Hubbard believed he deserved a Nobel Prize for his discovery of the “Purification Rundown,” a program that supposedly purged the body of drug and radiation residues. “While feeling enormous entitlement for accolades regarding his own projects, he haughtily and arrogantly demeaned perceived enemies, especially psychiatrists, for their opposition,” write Jodi M. Lane and Stephen Kent about Hubbard’s malignant narcissism.26
Narcissists feel they are above the law. Regulations meant for the rest of us do not apply. As special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into possible collusion between the Russian government and the Trump campaign loomed over the administration, Trump insisted that he could pardon himself—not that he would need to. On June 4, 2018, he tweeted, “As has been stated by numerous legal scholars, I have the absolute right to PARDON myself, but why would I do that when I have done nothing wrong?”
A sense of entitlement can lead to all kinds of financial infractions. Moon conspired to evade paying his taxes and was sentenced to prison for eighteen months.27 Trump has bilked hundreds of people—underpaying or failing to pay them. He has been involved in more than 3,500 lawsuits during the last thirty years, many from everyday Americans who have accused Trump and his businesses for nonpayment. They include employees of his resorts and clubs, contractors, and real estate agents.28 Then there is the question of Trump’s taxes. Ignoring a forty-year protocol, Trump the presidential candidate refused to release his tax returns—and got away with it.
As is often the case with narcissists, Trump surrounds himself with successful people but can quickly shift from idealizing them to denouncing them. When Trump picked Rex Tillerson to be his first secretary of state, the latter seemed camera-ready for the role. He had been the chairman and CEO of Exxon Mobil and was a heavyweight in the oil industry. It turns out Tillerson’s traditional persona was like water to Trump’s oil. The relationship got off to a rocky start over disagreements concerning Russia, North Korea, and Israel but deteriorated rapidly when it was rumored that Tillerson had called Trump “a moron.” Retribution was swift. Trump fired him via the communication method he likes best—tweet.
LACK OF EMPATHY
Narcissists exhibit a defining lack of empathy—they are unable to put themselves in someone else’s shoes and imagine what they might be feeling. They may be good at reading people, and may even appear charming, but in actuality they care little for other people’s pain or suffering. They use them to their own advantage, often with devastating consequences.
In 2017, after Hurricane Maria wreaked havoc on Puerto Rico, Trump challenged the mayor of San Juan, Carmen Yulin Cruz, who had criticized Trump’s lack of help. Trump denied that the storm was a real catastrophe—all the while taking personal credit for the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s response—questioned the death toll, and minimized aid to the island, which years later, is still reeling.
More recently, he pumped up the immigration crisis at the border between the United States and Mexico to justify the need for building a wall—and created a real humanitarian crisis by separating children from their parents. He minimized the plight of the 800,000 government employees who struggled to make ends meet during the thirty-five-day government shutdown. He claimed—without any evidence—that they would support him if the shutdown dragged on for months or even years, using their plight for his greater glory. He appeared to be unconcerned about the effect that the shutdown was having on all Americans—food and drug inspections were cut, raising alarms about safety; security at airports and borders was compromised, risking national security; and renters, homeowners, and farmers alike, who depend on federal housing subsidies and aid, were left short, some possibly facing eviction.29
During the campaign, he put politics far above compassion in his treatment of the Gold Star couple Khizr and Ghazala Khan, who lost their army captain son in combat, and who addressed the 2016 Democratic National Convention. Khizr Khan memorably offered his pocket copy of the Constitution to Trump, who responded by criticizing his wife, Ghazala, for quietly standing by as he spoke, suggesting it was her religion that was silencing her. And then there was his belittling treatment of Christine Blasey Ford, who accused Trump’s Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault when they were teenagers. Trump actually turned her testimony—and her ordeal—into a joke, mimicking her at a Mississippi rally, actions that her attorney Michael Browich described as “vicious, vile, and soulless.”30 Trump has shamed, bullied, and belittled hundreds of people since taking office, notably his once-devoted follower, former attorney general Jeff Sessions, whom he called “mentally retarded” and “a dumb Southerner.”
ENVY
Envy is a driving force for narcissists and probably arises from their fundamental feelings of low self-esteem. But it can express itself differently depending on the situation. L. Ron Hubbard was jealous of one of his own members, the South African Scientologist John McMaster, who was dubbed the “World’s First Clear,” having attained the highest state of consciousness, one that Scientologists pay lots of money to achieve.31 Hubbard, in his book Dianetics, claimed that people who are Clear have superior abilities. Apparently, Hubbard did not actually possess these himself and sought to make McMaster’s life miserable. David Koresh yearned to be a rock musician and was frustrated and envious of others who were successful.
Though Trump tries to appear self-confident, he does slip once in a while and reveal the current of jealousy that runs beneath the surface. In June 2018, after meeting with Kim Jong-un in Singapore, Trump reflected: “He’s the head of a country, and I mean he’s the strong head. Don’t let anyone think anything different. He speaks and his people sit up at attention. I want my people to do the same.”32 He later claimed that he was kidding, but he has made no bones about his admiration for authoritarian leaders, especially Putin, who have more control over their people than he does. He also appeared to be extremely impressed, if not envious, of the military display put on by French president Emmanuel Macron during Trump’s visit to Paris—and was even planning his own military parade, but canceled it, blaming local Washington, D.C., officials for inflating the cost.
Closer to home, some have commented that despite Trump’s outsider image, he has, as NBC’s Chuck Todd coined on his MSNBC daily show, “elite envy” because he “never was accepted by the upper crust of New York society… . For a guy who claims, you know, he’s just a ‘regular guy,’ ‘just folks,’ he sure does think a lot about the elite.”33
ANTISOCIAL BEHAVIOR
Until now, we have been discussing pathological narcissism. This form of narcissism is described as malignant when it is joined with other pathological behaviors—antisocial behavior, sadism, and paranoia. Antisocial behavior may be defined as an ingrained disregard, and even contempt, for morals, social norms, and the rights and feelings of others. This can lead malignant narcissists to persistently lie and to steal and mismanage their own and others’ money. It also leads them to manipulate others for their own personal gain, often through fear and intimidation.34 While pathological narcissists may lie and manipulate others, malignant narcissists elevate this to an art form.
LYING
Deception is the lifeblood of a destructive cult. Members are recruited and indoctrinated through lies and trickery. Lying has other intrinsic benefits for cult leaders—it creates confusion, which disrupts people’s stable mental framework and makes them more susceptible to the indoctrination process. Cult leaders use a variety of confusion techniques but a major one is delivering a dizzying amount of information, much of it contradictory and false, so that it overloads and overwhelms critical thinking. When overloaded and confused, people begin to doubt their ability to distinguish truth from lies, right from wrong. Fundamentally, their sense of identity is left uncertain, giving the cult leader an opportunity to inculcate a new set of beliefs, feelings, and behaviors. A confused person can be easily manipulated and controlled. People who confront leadership with contradictory information, regardles
s of it being factual, are punished or even banished for speaking the truth.
Cult leaders lie about everything from the state of the world to the size and devotion of their following. Mostly they lie about themselves in order to bolster their image. Moon lied about not having sex with his female disciples. He lied when he said he was a hero while in a North Korean prison camp. Moon lied about his taxes and was convicted and sent to the federal prison in Danbury, Connecticut. Hubbard lied about his military service. He claimed that he was highly decorated and that he was left partially blind and lame from injuries sustained during combat. In fact, his navy career ended far more ignominiously. After he conducted an impromptu ammunitions practice, Hubbard was brought before a military tribunal, who judged him unqualified for command. He was dismissed from his command and relocated to a larger vessel, where he could be properly supervised.
Trump has also lied about his military service, claiming he was deferred because of a bone spur. A doctor provided the false diagnosis as a favor to Trump’s father, Fred.35 When it comes to lies, Trump seems almost peerless. He has projected his own disregard for the truth onto the outside world, claiming it to be filled with fake news, liberal propaganda, and phonies. It happened during his candidacy and it started immediately with his inauguration. Trump lied not just about the size of the crowd but also about the weather. He claimed it was great, though the National Weather Service said it was actually raining. And he repeated his claim over and over, possibly leading some to question their own observations.
It only got worse. According to The Washington Post, Trump told roughly 2000 lies in 2017, about five and a half lies a day. By March 2019, he had racked up more than 10,000 false statements. According to The Atlantic, Trump is the “most fact-checked president.”36 But not everyone goes to the trouble of fact-checking Trump. People want to seek congruency—to see a reality that makes sense. When someone with presidential authority makes a false claim—and states it over and over—people can become disoriented, especially if they are predisposed to trust him and especially if they are a supporter.
The bigger the lie, the greater the disorientation. Ultimately a person can begin to question their own perception of reality, a phenomenon known as gaslighting. “The ultimate power of the gaslighter is to make it impossible for his targets to imagine a reality different from the one he imposes,” writes Paul Rosenberg.37 This power move got its name from the 1938 play Gaslight, later made into a movie, in which a husband conducts psychological warfare against his wife to the point that she begins to question her sanity. The goal is to undermine a person’s judgment and increase their reliance on the gaslighter. Trump and his administration are particularly good at this. Speaking to a veterans’ group in July 2018, Trump told the crowd, “Just remember—what you are seeing and what you are reading is not what’s happening.” In August 2018, Rudy Giuliani went on Meet the Press to argue the case that Trump should not testify in Mueller’s special investigation. “When you tell me that he should testify because he’s going to tell the truth and he shouldn’t worry, well, that’s so silly because it’s somebody’s version of the truth. Not the truth,” Giuliani said. “Truth isn’t truth.” He later tried to clarify, but his comments—like Kellyanne Conway’s use of the term “alternative facts” to defend demonstrable falsehoods—are not easily forgotten.
“A lie once told remains a lie, but a lie told a thousand times becomes the truth,” the infamous Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels memorably claimed. Lies used to cost politicians their careers but are now a common tactic for winning elections. In Trump’s world, they are standard operating procedure. When lies are repeated, they have the effect of shutting down critical thinking—people turn a blind eye to the lie and to the truth. When once respected and trusted sources of news are called fake or the enemy of the people, people are put into a double bind. They are discouraged from trying to reality check—they might even feel it is a betrayal of their allegiance to Trump to try to do so.
Trump’s lies appear to have pushed the same thought stopping buttons used by cult leaders—shutting down critical thinking; employing us versus them thinking; and using emotional manipulation to gain sympathy for the leader while at the same time drumming up animosity toward the media.
INTERPERSONALLY EXPLOITATIVE
Malignant narcissists exploit people for personal benefit, often for financial gain. Cult leaders are notorious for making money off their followers. Moon sent legions of members out on “mobile fund-raising teams”—basically selling flowers and candy for long hours, in terrible weather, and often in dangerous neighborhoods. They were told to lie to the public, to say the money was for Christian youth programs or drug rehab centers. Multilevel marketing groups sell vitamins, supplements, water, and other products, as well as lectures, courses, and retreats of dubious value, all in an effort to raise funds.
As we have discussed, Trump the businessman would hire contractors and small businesses and cheat them out of a fair wage, presumably without guilt since he did it over and over again. Trump’s for-profit university was sued and eventually shuttered for its deceptive practices and aggressive methods that scammed would-be students into paying tens of thousands of dollars, sometimes giving up their life savings.
Trump’s “charitable” organization, the Donald J. Trump Foundation, is currently under investigation for using funds illegally. Trump allegedly hired someone to place a high bid on a portrait of Trump at a fund-raiser at his Mar-a-Lago Club in Florida, presumably to inflate its worth in the public’s eye, and then bought the painting back, using funds from his charitable foundation.38 The painting was reportedly shipped to one of his golf clubs in Westchester County, New York.
To make his case for a wall at the southern border, President Trump asked relatives of victims killed by illegal immigrants to tell their stories, a move that was typically political but also clearly exploitative. He was less interested in their welfare and more in getting what he wanted—a wall.
Trump family-associated businesses continue to attract legal attention. As of October 2018, three Trump-associated companies—ACN, a multilevel telemarketing company; the Trump Network, a company that sold health products; and the Trump Institute, a traveling real estate lecture series—were targets of lawsuits. One of the complaints alleges that Trump and his children received millions of dollars in secret payments and “were aware that the vast majority of consumers would lose whatever money they invested.”39
SADISM
For malignant narcissists, sadism manifests as a conscious ideology of aggressive self-affirmation, one that also serves as a kind of perverse defense mechanism. According to one study, “Individuals with malignant narcissism have a tendency to destroy, symbolically castrate, and dehumanize others. Their rage is fueled by the desire for revenge.”40 Narcissists are defined by their need for praise but their desire to not be insulted or criticized may be even greater. Such attacks on their sense of self are so threatening that they cannot be tolerated—malignant narcissists will lash out aggressively and sadistically at anyone and everyone who has wronged them.
Cult leaders use an arsenal of indoctrination techniques to ensure complete devotion and will reserve some of their harshest weapons—shunning, shaming, expulsion, and even physical punishment—for those who criticize or disobey them.
Trump has repeatedly proved that he is incapable of taking the high ground—he always hits back at anyone over any perceived wrongs. In his book Think Big: Make It Happen in Business and Life, Trump has a whole chapter devoted to revenge. In 2011, at the National Achievers Congress, he said, “Get even with people. If they screw you, screw them back 10 times as hard. I really believe it.”41 For him, it is a matter of principle. Melania Trump has described how, when provoked, he “will punch back ten times harder”—a lesson he learned from his father, Fred. According to psychologist John Gartner, Trump has a cruel streak a mile wide. “You see it in everything he does, from the separating of the children at the
border to how Trump tortures anyone who doesn’t give him what he wants. There’s a way in which he takes a kind of manic glee in causing harm and pain and humiliation to other people.”42
When President Trump first nominated former senator Jeff Sessions for attorney general in November 2016, he showered him with compliments: “A world-class legal mind and considered a truly great Attorney General and U.S. Attorney in the state of Alabama. Jeff is greatly admired by legal scholars and virtually everyone who knows him.”43 Sessions, one of Trump’s earliest and most ardent supporters, was a darling of Trump—until he wasn’t. Unhappy that Sessions recused himself from the special counsel investigation, Trump became relentless in the public stoning of Sessions, angrily tweeting jibes such as “Will Bruce Ohr, whose family received big money for helping to create the phony, dirty and discredited dossier, ever be fired from the Jeff Sessions ‘Justice’ Department? A total joke!” Then there was James Comey. He was in Los Angeles visiting a local FBI office when he saw a ticker on the TV screen that read “Comey Resigns.” He thought it was a prank. “I thought it was a scam by someone on my staff. So I turned to them and I said, ‘Someone put a lot of work into that.’ And then I continued talking.”44 After firing deputy FBI director Andrew McCabe two days before he was to receive his pension after twenty-one years at the bureau, Trump tweeted that it was “a great day for the hard-working men and women of the FBI—a great day for Democracy.”45
The Cult of Trump Page 7
