The Cult of Trump

by Steven Hassan

  We know what Putin wants—to destabilize democratic institutions and government in the United States and elsewhere. He wants to destroy the NATO alliance and get U.S. forces out of Europe so he can further pursue Russia’s interests—possibly including future invasions—without international interference. He also wants Western-imposed sanctions lifted, not just on Russian trade but also on his own foreign bank accounts. With his sixteen years of KGB experience—he was an agent between 1975 and 1991—and years of using influence and mind control techniques on his own people as prime minister, Putin has the ability and knowledge to be creative about how to get it, including supporting the presidency of Donald Trump.

  THE CULT OF PUTIN

  Putin came to power in 1999, a relative unknown. One of the first things he did was stage a series of apartment block bombings and blame them on Chechen rebels, which created a sense of crisis and fear—and helped get him elected president. The second was to beef up his public persona. Back in 1992, while working for the mayor of St. Petersburg, he had commissioned a film about himself called Vlast, the Russian word for power. As president, he continued his personal mythmaking, releasing videos and photos of himself scuba diving and horseback riding—and even shirtless on vacation.

  He would use other tricks in Pratkanis and Aronson’s would-be cult leader’s playbook to get the Russians to support, admire, and embrace him. Though Putin’s rugged charisma and nationalist views—he promised to return Russia to its past glory, essentially to make Russia great again—initially won over the public, it led to an authoritarian style of governing, one that controlled many aspects of citizens’ lives—their behavior, information, thoughts, and emotions. This included a crackdown on the press, the persecution (and poisoning) of political opponents, the suppression of personal freedoms and minority rights, and a surge of predatory foreign aggression.

  Yet Trump appears to be smitten. Putin’s toughness seems to play into Trump’s vision of a true leader. According to Nance, Putin provides a blueprint for Trump. “DJT appears to literally have the checklist by Putin in how to solidify a nation into autocracy.” It begins with information control—a “war on law enforcement intelligence and media. [It is] real, and will undermine our constitution.”25

  Like Trump, Putin is a malignant narcissist. He is charming but ruthless. He exaggerates his accomplishments, lies, and steals (he is a billionaire many times over). He also exhibits a seemingly KGB-bred paranoia and appears to lack empathy, judging by the way he treats dissenters, like Sergei and Yulia Skripal, the Russian father and daughter who were poisoned in Britain. Such attacks send a powerful message to anyone who dares to cross Putin, and are a powerful mechanism for controlling people, even if they don’t live in Russia.

  When Fox News host Bill O’Reilly asked Trump what he thought about Putin being a killer, Trump responded, “We’ve got a lot of killers. What do you think? Our country’s so innocent?”26 Again, we do not know what, exactly, accounts for Putin’s grip on Trump, but it is often the case that cult leaders model themselves on other cult leaders. Sun Myung Moon was in a Korean cult before he started his own, and L. Ron Hubbard was involved with Aleister Crowley—the self-proclaimed Beast 666—and his occult group, Thelema, which was supposed to guide humanity to a new era, the Aeon of Horus.

  There is also the possibility that Putin controls Trump through fear—that he will release compromising material. Though O’Reilly and other Fox commentators were bewildered by his defense of Putin, Trump’s embrace of Putin appears to be filtering down. Polls show that Republican approval of Russia has risen significantly. Part of it may be due to Trump’s distraction campaign—he legitimizes Russia at the same time that he demonizes Democrats. In any case, it seems to be working. At a Trump rally in Ohio, a photo was taken of two friends wearing T-shirts that read: “I’d Rather Be a Russian Than a Democrat.”27

  THE CHRISTIAN RIGHT

  Cult leaders often lie about their past. They embellish, distort, exaggerate, and invent to enlarge themselves in their own eyes and the eyes of their followers. While Trump does his fair share of self-mythologizing, the biggest myths of all are being told by others. Nowhere is that happening with greater gusto, flair, and audacity than on the Christian right. They have appropriated, reworked, and manipulated Trump’s tale, using their own loaded language and imagery, for their own purposes. According to many Christian right leaders, Trump was chosen by God to lead America. He may be a sinner, but God has raised him up to turn America into a Christian nation. Theocratic theorist Lance Wallnau, in his 2016 book, God’s Chaos Candidate: Donald J. Trump and the American Unraveling, compared Trump to the idol-worshipping Persian king Cyrus, who helped return the Jews to Jerusalem. Like Cyrus, Trump is seen as a figure of deliverance, an unwitting conduit, an unlikely vessel. And deliver he has—not just to the Christian right but also to the Jewish right. Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, thanking Trump for moving the American embassy to Jerusalem, compared him to “King Cyrus the Great.”28

  At the CPAC meeting in February, Mark Lindell, the inventor and CEO of MyPillow, gushed about meeting with Trump in 2016. “I knew God had chosen him for such a time as this. We were given a second chance and time granted to get our country back on track with our conservative values and getting people saved in Jesus’s name.”29

  As outrageous as such claims may seem, they are taken seriously by millions of conservative religious believers. When a group’s leader is exalted and imbued with divinity, it is a short step to one who demands complete loyalty, devotion, and obedience. What is especially concerning is that such views are being touted not just by pillow makers and proselytizers, but by a former White House press secretary. “I think God calls all of us to fill different roles at different times and I think that he wanted Donald Trump to become president, and that’s why he’s there,” said Sarah Huckabee Sanders during an interview on the Christian Broadcasting Network.30

  To think of the Christian right as a monolithic, Bible-thumping, churchgoing bloc is a mistake. It’s a dynamic movement fueled by conservative factions and ministries—primarily Protestant evangelicals and Catholics. What unites them is a strong desire to see their conservative positions—anti-abortion, antihomosexuality, antiscience (including stem cell research and evolution)—become the law of the land en route to achieving their grand theocratic vision. Their rallying cry is “religious freedom,” defined not as the First Amendment right to believe differently from the rich and powerful, free from the undue influence of government and religious institutions, but instead as the right to deny constitutional rights to others based on one’s own religious beliefs.

  Christian right entities range in size, from the big megachurches led by Rick Warren and televangelists like Pat Robertson to smaller congregations. Most are small and not widely known. There are also religious cults in the mix—Westboro Baptist Church, International Church of Christ, as well as the Unification Church—that have theocratic ambitions. Here it is important to stress that most of mainstream Christianity, including the thirty-eight member denominations of the National Council of Churches31 and most Catholics, rejects the theocratic methods and goals of the Christian right. In fact, mainstream Christians are considered to be heretics and apostates by many Christian right leaders, who may hold somewhat differing views but generally believe that their fundamentalist versions constitute true Christianity.

  Beneath the surface of these Christian right churches are powerful, sometimes secretive networks, whose goal is to exert influence on powerful people—businessmen, celebrities, politicians, and even presidents like Trump—in order to bring about their vision of a Christian nation. One of these, known publicly as the Fellowship and privately as the Family, operates numerous front groups that keep its activities hidden. Another is the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR), which grows out of the Pentecostal and charismatic wing of evangelicalism and includes a wide range of large and small ministries. A third is the Catholic organization, Opus Dei. All a
re well-connected and ambitious. They believe that Christianity is under siege and must be restored to its rightful, central place by a theocratic takeover of American political and cultural institutions. As NAR leader Dutch Sheets said at CPAC in 2019, “We will expose the enemies of God, disrupt their plans, enforce Heaven’s rule, and reform America.”32

  More mainstream Christian groups may evangelize and otherwise seek to influence politics and government. What distinguishes the modern Christian right is the idea that their theocratic takeover is ordained by God and, some believe, may lead to the return of Jesus. According to Frederick Clarkson, a senior research analyst at Political Research Associates and a longtime researcher of the Christian right, they believe that “regardless of theological camp, means, or timetable, God has called conservative Christians to exercise dominion over society by taking control of political and cultural institutions.”33 This theocratic doctrine, known as Dominionism, is “the ideological engine of the Christian Right” and has been driving Christian right ministries across the country—and, in the case of the Family, right in the heart of Washington, D.C.

  THE FAMILY

  No one has done more to shine a light on this group than Jeffrey Sharlet. In his book The Family, Sharlet, who is associate professor of literary journalism at Dartmouth College, traces the history of the group back to 1935. Abraham (Abram) Vereide, a Norwegian-born Methodist minister and founder of Goodwill Industries in Seattle, had a vision. “God spoke to him and told him that Christianity had been getting it wrong for 2,000 years by focusing on the poor and the weak and the down and out,” said Sharlet.34 “Only the big man was capable of mending the world. But who would help the big man?” Vereide organized a series of breakfast prayer meetings with civic and business leaders in Seattle—one of them would be elected mayor in 1938—and then across the Northwest and eventually across the country. By 1942, Vereide had sixty regular meeting groups. That same year, Vereide—living now in Washington, D.C.—held his first joint Senate-House prayer breakfast meeting. In 1953, he convened his first National Prayer Breakfast, which continues to this day, attracting the wealthy and powerful Washington elite—and every president since Eisenhower. It would become, as The New York Times reports, “an international influence-peddling bazaar, where foreign dignitaries, religious leaders, diplomats and lobbyists jockey for access to the highest reaches of American power”35—including Marina Butina, a Russian graduate student and gun rights activist. In 2017 she attended the breakfast, where Trump was giving the keynote speech, in hopes of establishing a back channel of communication with American politicians. She was later convicted of spying for Russia.36

  Vereide would expand his vision over the years. He had what he called the Idea, writes Sharlet, “the most ambitious theocratic project of the American century, ‘every Christian a leader, every leader a Christian.’ ” With the onset of the Cold War, amid claims that “godless communists” wanted to take over the world, he envisioned a “ruling class of Christ-committed men bound in a fellowship of the anointed, the chosen, key men in a voluntary dictatorship of the divine.”37 Though he would position the Family as, among other things, a Jesus youth movement, most of their dealings would be discreet. Today they lobby, recruit, and conduct private meetings and spiritual retreats in a red brick townhouse, C Street House, on Capitol Hill and in other buildings, including a gray colonial building in Arlington, called Ivanwald.

  Sharlet lived at Ivanwald among young recruits—“high priests in training”—following a daily regimen that would sound familiar to many cult members: “no swearing, no drinking, no sex, no self. Watch out for magazines and don’t waste time on newspapers and never watch TV. Eat meat, study the Gospels, play basketball: God loves a man who can sink a three-pointer.”38 He was told he was there “to learn how to rule the world.”

  Family member and Watergate felon Charles Colson called the Family “a veritable underground of Christ’s men all through the U.S. government.”39 Though secretive about their membership, the list is thought to include Jeff Sessions, Betsy DeVos, Senators Chuck Grassley, Pete Domenici, and John Ensign, along with Vice President Mike Pence. Not all members are Republican. The Family’s strategy is to cultivate people with money, power, or special skills by inviting them to their National Prayer Breakfasts—they have invited Muslims, Jews, foreign nationals, and even dictators of other countries, as well as Democrats. The Family thought Hillary Clinton might someday become president and began cultivating her years ago. She was reportedly an active participant in the Family (although not, apparently, a member) during her years in Washington, and described Doug Coe, the leader at that time, as “a genuinely loving spirit and mentor.”40

  Yet compassion does not seem to occupy a central place in the Family’s philosophy. One of Vereide’s most significant moves was to reimagine Jesus as a kind of strongman, one cast in the mold of authoritarian leaders like Adolf Hitler. “The bottom-line of Christ’s message wasn’t really about love or mercy or justice or forgiveness. It was about power,” said Sharlet.41 Though Vereide denounced Hitler, according to Sharlet “he admired fascism’s cultivation of elites, crucial to what he saw as a God-ordained coming ‘age of minority control.’ ”42 Doug Coe would later add Stalin, Pol Pot, and Mao Zedong to the list. “[Coe is] quick to say these are evil men, but they understood power.”43

  It’s not clear if the Family actively supported the authority-loving Trump, since they mostly operate behind the scenes. But in Mike Pence—who according to Sharlet was recruited into the Family by Charles Colson in 2009—they appear to have one of their own in the White House. Though Pence was brought up Catholic and Democratic, he underwent a conversion as a “born again” Christian in college. By the mid-1990s he would famously describe himself as “a Christian, a conservative, and a Republican, in that order.”

  As a member of Congress, he was known for his “unalloyed traditional conservatism,”44 but most of all for his faith. He famously does not drink or associate socially with women unless his wife is present. “His evangelical Christianity is now the driving force behind his political agenda, whether it is working to deny federal funds to Planned Parenthood or to make it legal for religious conservatives to refuse to serve gay couples,” write Jonathan Mahler and Dirk Johnson in The New York Times. “ ‘Pence doesn’t simply wear his faith on his sleeve, he wears the entire Jesus jersey,’ as Brian Howey, a political columnist in Indiana, once put it.”45

  The Family, intentionally or not, took a huge leap toward fulfilling their central mission of creating, in Vereide’s words, a “ruling class of Christ-committed men” when Pence took over as head of Trump’s transition team. By the time he was finished, Trump’s cabinet was filled with no fewer than nine evangelicals, including—in addition to Jeff Sessions—Rick Perry, Sonny Perdue (Agriculture), Ryan Zinke (Interior), Tom Price (Health and Human Services), Ben Carson (Housing and Urban Development), Elaine Chao (Transportation), and Betsy DeVos, who would soon begin pushing for charter schools and bringing prayer back into the classroom.

  Zinke and Price were forced to resign amid scandal. Trump also replaced secretary of state Rex Tillerson with conservative evangelical Mike Pompeo, who has cast Muslim-Christian relations as a holy war, and who in his previous post as director of the CIA made speeches loaded with explicitly religious language. Trump would replace Jeff Sessions with William Barr. Though not an evangelical, Barr has close links—as we shall soon see—to the secretive conservative Catholic order Opus Dei, which, like the Family, has a theocratic mission. About a month after assuming his Justice Department post in 2019, Barr would write a four-page summary of the Mueller report that, according to many, whitewashed and cherry-picked the Mueller findings.

  “What’s interesting about Trump is that he’s not really a believer, yet he’s put together the most fundamentalist Cabinet in U.S. history,” said Sharlet. “There never has been one like this. It’s the most Family-friendly.”46

  THE NEW APOSTOLIC REFORMA
TION

  On December 7, 2018, an unusual prayer was offered up in one of the grand ballrooms in the Trump International Hotel in Washington D.C. “In Jesus’ name, we declare the Deep State will not prevail!” said Jon Hamill, head of Lamplighter Ministries, as dozens of worshippers held their hands aloft, engaging in glossolalia, referred to as “speaking in tongues.” “We have governmental leaders throughout the Trump administration who love Jesus with all of their heart, and they are giving their all for this nation and for God’s dream for this nation.”47 Hamill described how he and a group of religious leaders had been invited by former Kansas Republican senator Sam Brownback, U.S. ambassador at large for international religious freedom and a Family member, into his office to pray for evangelical pastor Andrew Brunson, who was imprisoned by Turkey’s government. Brunson was later “miraculously” released.

  Prayer can be powerful, according to many in the movement known as the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR). A contemporary movement of networks of ministries—each of which is led by modern-day “prophets” or “apostles” such as Hamill and his wife, Jolene—the NAR is united in their belief that intercessory prayer can work miracles. NAR originated in Pentecostal and charismatic movements and has roots in the so-called discipling and shepherding movements, which claim to model themselves on first-century apostolic Christianity. Through robust networking, savvy use of computers, aggressive grassroots tactics, and a mastery of influence techniques right out of the cult playbook, the NAR has grown into a movement with tens of millions of followers in America and a reported 300 million internationally, many of whom have been highly indoctrinated—rendered highly dependent and obedient to their leadership.