Mystical Manipulation: Thought Reform in Trump’s MAGA, Part 3
How spiritual and secular manipulations deliver the magic of Trump's 2024 campaign
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.
(New International Version, additional context here) Other Trump supporters have more accurately cited Ephesians 6:11, but without answering the question, why Ephesians? Many other books of the Bible have a chapter 6-verse 11, but Trump supporters have selectively used a verse that could imaginably relate to the assassination attempt.