The Cult of Trump

by Steven Hassan

  STORYTELLING

  Stories are the primary way we communicate with ourselves and others in our ongoing experience to make meaning of our lives. They are how we learn and how we teach. Engaging a person in a compelling narrative creates vicarious experiences that elicit powerful emotional responses, accessing memories and creating new perspectives.

  Stories can be told to help, heal, instruct, guide, inspire, create, and move people to actions that help them and their communities. But stories can be used to entrap, manipulate, and control. Scientology’s L. Ron Hubbard was a science fiction writer before he became a cult leader. It is no wonder that at the heart of Scientology lies a fantastic secret narrative, one that members spend many years and tens of thousands of dollars to finally learn. They are told that they will die if they discover this information before they are prepared for it. The story goes like this: 75 million years ago, a galactic dictator named Prince Xenu (or Xemu) wanted to solve the overpopulation problem plaguing the galaxy, so he sent millions of beings from seventy-six different planets to Teegeeack—now known as Earth. He forced the beings, or “thetans,” into volcanoes and then dropped hydrogen bombs on the volcanoes. According to Hubbard, everyone alive today is a mass of thousands of “clusters” of these “body thetans,” which influence our every thought and action. We are all possessed and controlled by demons, according to Hubbard. Only Scientology can rid us of these invisible body thetans. Once freed—which usually requires six extremely expensive levels of “processing”—Scientologists are told they will have super powers, including complete control over matter, energy, space, and time. (Although Hubbard’s courses have been available since 1967, no Scientologist was able to claim the million-dollar prize offered, until 2016, by famous magician James Randi to anyone able to demonstrate supernatural powers.)

  White nationalist storytelling describes a global conspiracy of Jewish bankers, Muslims, and terrorists who want to destroy the white race. They create vivid narratives portraying Hitler as a great savior and hero who tried to restore the white race to its rightful dominant place. They rouse people who have felt economically or culturally deprived by blaming and even attacking the “other”—Jews, Blacks, Hispanics,

  Muslims—for taking what is rightfully theirs. It’s a classic villain-

  versus-hero narrative pattern. The meme #WhiteGenocide is a kind of shorthand for the story, one that Trump has retweeted many times.22

  Trump is not a brilliant storyteller—he can be clumsy, and lacking in subtlety. But in his campaign slogan—Make America Great Again—he had a simple and brilliant story, one that he told over and over again, in rally after rally. According to author and filmmaker Randy Olson, it won him the presidency: “How could this country elect a reality TV show host as its President? Trump had a story. Hillary had none. ‘America was once great. America is no longer great. I will make America great again.’ ”23 Now that he is president, Trump tells an updated version—Keep America Great. But the message is similar: “I have made American great again, but it can all come crashing down if the liberal Democrats are elected into office.”

  One might say that Donald Trump, the successful businessman, is himself a story crafted by Tony Schwartz, his ghostwriter on The Art of the Deal—one that was furthered through the propaganda efforts of Mark Burnett for fourteen seasons on American reality television. People who have worked on The Apprentice have talked about how important the editing process was to crafting a story that reinforced the image of Trump’s greatness. Fans of The Apprentice would be influenced hour by hour, week after week, and year after year to think of him as a great business leader. It may not have been a leap to think of him as president.

  MODELING

  Young people look to model themselves after influential people—a parent or family relative, a scientist or inventor, an athlete or celebrity, historical figure, a president. It’s an important aspect of identity formation. Trump had several role models—his father, and his military academy instructor, Colonel Theodore Dobias. Norman Vincent Peale was also influential, as was Roy Cohn. Looking for role models doesn’t end with childhood—adults often emulate people they respect and may try to embody certain of their characteristics. The whole self-help movement is based on the premise that by following the advice and example set by successful people, we can improve our lives.

  One of the key techniques of NLP is to create internal mental models of success. Often that involves finding a “true” role model of success—an actual person. The danger comes when our role models turn out to be unethical, unscrupulous people, who promise one thing and deliver another and who seek followers for their own gain. Cults are built on a foundation of role-modeling—followers model themselves in the image of false prophets, gurus, or messiahs. It seems ludicrous to me today that I once tried to be like Sun Myung Moon—a paunchy, middle-aged Korean arms dealer who lied, humiliated followers, had multiple extramarital affairs, and foisted his delusions of grandeur on his hundreds of thousands of followers.

  This is often the case in religious cults. While most Bible cults claim to be following Jesus, their leaders are often promoted as role models for followers—even when they ignore the words and practices taught by Jesus Christ. Jesus minimized the importance of money and wealth and yet so-called prosperity preachers tell their followers that their faith will be rewarded by material riches. Often these preachers live luxurious lifestyles while their followers get poorer and poorer. Jesus taught his followers to “turn the other cheek,” and yet Trump, who is held up by many of these groups as a man of god, preaches revenge.

  To prepare herself for her role on The Apprentice, Omarosa Manigault Newman read everything she could about Trump. She wanted to learn all she could to impress him, but modeling herself after him may have made her more susceptible to his influence. In The Art of the Deal, Trump promoted himself as a kind of business role model. Now he touts himself as a kind of political savior who will help rescue America. We saw earlier how Florida governor Ron DeSantis said he can’t think of a better role model for his own children than Trump.

  RAPPORT AND TRUST-BUILDING TECHNIQUES: MIRRORING, MATCHING, PACING, AND LEADING

  Mirroring is a relatively easy and common persuasive technique: copy the other person’s body language, speech patterns, and mannerisms. Make that person feel comfortable with you and they will let down their guard. When I was being trained in NLP, we were taught to mirror someone’s body posture but not too overtly; otherwise it could have the opposite effect. Arms folded? Fold yours, but not too obviously. Legs crossed, cross yours. We were even trained to match people’s breathing rates. These behaviors occur quite naturally with those you feel close to. NLP practitioners are taught to speed up the get-to-know-you process by mirroring and matching someone’s speech patterns, accents, words, mannerisms, and beliefs.

  Trump has his own style, to be sure, and he exploits it to full effect—essentially announcing that “I am not like the rest of Washington.” He is always gesturing, striking power poses, and making faces to press his points. He plays to his audience’s expectation that he is not like other politicians—an expectation that he helped to cultivate in the first place. At the same time, he is extremely responsive to his audiences, in some ways encouraging them to match him in emotion and intensity. He bobs his head vigorously when he is listening, which is a kind of positive reinforcing behavior. Perhaps most of all, he mirrors people’s expectations that he be an authority figure—with his dominance stance, his fierce handshake, his strutting, and on one memorable occasion, his almost threatening posturing. This was during a 2016 debate with Hillary Clinton, when he stood—or rather loomed—directly behind her while she was speaking. The effect for many viewers was breathtaking and scary.

  Trump has also used the mirroring technique on the international stage. In January 2018, as North Korea was ramping up its nuclear program and threatening to unleash a missile on the United States, Trump threatened back verbally, saying that he could
destroy Kim and his country with “fire and fury.” Kim said he has a nuclear button on his desk. Trump told Kim that his button was bigger than Kim’s button, and that his nuclear arsenal actually worked.

  He switched tactics at a later point and flattered Kim and, some would say, “wooed” him into talks. Obviously, Kim was the one with the most to gain by a meeting with Trump—the leader of a small pariah nation meeting with an American president. Trump walked away from the meeting with no deal, though he did receive international media attention. Diplomats said it was a squandered diplomatic opportunity. But it gave Trump temporary bragging rights: he could say he had averted a nuclear showdown. Never mind that his earlier rhetoric—which included giving Kim his own nickname, Rocket Man—actually helped create the crisis in the first place. Braggadocio aside, the method that Trump used to engage the Korean dictator was effective. Narcissistic cult leaders can often be manipulated by flattery. It takes one to know one.

  CONFUSION TECHNIQUES

  Among the most effective persuasion techniques are those designed to create confusion. Our conscious minds can only attend to a limited amount of information at any moment—they can get overwhelmed very easily. When there is incongruity between information and how it is delivered—for example, someone telling you bad news while smiling—the situation is exacerbated. People often go into a mild trance to resolve the conflict. In that trance state, they are more susceptible to being programmed with false beliefs, phobias, and conspiracy theories. Confidently lying while your facial and body language says you are telling the truth is an especially effective confusion technique. Con artists and pathological liars know that they need to occasionally say some true things, which can reassure people but also confuse them. What is the truth?

  This is one of Trump’s favorite techniques—he tells lies about a lot of things, some of them quite extreme. It turns out “the big lie” is an effective persuasion technique, one used often by Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels. Goebbels found that the bigger the lie, the more it is likely to be believed—people think, “This is such a huge and outrageous claim, it must be true.” Repeating the big lie—as Trump did with his claims that Obama wasn’t born in the United States or that he is a Muslim—reinforces the validity of the falsehood that a person has just accepted. Trump does this all the time.

  Once a frame is set that the person lies a lot to make a point, there is usually less confusion. Many Trump followers excuse his behavior by saying he is prone to exaggeration but is not a liar, or that all politicians lie. Or that he lies but they support and love him anyway.24 Such a dizzying amount of false and contradictory information, with the occasional kernel of truth, overloads and overwhelms critical thinking. Making matters worse is when a person gaslights—utters a lie and then says they never said it, as Trump did when he denied that he ever claimed that Mexico would pay for the Wall.

  PATTERN INTERRUPTION

  A pattern interruption occurs when there is a violation of a norm or social script. Cursing and swearing is something that some Scientologists like to do to throw people off guard, especially when asked critical questions about their group.25 Trump does this frequently—his presidency is defined by pattern interruptions. While most politicians show some modicum of political decorum, Trump does the opposite—he is bold and disruptive. He uses politically incorrect words and actions to reaffirm in his followers that he is not a politician. He is an outsider. He lies, as we have abundantly seen, and distracts. His tweets disrupt the normal mode of political communication and can come at any hour of the day or night (and Trump sleeps only a few hours). His followers love him for it but it also creates a disconnect for those who expect a president to be honest, trustworthy, and respectful. His actions call into question not just the executive branch but the whole structure of government.

  Another pattern interrupt Trump has used is the handshake—and in hypnosis, there is a technique known as a handshake induction. The norm is to reach out your hand, grasp the other person’s—not too tightly or loosely—and shake and release. Trump would famously not let go, even pulling the other person toward him, inducing a moment of confusion and disorientation, demonstrating that he is in control—until Portuguese president Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa turned the tables on him as he was greeted by Trump at the White House. De Sousa yanked Trump’s outstretched arm before Trump could assert his dominance.26

  Trump’s self-avowed grabbing of women’s genitals—if true—could be considered another pattern interruption technique. Most women would consider such behavior invasive and highly disturbing and go into an immediate confusion state—especially if Trump were to make eye contact, smile, and say something like “You are so beautiful. I want to get to know you.” His celebrity, power, and money would add to the confusion. Of course, if a woman had been abused previously or was taught about this abusive behavior, they might get angry, move away—and, ideally, report the incident.

  DOUBLE BINDS

  As we have seen earlier, a double bind forces a person to do what the controller wants while giving an illusion of choice. I once heard a tape of now-deceased cult leader Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh (known now as Osho) hypnotically say, “For those people who are having doubts about what I am telling you, you should know that I am the one putting those doubts inside your mind so that you will see the truth, that I am the true teacher and come back to me.” Whether the person believes or doubts the leader, they are usually left confused and vulnerable—unless they understand what a double bind is.

  Sometimes a double bind can be used for a person’s benefit. For example, the psychiatrist Milton Erickson is quoted as having said to a client, “I think your unconscious mind knows more about this than your conscious mind does, and if your unconscious mind knows more about this than your conscious mind does, then you probably know more about this than you think you do.” Either way, the person is smarter than they believed!

  Trump uses double binds to control situations to his own advantage. Charlie Houpert, founder of Charisma on Command and a YouTube personality, cites several examples of Trump using double binds during the Republican primary debates. In one of the debates, Trump taunted Jeb Bush about having low energy, saying, “I know you’re trying to build up your energy, Jeb, but it’s not working.” As Houpert astutely observed, “With this, Jeb Bush has two options: either up his energy level or bring it back down. If he chooses to go after Trump full-throttle, he’ll look defensive and [like he’s] putting Trump in the control seat. If he tries to diffuse it, he perpetuates [Trump’s] taunt.”27 It’s a catch-22. Trump 1, Jeb, 0.

  PROJECTION

  Projection is one of the most powerful techniques used in social psychology. It occurs when a person projects their own behaviors, traits, or beliefs onto other people. For example, when confronted, a cheating husband might turn around and blame his wife, saying it was she who wanted to cheat, has cheated, or is somehow responsible for him cheating. Jim Jones ordered his followers to drink poisoned fruit punch but said that enemies of the group were coming to kill them. I have been the recipient of a fair amount of cult projection. Cults accuse me and other countercult activists of trying to gain fame and money, when in fact that is exactly what the cult leader is doing.

  Trump is a master of projection. His twisted use of the “birther” lie is one example. For years he claimed that President Obama was not born in the United States, earning a lot of publicity in the process. When the birth certificate was produced, he accused Senator Hillary Clinton of spreading the rumor. In September 2015, he tweeted, “The birther movement was started by Hillary Clinton in 2008. She was all in!”28 Why would he do this? Projection is a powerful psychological defense mechanism, one that is a hallmark of malignant narcissism. But it is also an incredibly powerful technique of psychological manipulation.

  Projection is Trump’s consistent response to criticism.29 30 When he was accused of being misogynistic, he immediately defended himself, claiming no one respects women more than him. He the
n deflected the accusation, accusing Bill Clinton of abusing women. “There’s never been anybody in the history of politics in this nation that’s been so abusive to women. So you can say any way you want to say it, but Bill Clinton was abusive to women. Hillary Clinton attacked those same women and attacked them viciously,” Trump said.

  Often Trump’s projections will entail an elaborate pattern of deflection. When he was accused of criticizing the Gold Star couple, Kihzr and Ghazala Kahn, he actually tried to blame the death of their son on Hillary Clinton. “Captain Khan is an American hero, and if I were president at that time, he would be alive today, because unlike her, who voted for the war without knowing what she was doing, I would not have had our people in Iraq. Iraq was a disaster. So he would have been alive today.”31 From a general psychological perspective, people with undeveloped personalities, such as occurs in narcissistic personality disorder, are unable to tolerate criticism; they need to be viewed as brilliant and wonderful, and will go to great lengths to bury or project the criticism and blame onto someone else.

  Social influence expert Anthony Pratkanis demonstrated in his 2000 study, “Projection as an Interpersonal Influence Tactic: The Effects of the Pot Calling the Kettle Black,” that projection is a surprisingly effective persuasion tool. In the first experiment, Pratkanis was able to verify the most obvious case: that projection exonerates the accuser at the expense of the accused. Later experiments showed that projection continued to be an effective technique even when suspicions were raised about the projectionist. Participants in the experiment still saw the “accused” as guilty. “The vast majority of participants thought that projection would not work and would boomerang to increase the perceived guilt of the accuser,” writes Pratkanis. Even more surprising, being skeptical of projection as a persuasion technique had little effect on how well the technique worked and was in fact negatively correlated.