Trump’s new MAGA cult videos are part of a much larger propaganda operation

President Donald J. Trump shakes hands and poses for photos with supporters Thursday, Oct. 3, 2019, upon his arrival to Ocala International Airport in Ocala, Fla., en route to visit The Villages, FL.

Beginning last Wednesday, Americans were subjected to what amounts to a cult-style training video on Fox News, CBS, and other national networks. Few seemed to notice.

The video shows dozens of images of Donald Trump. Under them, an R&B song keeps repeating, "Love me… love me… love me…"

UFC President Dana White’s voice calls the president “the toughest, most resilient person that I’ve ever met, and nothing was going to stop him from fighting so hard for the country he loves.” The familiar campaign messages are there: Trump as a defender of the police who cuts taxes, and a McCarthy-era warning about an imaginary threat from “Communists.” It is all camouflage.

The real message is “Love me.”

Over the weekend, the administration resurrected a campaign ad from 2024 that called for “a final battle” against Trump and MAGA’s enemies:

"With you at my side, we will demolish the deep state. We will expel the warmongers from our government. We will cast out the communists, Marxists, and fascists. We will throw off the sick political class that hates our country. We will rout the fake news media, and we will liberate America from these villains, once and for all."

We will is a vow. We will is also a threat.

CNN reports that Donald Trump helped to choose the footage and images himself. According to the New York Times, Trump “personally instructed his budget director to use taxpayer money for TV ads praising him and his presidency, setting in motion a $20 million contract that used funds from the Department of Homeland Security, according to people familiar with the matter.”

The first audience for these videos is Trump. They provide him with narcissistic fuel: proof that he is loved and divine.

These ads, including a third video of Trump at Mount Rushmore proclaiming a new “golden age,” follow the familiar script of cult recruitment and indoctrination.

The videos are new; the larger pattern is not. It runs through Trump’s rallies, speeches, emails, and other communications.

A perfect leader. Trump is presented as all-powerful, a man of destiny — if not divine.

Us vs. Them. The MAGA cult and Trump’s “real Americans” are depicted as being under siege by “communists,” Marxists, and the broader “enemy within.” These enemies must be subdued and eliminated in a glorious struggle.

A final battle. There is an emphasis on some type of apocalypse where the cult members will survive — but only if they obey the cult leader.

Love as obligation. In cults and other undue influence organizations, the followers are expected to surrender their individuality to the group and its leaders. In return, the leaders usually show their “love” by exploiting the cult members.

Like the autocrats and dictators he so greatly admires, Trump demands total obedience.

These three ads are just the beginning.

Last month’s “midterm” convention in Dallas showed what this cult behavior looks like in practice.

Closing out the convention on Thursday, September 10, Trump led the audience in taking a loyalty oath — to him.

“Please raise your right hand. I pledge to the greatest president in the history of the United States that loves us so much he can’t even breathe, that I will go out with my family, my friends. I don’t care if I’m registered or not. I’m going to try and cheat like hell like they do. There’s never been bigger cheaters. They don’t care… I am going to go out and I am going to get my friends, my family, and we are going to vote on Nov. 3rd or we are going to vote before that. OK. So help me God.”

Trump concluded his loyalty pledge with threats of damnation.

“You know what happens if you don’t vote? You go to hell. You know that, OK? You go to hell, and I don’t want that to happen to you. So please go and vote, because together we will defeat the communists.”

This was one of the most grotesque moments in modern American political history.

Cult leaders, gangs, and criminal organizations often make members violate their own moral codes as a way of bonding them to the group. Those who refuse risk being shunned, or much worse.

Trump’s new MAGA cult programming videos are part of a much larger propaganda operation: Fox News, the broader right-wing news-entertainment disinformation machine, his fundraising emails, and his other communications.

In his emails, Trump tells recipients that he is watching them, that he misses their messages and wonders whether they are avoiding him, and that he has special secrets to share only with them.

Trump’s emails also carry threats, both implied and explicit, against “disloyal” people and other enemies such as the Democrats, liberals, “Commies,” and “illegal aliens.”

In some, Trump shares his supposed worries about dying and his yearning for heaven.

Cult leaders are experts at manipulating the fears and insecurities of their followers and recruits, many of whom are lonely and desperate for community and belonging. MAGA is their found family. Trump is the father figure.

Steve Hassan, one of the world’s leading experts on cults and undue influence organizations, told me in 2024:

America has many millions of these vulnerable people. Some of them have gotten swept up in Trumpism and the MAGA movement. Others become white supremacists or join the Christian Right and its most extreme elements….

When we are overstimulated with fear, anger, and disgust and other negative emotions the frontal cortex goes offline. You age regress and look for a strong father or mother figure or other authoritarian leader to tell you what to do. Thus, Donald Trump and other populist authoritarians have risen to power all over the world.

Hassan emphatically warned that “the MAGA movement is, in fact, an authoritarian cult”:

It is dangerous, destructive, anti-human rights, anti-woman, racist and white supremacist, antigay, and has many other antisocial values and beliefs. The Trump authoritarian personality and the larger antidemocracy movement are very dangerous. People tried to stop these evil forces in the 1930s and 1940s. We can learn from them and rise to the challenge today.

The mainstream news media — including much of the liberal and progressive media — focused largely on the legality of using public money to pay for these “ads,” America’s broken political norms and institutions, and of course horse race politics and the upcoming midterms.

It has been slightly more than a week since Trump’s “love me” propaganda video debuted nationally on Thursday, September 24, and much of the media has already grown bored and moved on.

This is journalistic malpractice.

In an essay at Stop the Presses, Mark Jacob, former metro editor of the Chicago Tribune and former Sunday editor of the Chicago Sun-Times, wrote:

The cost of sucking up to a dictator is that hardly anyone feels sorry for you when the dictator turns on you.

The mainstream media are learning that right now….

In an almost cartoonish illustration of Jacob’s critique, TheWashington Post reported last week that the Trump administration is now buying taxpayer-funded ads for Trump’s new propaganda videos on MS Now and CNN.Trump had recently banned those two outlets (as well as Politico) from the White House, although a federal judge temporarily restored their access.

In response to complaints about Trump’s “campaign” videos, the White House issued this statement:

“These public service announcements are about reminding Americans to love their country and understand what makes it worth defending, at home, at our borders, and abroad. The ad is educational and unapologetically patriotic. We should be proud of our country.”

Loyalty to, and love of, Trump and MAGA are presented as being the same as patriotism and the good of the nation. This is Orwellian.

Last Wednesday, Trump went further. “I’m not running for office, first of all,” he said. “When I’m talking about making America great, making our country great, that’s a countrywide ad. That’s an ad for the spirit of our country.”

Trump’s new videos are likely illegal and may constitute an impeachable offense. They appear to violate several federal laws governing the use of public money for propaganda and partisan political activities. Mehdi Hasan’s news site Zeteo reports that Trump administration insiders have described these propaganda videos as being “obviously illegal.”

In North Korea, each home reportedly has a small speaker, known as the “Third Network.” It plays patriotic songs, emergency alerts, and directives to praise the government and its leaders most of the day.

If President Trump gets his way, every American home will have a Trump-MAGA box doing the same thing.

In his new Time interview, Trump refused to rule out invoking the Insurrection Act or declaring a national emergency around the midterm election. He also attacked Time for not asking him “one fu**ing positive question.”

Trump’s Republicans are facing serious losses in the midterms. Recent national polls show that his popularity is cratering among the American people, down to the low 30s. The more imperiled Donald Trump feels, the more dangerous he becomes. You have been warned, again.

Chauncey DeVega is a politics and opinion writer whose work considers American democracy, inequality, political power, and the enduring significance of race in American society and the wider world. He was formerly a senior politics writer at Salon. His essays and commentary have been cited by The New York Times, The Washington Post, the BBC, NPR, The Atlantic, and other leading publications. He hosts two podcasts: The Chauncey DeVega Show and The Truth Report.

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