Trump seeks to influence what people say, see, hear – and ultimately, think – about him.  

When Robert Jay Lifton detailed his eight psychological themes of thought reform in communist China, he started with milieu control:

The most basic feature of the thought reform environment, the psychological current upon which all else depends, is the control of human communication. Through this milieu control the totalist environment seeks to establish domain over not only the individual’s communication with the outside (all that he or she sees and hears, reads and writes, experiences, and expresses), but also – in its penetration of one’s inner life – over what we may speak of as one’s communication with oneself  (Lifton, p. 68 emphasis added).

Disinformation

While it’s common for politicians to try to shape perceptions so people will vote for them, Trump seems to go further by attempting to forge an alternate reality for MAGA followers. Trump’s reach extends to both public media (TV, radio, web etc) and social media, and to distributing both information and disinformation (knowingly false information intended to mislead). 

Since political leaders like Trump can’t directly control the entire milieu, or environment, for their potential audience, Trump focuses intensely on the media. Longtime Trump ally and strategist Steve Bannon famously told author Michael Lewis, “The real opposition is the media. And the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with sh*t” (Lewis). 

During a decade leading the MAGA Movement, Trump has indeed “flooded the zone,” often with outright disinformation:

• A newspaper analysis said Trump told over 30,000 mistruths during a four-year presidency – including over 500 falsehoods during the last day of the 2020 election cycle.

• National Enquirer publisher David Pecker testified that he created a false story and photos indicating that the father of Ted Cruz – then a Trump competitor for the 2016 Republican Presidential nomination – knew Lee Harvey Oswald before Oswald assassinated JFK. Trump then spoke with the media about the story, which had been created as a favor to Trump. 

• Trump and members of his legal team spread disinformation that the 2020 election had been stolen, a claim Trump maintains to this day.

• Trump asserted during the 2024 campaign that immigrants in Springfield, Ohio were eating the dogs and cats of citizens. 

• Trump has commonly called out the news media as fake news at his rallies, such as in this video of a 2018 Pennsylvania rally where the crowd responds by chanting,  “CNN sucks!” 

Working the refs

Besides branding mainstream media as “fake news” to discourage supporters from consuming it, Trump also pits conservative networks – and conservative media personalities – off one another to manipulate the most positive possible coverage for himself:

Taking Trump’s football comparison and turning it into a sports analogy, Trump aggressively “works the referees (refs)” – complaining about their decisions to try and impact them. 

Trump wrangles a complex and mutually beneficial relationship with cable TV’s Fox News:

• He courts the favor of FOX News opinion hosts with phone calls and exclusive access, praising them in public: Hannity, Ingram, former host Tucker Carlson.

• New programs during daytime hours (when Fox News has fewer viewers) present more hard news, which frustrates Trump, as he relates in this post on Truth Social:

The day after his 2024 Presidential debate with Kamala Harris, Trump called the Fox & Friends show and suggested that that daytime personalities Brett Baier and Martha MacCallum would not be suitable moderators for a potential debate on Fox News, but that Hannity, Ingram, and Jesse Waters would be, saying ”Jesse was fantastic last night, what he said. He really got it. Jesse said Trump won that debate.” 

Trump complaining to the CIA that the press mis-reported his inauguration crowd size, mentioned at the opening of this series, was Trump “working the refs.” His administration “worked the refs” regarding The Mueller Report (The Report On The Investigation Into Russian Interference In The 2016 Presidential Election). Trump’s appointed Attorney General William Barr pre-released a public March 2019 letter mischaracterizing the report’s findings. By the time Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report released, Trump had already claimed exoneration for 3+ weeks and public interest in Trump’s conduct had waned.

How does milieu control affect the individual?  Lifton writes:

Many things happen psychologically to one exposed to milieu control; the most basic is the disruption of balance between self and outside world. Pressured toward a merger of internal and external milieus, individuals encounter a profound threat to personal autonomy. They are deprived of the combination of external information and inner reflection required to test the realities of their environment and to maintain a measure of identity separate from it. Instead, they are called upon to make an absolute polarization of the real (the prevailing ideology) and the unreal (everything else). To the extent that they do this, they undergo a personal closure that frees them from humanity's incessant struggle with the elusive subtleties of truth (Lifton, p. 70).

By discrediting the mainstream news media, “working the refs” and flooding the media with distracting and/or incorrect information, Trump discourages access to information that could help people to make different decisions about him. Trump supporters who consume his semi-orchestrated version of reality may adopt Trump’s media preferences, his view of reality, and forego their own internal judgments about what is “real” vs “fake.” This process may be intensified by Lifton’s additional themes.

Navigation within this article:

Thought Reform in Trump’s MAGA - Intro
Milieu Control in Trump's MAGA, Part 2
Mystical Manipulation in Trump's MAGA, Part 3
The Demand for Purity in Trump's MAGA, Part 4
The Cult of Confession in Trump’s MAGA, Part 5
Sacred Science in Trump’s MAGA, Part 6
Loading the Language in Trump’s MAGA, Part 7
Doctrine over Person in Trump’s MAGA, Part 8
The Dispensing of Existence in Trump’s MAGA, Part 9
Conclusion: Thought Reform in Trump’s MAGA, Part 10

References

Lewis, Michael (2018). Has Anyone Seen the President? [Audiobook], Simon & Schuster Audio.

Lifton, Robert Jay (2019). Losing Reality: On Cults, Cultism, and the Mindset of Political and Religious Zealotry, The New Press.

Introduction

On Donald Trump’s first full day as president in 2017, he gave a speech at CIA Headquarters in Langley. Trump stood in front of the agency’s revered Memorial Wall of Agency Heroes, which then featured 117 stars carved in white Alabama marble, each symbolizing an agency employee who had died in service to the agency and the American people. Several minutes into his speech Trump mentioned his “running war with the media,” and although he had made comments critical of the CIA during his campaign, Trump denied in his speech that he had a feud with the Agency, and began talking about the previous day’s inauguration. He criticized the media for reporting that his inauguration had been poorly attended, a skirmish that would continue through his first week in office. Then, absurdly, Trump told 400 gathered CIA employees that God had stopped the rain for his inaugural speech:

"The rain should have scared them away, but God looked down and he said, 'We’re not going to let it rain on your speech.' In fact, I – when I first started I said, ‘Oh no.’ First line, I hit – got hit by a couple of drops. And I said, 'Oh, this is, this is too bad, but we’ll go right through it.' But the truth is that it stopped immediately, it was amazing – and then it became really sunny, then I walked off and it poured right after I left. It poured!"  

The official White House archive video of the inauguration shows that it rained throughout Trump’s speech, and following it. Yet Trump said God stopped the rain, a claim which is verifiably untrue. 

That day at the CIA, as in many of his days as an American political figure, Donald Trump has engaged in a war on reality. His battles with the media, with intelligence services, and with the legal system are all proxies in his fight to change the minds of people about him.  

One author who has written about Trump’s “assault on reality” (Lifton, pp.155-161), Robert Jay Lifton, earlier in his career wrote a definitive book about communist brainwashing called Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism. A chapter in this 1961 book, “Ideological Totalism,” described eight psychological themes of “thought reform” used by the Chinese government on political prisoners and intellectuals. Years before Lifton’s themes were adopted to understand the dynamics of religious cults, Lifton wrote that the more these themes affect people in a group, the more the environment looks like brainwashing:

The more clearly an environment expresses these eight psychological themes, the greater its resemblance to ideological totalism; and the more it utilizes such totalist devices to change people, the greater its resemblance to thought reform (or “brainwashing”) (Lifton, p. 90 - parenthesis is Lifton’s). 

After all that has been said and written about Donald Trump’s Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement, is it possible that Lifton’s eight themes provide some insight into this historic, chaotic and often confounding movement? Persisting questions about MAGA still lack satisfying answers. For example, Why are certain MAGA ideas so persistent in the group, despite contrary evidence? Why does Trump use buzzwords (and nicknames) excessively, even for a politician? Why does Trump relentlessly attack the media? 

Regarding Trump’s trip to the CIA, we could ask, why would a newly inaugurated US President stand before trained intelligence professionals and make a false claim that can be easily disproved in five minutes using a Web browser? Trump’s CIA speech at the CIA is reminiscent of three of Lifton’s themes: mystical manipulation, milieu control and doctrine over person.  

This series of articles will look at Donald Trump's MAGA through the psychological lens of Lifton's eight themes of thought reform, demonstrating how these themes may be present, using examples from the last decade's political news. Links will be provided to support many examples, but not for some examples that are easily verified or commonly understood. Lifton’s themes will be sourced from his most recent book that republishes them, called Losing Reality. 

Navigation within this article series:

Thought Reform in Trump’s MAGA - Intro (you are here)
Milieu Control in Trump's MAGA, Part 2
Mystical Manipulation in Trump's MAGA, Part 3
The Demand for Purity in Trump's MAGA, Part 4
The Cult of Confession in Trump’s MAGA, Part 5
Sacred Science in Trump’s MAGA, Part 6
Loading the Language in Trump’s MAGA, Part 7
Doctrine over Person in Trump’s MAGA, Part 8
The Dispensing of Existence in Trump’s MAGA, Part 9
Conclusion: Thought Reform in Trump’s MAGA, Part 10

References

Lifton, Robert Jay (2019). Losing Reality: On Cults, Cultism, and the Mindset of Political and Religious Zealotry, The New Press.

Citizens increasingly call Donald Trump’s Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement a personality cult. This should be no surprise: From MAGA’s early days, Trump proclaimed he feels unquestioning loyalty from supporters:

“The people – my people – are so smart. And you know what else they say about my people?  The polls, they say I have the most loyal people – did you ever see that? Where I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters, okay? It’s like, incredible.”CBS News, Jan 23, 2016

Not only does Trump’s MAGA movement fit the profile of a personality cult, Trump himself displays the traits of a cult leader (see the excellent chapter “The Cult Leader Profile” in Steven Hassan’s book The Cult of Trump). Is it just name-calling to use the “c” word for MAGA, or does it express something useful to voters, citizens and current and former MAGA followers? I’m convinced it’s crucial to how we prepare for the 2024 election and its aftermath.

Why does it matter if MAGA is a personality cult? 

Because it will serve the interests of the leader rather than the followers. 

This feature of personality cults means that followers (not “all” followers) will get used. People’s support will be used to lend power and money to things they may not have personally chosen to support. 

Financially, some MAGA supporters are giving money without realizing some of it is being used to pay the billionaire former President’s legal bills. They might be giving money to the Republican National Committee not realizing that its co-chair Lara Trump (his daughter-in-law) can steer funds toward Trump’s campaign at the expense of other candidates for other offices. They may not realize that Trump’s campaign hires his own properties for events, in a way that puts millions of their money in his pockets.

Co-author of “The Art of the Deal,” Trump is a highly transactional politician, making deals for his own benefit that would affect others during a next presidential term. Eccentric allies like Elon Musk will support Trump for a price he’ll be happy to pay — on the behalf of the American people. Endorsers like Musk will expect payback, perhaps through policies that favor his businesses. While Trump did not invent political influence peddling, he takes it to a transactional extreme, and taxpayers will pay the bill.  

Because MAGA may again cause followers to break the law

From Trump’s presidential campaigns, many of his closest political associates (Manafort, Cohen, Stone, Bannon, Gates, etc.), dozens of nationwide political supporters (e.g., fake electors in multiple swing states), and hundreds of others (January 6 defendants) have been either convicted, pardoned, or indicted for felonies committed in support of him. In a 2024 election cycle where Trump has even more to lose (prosecution for dozens of felony counts), why would there not be even more pressure to commit illegal actions? To paraphrase an old joke about pathological liars: “How do you know he is lying? Because he’s moving his mouth…” How do you know Trump may be causing election crimes? Because he’s running for president.

Perhaps more critical than MAGA followers’ legal jeopardy is political jeopardy for us all. People breaking election laws take votes away from people who will vote against them and impact results in ways that do not reflect the expressed will of the public. When individuals threaten the peaceful transfer of power, they threaten to take political power away from the people. 

Under Trump’s personality cult, even the Supreme Court has ruled that his official actions will not be subject to prosecution, regardless of whether they comply with the law. “Law and order” are not considered necessary when they stand in the way of this leader doing what he wants. 

Because personality cults can become destructive

Put under enough pressure, a personality cult can become violent, as we saw on January 6, 2020. Imminent certification of a Biden election victory, Trump's lies about a stolen election, mobilization of radical groups, including the Proud Boys, and Trump’s speech alongside the National Mall led to violence at the US Capitol. In 2024, Trump may lose again and feel even more incentive to incite violence in an attempt to evade prosecution.  

A Trump victory could also lead to the MAGA movement becoming more ruthless. Project 2025 provides a roadmap to make a President Trump even more powerful, to fire nonpartisan civil servants and replace them with Trump loyalists. He would have a path to punish political enemies by increasing presidential control over the US Department of Justice and preventing accountability for his actions as President. Such changes would serve Trump’s needs more than his followers.

Because MAGA’s followers will remain among us

If Trump loses the 2024 election, he may finally be done as a political leader. But just as America’s Tea Party movement led to the MAGA movement—including many of the same followers—the MAGA movement will lead to a future group(s) with leaders who try to project a similar personality to Trump to gain followers and political power. Understanding Trump’s personality cult can help Americans wisely choose future leaders.  

Trump’s loss could also produce masses of disillusioned followers who had expected him to win and fulfill their dreams and hopes. Some MAGA followers have become disconnected from their prior family and friends and may need help reconnecting lost or damaged relationships. Others may feel alienated from society after hearing years of gaslighting about the state of the world and the intentions of other Americans.

I have much personal experience with helping former cult members recover, having fielded hotline calls, facilitated support groups, and even sat in interventions with people who were leaving a cult. I have seen people struggle to revisit the person they used to be and decide what they want to believe following an intense group experience. I have seen people grapple with regret about lost or damaged relationships from devoting themselves to an intense group. I have seen people struggle to move forward after losing a feeling of community and the sense of purpose that the group provided. 

As a political movement, MAGA’s may or may not be here to stay, but its followers will remain among us either way. We will be better prepared for the future if we understand the Trump personality cult and use this knowledge to move forward together.  

Is it an insult to all Donald Trump voters to say that his MAGA (Make America Great Again) movement is a personality cult? It should not be taken as one. 

Saying that MAGA is a personality cult is not the same thing as saying all Trump voters are cult members. Trump’s potential voters show a range of commitment levels to his candidacy: “single-issue” voters, long-time loyal Conservatives as well as MAGA true believers. Individual experiences will vary. 

By analogy, let’s say Hannibal Lecter invites people to a barbecue he’s hosting in the park. People may attend his barbecue with different motivations and expectations. Some may come just to meet others from the neighborhood. Some may come to discuss psychiatry with Dr. Lector and his professional friends. Vegetarians might come just because they like his fava beans. And some may come because they are actually cannibals. Yet they may all be serving Lecter’s interests in promoting cannibalism or finding new victims.

Now, are all the attendees cannibals? No – some are even vegetarians! Do most have good intentions? Probably. Would everyone feel afterward that they had attended a cannibal barbecue? Probably not (Note: I have no idea why Trump has mentioned Hannibal Lecter in his speeches).

So it is with Trump’s voting coalition. Not everyone who votes for Trump will think of MAGA as a cult, nor themselves show the traits of cult members. Some have always voted Republican. Others have a single issue that compels them to vote for Trump. Some may have systematically looked at Trump’s policies, and decided they like these more than they like Trump’s personality. Some may simply find Trump’s rallies fun. Others are true believers in most everything Trump says, who will think they are part of something patriotic and important.

But here’s the rub (pun intended). Just like the vegetarians who go to Lecter’s barbecue, if MAGA is a cult, Trump voters are supporting it. They are lending legitimacy to it by their presence. They are increasing the chances of a personality cult once again running the US government. They are voting for the chaos that Trump, the cult leader, will bring. They are empowering people who could cause another January 6, or worse. Like Lecter’s barbecue, by showing up, they are increasing the chances other people will be harmed. Voters should consider this. 

Also remember: If you get invited to Hannibal Lecter’s barbecue, don’t forget to pay attention to what’s on the grill.

I'd like to call attention to an email you sent to your email list, so that I can call out your misrepresentation of my words in this communication (Subject: Fwd: [Test] NCGOP Releases Crazy Letters from Democrats to NC Electoral College Members).

You claimed in your December 15 letter that Democrats are "harassing" electoral college members in what "sounds like is a request to overturn an already completed election for their own silly reasons," citing my letter as an example.  

First I will point out to you that the election will be conducted today, December 19 and the votes counted in the US Senate on January 6, so the election is not yet complete and was not complete at the time of my letter or yours.  Regarding alleged "harassment," I maintain there is a clear difference between lobbying elected and appointed political representatives such as in a letter to electors, and harassing them.  Personally I consider your forwarding my personal email address, from a message spent specifically for presidential electors, to your mailing list in this circumstance to be harassment, and I ask you to cease and desist from such actions by you or the North Carolina Republican party, immediately.

You attempted to frame my reasons as "silly" with your puzzling claim that "Dave thinks Alexander Hamilton wrote part of the Constitution FOR Donald Trump."  As will be clear from reading the full letter below (or the Constitution itself), I was not quoting the Constitution, which Alexander Hamilton signed but did not write, but Hamilton's The Federalist letter #68, published March 14, 1788.  It is quite obvious that Alexander Hamilton did not know the specific person of Donald Trump in 1788, and yet described the "talents for low intrigue" and "little arts of popularity" of an unfit candidate, which candidate Trump displays on a regular basis.  I went on to list bulleted examples of these two traits, as well as a summary of why Donald J. Trump is unfit for the presidency, all of which you omitted from your letter.

If you would like to forward my entire letter to your mailing list, sans my personal email address, you are welcome to do so, as it would establish that my reasons are not "silly," that my letter is actually non-partisan, and that citizens have lobbied the electoral college with utmost sincerity from the patriotic desire to see a 45th President of the United States who is fit for office.

Dear Presidential Electors:

I write to you as a citizen to urge you to do your duty when electing the next President of the United States of America. This decision has been placed constitutionally in your capable hands, and I implore you and the other electors to make certain we inaugurate a President fit for office. 

As you may well know, Alexander Hamilton’s The Federalist No. 68 is an excellent resource for understanding the rationale of the Constitutional Convention in using the role of electors to choose Presidents. Hamilton and James Madison, et al wrote Federalist articles to persuade the States to support and sign the Constitution. 

In this letter I will review what Federalist 68 says about your responsibilities as electors, and beseech you to fulfill them in the December 19 electoral vote by not casting your vote for Donald J. Trump for abundant reasons described below. 

Here is how Hamilton describes your capabilities as electors:

”the immediate election should be made by men most capable of analyzing the qualities adapted to the station, and acting under circumstances favorable to deliberation, and to a judicious combination of all the reasons and inducements which were proper to govern their choice. A small number of persons, selected by their fellow-citizens from the general mass, will be most likely to possess the information and discernment requisite to such complicated investigations.”

According to these words of this Founder and signer of the Constitution you are:

·      Capable of analyzing the qualities needed for the office of president

·      Expected to use information and discernment in casting your vote

·      Assumed to use deliberation in your choice – not to automatically rubber-stamp the leader of your state’s popular vote

If you do all these things, you will inevitably cast your vote other than for Donald J. Trump.

Vote for a “Fit Person”

Principally, Hamilton writes that electors must only cast their vote for persons fit to be President:

“…the people of each State shall choose a number of persons as electors, equal to the number of senators and representatives of such State in the national government, who shall assemble within the State, and vote for some fit person as President… 

The process of election affords a moral certainty, that the office of President will never fall to the lot of any man who is not in an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications.”

It is obvious through Hamilton’s word choice of “in an eminent degree” that fit candidates hold abundant positive personal qualifications, beyond the mere prerequisites for a president, such as age, citizenship, residency (the word “eminent” according to Merriam-Webster means “standing out so as to be readily perceived or noted).”  Being fit for office means so much more than simply age and citizenship.

Donald J. Trump is not “Fit” to be President

In describing candidates who should fall short of the presidency, Hamilton goes on to give characteristics that seem written to depict Donald J. Trump:

“Talents for low intrigue, and the little arts of popularity, may alone suffice to elevate a man to the first honors in a single State; but it will require other talents, and a different kind of merit, to establish him in the esteem and confidence of the whole Union, or of so considerable a portion of it as would be necessary to make him a successful candidate for the distinguished office of President of the United States.”

I ask you as electors, who could these defects listed in the Federalist better describe than Donald J. Trump?

Regarding “talents for low intrigue:”

·      Candidate Trump threatened his political opponent with imprisonment

·      Candidate Trump brought the alleged mistresses of his opponent [edit: opponent’s spouse] to a nationally televised presidential debate

·      Candidate Trump intimated he would not accept the election results if he did not perceive a “clear result”

·      Etc.

Regarding “the little arts of popularity:”

·      Before declaring himself a presidential candidate Trump was perhaps best known to Americans as a reality television star

·      Candidate Trump launched his political career by insinuating that President Barack Obama was not a US citizen

·      As candidate, Trump built his popularity via a steady stream of outrageous public statements, many of which were either ignorant of or defiant of the Constitution

·      Etc.

I submit that Donald J. Trump is not fit to be President:

·      He displays an unstable temperament

·      He has no experience in public service or office

·      He shows distain toward American institutions ranging from the free press to the independent judiciary, military veterans, and intelligence agencies

·      He is unaccountable for conflicts of interest with his business and/or foreign interests, having spurned providing tax returns or putting assets in a blind trust

·      Etc.

There are many more examples of his unfitness evident from this long presidential campaign and rocky presidential transition, some of them more subjective, moral, or controversial including his statements on race, gender and religious freedom. You can likely name several more disqualifiers using your own “information and discernment,” as Hamilton described.

As a final test of the fitness of Donald J. Trump for the presidency, I ask you individually to think back to the time you first learned about the college of presidential electors – whether this was when you were a student as I was, or as a public servant. Could you have imagined being confronted with a candidate who has done what he has done, said what he has said, presented the (lack of) character and empathy he projects, and then imagined yourself performing this duty for your country by personally declaring him fit for office through the act of casting your electoral vote for him to be president?  If not, then you have agreed that his non-fitness for office is self-evident, and your duty as an elector is clear.

If you are not yet convinced, this spectacularly unusual candidate for President may yet give you more reasons to be certain of his unfitness before December 19.

Resist Foreign Powers

Finally, Hamilton made clear that the electoral college was designed in part to prevent foreign interests from influencing the presidential election:

“Nothing was more to be desired than that every practicable obstacle should be opposed to cabal, intrigue, and corruption. These most deadly adversaries of republican government might naturally have been expected to make their approaches from more than one quarter, but chiefly from the desire in foreign powers to gain an improper ascendant in our councils. How could they better gratify this, than by raising a creature of their own to the chief magistracy of the Union? But the convention have guarded against all danger of this sort, with the most provident and judicious attention. 

According to multiple news organizations, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has concluded that Russia intervened in the 2016 election with the goal of helping Donald J. Trump win the presidency.  By not voting for Trump, you protect America’s highest office from Russian influence.

For Whom Should You Vote?

You should vote according to your conscience and considering the interests of your country, state and party.  I personally cast my citizen’s vote for Hillary Clinton, but because you choose the President as an elector, I humbly suggest voting for one of the following:

·      Hillary Clinton (1^st in national popular vote)

·      Gary Johnson (3^rd in national popular vote)

·      Write-in

·      Abstain (if no candidate has a nationwide majority electoral vote, the decision moves to the US House of Representatives)

It is not the purpose of this letter to lobby for a specific candidate, merely a fit one. I urge you to do your duty and cast a vote for a fit candidate for President, and if not you cannot, to not cast a vote. 

There are many possible approaches – including coordinated state voting of electors for another conservative.  I realize the likely consequence of no candidate holding an electoral majority is that the US Republican House of Representatives will ultimately choose a Republican president – ideally a more fit alternative to Donald J. Trump.  I’m willing to put my country above my party, and hope that you, in your Constitutional duty to State and Country, will do the same. As 2016 presidential elector Christopher Supran (Texas) said when announcing that he will not vote for Trump, “I owe no debt to a party. I owe a debt to my children to leave them a nation they can trust.”

Please do your duty.

Respectfully Submitted,

Dave Anderson

References:

Hamilton, Alexander, “The Mode of Electing the President,” Federalist No. 68, March 14, 1788.

https://www.congress.gov/resources/display/content/The+Federalist+Papers#TheFederalistPapers-68

Bowman, Emma, “CIA Reportedly Concludes Russian Interference Aimed To Elect Trump,” National Public Radio, December 10, 2016.  http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/12/10/505072304/cia-concludes-russian-interference-aimed-to-elect-trump

Suprun, Christopher, “Why I Will Not Cast My Electoral Vote for Donald Trump,” The New York Times, December 5, 2016.  http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/05/opinion/why-i-will-not-cast-my-electoral-vote-for-donald-trump.html?_r=0