The Cult of Trump Quotes

“Certitude is not evidence of truth. Nor does repetition make it true. If anything, repetition should make you suspicious. Truth always stands up to scrutiny on its merits.”
― Steven Hassan PhD, The Cult of Trump: A Leading Cult Expert Explains How the President Uses Mind Control

“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.”
― Steven Hassan, The Cult of Trump: A Leading Cult Expert Explains How the President Uses Mind Control

“[Cult] members learn a new vocabulary that is designed to constrict their thinking into absolute, black-and-white, thought-stopping clichés that conform to group ideology. (“Lock her up” and “Build the Wall” are Trumpian examples. Even his put-downs and nicknames—Crooked Hillary, Pocahontas for Elizabeth Warren—function to block other thoughts. Terms like “deep state” and “globalist” also act as triggers. They rouse emotion and direct attention.)”
― Steven Hassan, The Cult of Trump: A Leading Cult Expert Explains How the President Uses Mind Control

“Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts. —Daniel”
― Steven Hassan, The Cult of Trump: A Leading Cult Expert Explains How the President Uses Mind Control

“We also looked at confirmation bias—how our minds filter and select information that confirms our own point of view, and dismiss information that does not fit in or negates it. And confirmation bias is certainly not limited to cults. We basically see and hear what we want to, whether we realize it or not, and rationalize away what does not fit our preconceptions and predictions. We find it hard to accept or agree with even well-argued or supported views when they are expressed by a member of the other side. We speak to—and find affirmation from—those of our own political persuasion, but the level of passion is so high that often we do not, or cannot, talk to those across the divide.”
― Steven Hassan, The Cult of Trump: A Leading Cult Expert Explains How the President Uses Mind Control

“The Republican party is almost like a religious cult surrounding an organized crime family.”
― Steven Hassan, The Cult of Trump: A Leading Cult Expert Explains How the President Uses Mind Control

“In my practice, I’ve helped to creatively engineer all kinds of physical separations—bringing a cult member home for a holiday, family celebration, or even a funeral. It might seem manipulative, but it is a critical first step to helping a person free themselves from the clutches of a cult—one that has become increasingly difficult with 24/7 access to the internet through smartphones. In the case of Trump, there are also the continual tweets and right-wing and Christian right programming through radio and television. The relentless programming streaming from both ends of the political spectrum is pushing supporters ever deeper into Trump country.
This brings me to an important point and a key aspect of my approach. By attacking or belittling Trump’s followers, political opponents and traditional media may be helping Trump to maintain his influence over his base. In my experience, telling a person that they are brainwashed, that they are in a cult, or that they are following a false god, is doomed to fail. It puts them immediately on the defensive, confirms you are a threat, possibly an enemy, and reinforces their indoctrination. It closes their mind to other perspectives. I’ve seen this happen over and over again. It happened to me when I was in the Moon group. It immediately triggers a person’s mind control programming—including thought stopping and us-versus-them thinking, with you being the “them.”
― Steven Hassan PhD, The Cult of Trump: A Leading Cult Expert Explains How the President Uses Mind Control

“In the Moonies, I was taught to suppress negative thoughts by using a technique called thought stopping. I repeated the phrase “Crush Satan” or “True Parents” (the term used to describe Moon and his wife, Hak Ja Han) whenever any doubt arose in my mind. Another way to control thoughts is through the use of loaded language, which, as Lifton pointed out, is purposely designed to invoke an emotional response. When I look at the list of thought-controlling techniques—reducing complex thoughts into clichés and platitudinous buzz words; forbidding critical questions about the leader, doctrine, or policy; labeling alternative belief systems as illegitimate or evil—it is astounding how many Trump exploits. As I have mentioned, one of the most effective techniques in the thought control arsenal is hypnosis. Scott Adams, the creator of the cartoon Dilbert, described Trump, with his oversimplifications, repetitions, insinuating tone of voice, and use of vivid imagery, as a Master Wizard in the art of hypnosis and persuasion.”
― Steven Hassan, The Cult of Trump: A Leading Cult Expert Explains How the President Uses Mind Control

“Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts. —Daniel Patrick Moynihan”
― Steven Hassan, The Cult of Trump: A Leading Cult Expert Explains How the President Uses Mind Control

“As New York Times columnist Charles Blow observed, “Trump’s magical mixture is to make being afraid feel like fun. His rallies are a hybrid of concert revelry and combat prep. Trump tells his followers about all the things of which they should be afraid, or shouldn’t trust or should hate, and then positions himself as the greatest defense against those things. His supporters roar their approval at their white knight.”
― Steven Hassan, The Cult of Trump: A Leading Cult Expert Explains How the President Uses Mind Control

“Nobody will be tougher on ISIS than me. Nobody,” he said during his campaign announcement speech on June 16, 2015. “There’s nobody bigger or better at the military than I am,” he stated a few days later. The following month came this memorably hypnotic line, one that echoes Moon’s language: “I know more about offense and defense than [the generals] will ever understand, believe me. Believe me. Than they will ever understand. Than they will ever understand.” It’s a classic example of Trump’s tried-and-true habit of lulling his audience through repetition. A few months later came another infamous claim: “I know more about ISIS [the Islamic State militant group] than the generals do. Believe me.”
― Steven Hassan, The Cult of Trump: A Leading Cult Expert Explains How the President Uses Mind Control

“At a 1937 conference of the Communist Party in the Soviet Union, Stalin’s people applauded him for eleven consecutive minutes, fearing that the first to stop would be killed or sent to prison. Finally, one man stopped, the director of a paper factory. “To a man, everyone else stopped dead and sat down,” writes Nobel Prize winner Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in The Gulag Archipelago. That same night the director of the paper factory was arrested and sent to prison for ten years.”
― Steven Hassan, The Cult of Trump: A Leading Cult Expert Explains How the President Uses Mind Control

“At the time, casting Trump as host was seen as a huge gamble. He had been labeled a “D-lister”—someone who lost all his money, a clownlike figure who couldn’t be taken seriously. Supervising editor of The Apprentice Jonathon Braun told the New Yorker, “We knew Trump was a fake… but we made him out to be the most important person in the world, making the court jester the king.”
― Steven Hassan, The Cult of Trump: A Leading Cult Expert Explains How the President Uses Mind Control

“Another way to control thoughts is through the use of loaded language, which, as Lifton pointed out, is purposely designed to invoke an emotional response. When I look at the list of thought-controlling techniques—reducing complex thoughts into clichés and platitudinous buzz words; forbidding critical questions about the leader, doctrine, or policy; labeling alternative belief systems as illegitimate or evil—it is astounding how many Trump exploits.”
― Steven Hassan, The Cult of Trump: A Leading Cult Expert Explains How the President Uses Mind Control

“Many political candidates, in their speeches and negative ads, create an image of dire consequences if their opponent wins. If you vote for the other candidate, you and the country will suffer—jobs will be lost, crime will rise, family values will erode, and your very freedoms will be stripped away.”
― Steven Hassan, The Cult of Trump: A Leading Cult Expert Explains How the President Uses Mind Control

“It turns out the NAR—with its millions of adherents—has become one of Trump’s biggest supporters. They are told, and many believe, that Trump was picked by God to lead the nation. They are Trump’s true believers. They view themselves as “spiritual warriors” who think they are helping Trump carry out his God-given mission.”
― Steven Hassan, The Cult of Trump: A Leading Cult Expert Explains How the President Uses Mind Control

“People like to think they are rational and in control, but the lessons of history and social psychology demonstrate, time and again, that simply isn’t so. We go about our days, and our lives, using unconscious mental models. When cult leaders manipulate those models, in subtle and overt ways, we can be persuaded to believe and do things we might never have considered without such systematic psychological influence.”
― Steven Hassan, The Cult of Trump: A Leading Cult Expert Explains How the President Uses Mind Control

“Group ideology is privileged far above a member’s experience, conscience, and integrity. If a member doubts or has critical thoughts about those beliefs, it is due to their own shortcomings.”
― Steven Hassan, The Cult of Trump: A Leading Cult Expert Explains How the President Uses Mind Control

“Inspiring fear of real or imagined threats override’s people’s sense of agency. It makes them susceptible to a confident authority figure who promises to keep them safe, and can make them more compliant and obedient.”
― Steven Hassan, The Cult of Trump: A Leading Cult Expert Explains How the President Uses Mind Control

“Narcissists have difficulty handling even the most constructive criticism and may feel shame and humiliation when criticized or rejected.”
― Steven Hassan, The Cult of Trump: A Leading Cult Expert Explains How the President Uses Mind Control

“There’s a way in which he takes a kind of manic glee in causing harm and pain and humiliation to other people.”
― Steven Hassan, The Cult of Trump: A Leading Cult Expert Explains How the President Uses Mind Control

“the purpose “is to harass and discourage rather than win. The law can be used very easily to harass, and enough harassment on somebody who is simply on the thin edge anyway, well knowing that he is not authorized, will generally be sufficient to cause professional decease. If possible, of course, ruin him utterly.”
― Steven Hassan, The Cult of Trump: A Leading Cult Expert Explains How the President Uses Mind Control

“How could it be otherwise when the president equates power with fear? Mnuchin, Acosta, and the others had already seen, as had the world, what happens to those who “betray” Trump—the shunning, bullying, baiting, and outright expulsion.”
― Steven Hassan, The Cult of Trump: A Leading Cult Expert Explains How the President Uses Mind Control