What is the difference between President Donald Trump's supporters and traditional Republicans?
Why does the Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement revolve around the worship of a single personality — to the point where they'll back him even after he breaks key promises like keeping America out of forever wars, bringing down prices and not personally profiting from his office — while pre-Trump conservatives were united by consistent policy beliefs?
How is it that Trump convinces them of blatantly untrue things, such as that he won the 2020 presidential election? How can he get them to ignore his obvious and serious flaws, including his long history of being a sore loser (long predating the 2020 election), his close friendship with the late child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein and the at least two dozen women who have accused him of sexual misconduct, one of whom he was found liable in a court of law for sexually abusing?
In short: How did Trump transform one of America's two major political parties into what can best be described as a cult?
To answer this question I spoke with Dr. Steven Hassan, cult expert and author of "Combating Cult Mind Control" and "The Cult of Trump." When he was a young man, Hassan was recruited into the Unification Church of the United States, colloquially known as the Moonies because they were led by a conservative religious leader named Sun Myung Moon. He eventually left Moon’s cult and became an acclaimed mental health counselor, making him an expert on cults both through personal experience and intellectual study.
In the following interview — which has been lightly edited for clarity, context and length — I speak with Hassan about why Trump’s movement is a cult while other conservative movements are not and how people can be persuaded to leave the Trump cult. We also addressed a number of other subjects, from how the self-proclaimed freethinker Joe Rogan only booked Hassan when his anti-cult ideas didn’t criticize Trump to how one of my favorite comedians may have been too harsh in his assessment of Trump supporters.
ROZSA: I want to start with a recent interview I did with Dr. Stefan Lewandowsky. He is a cognitive scientist at the University of Bristol who has written extensively about the psychology behind President Trump's political movement. He had an observation that I'm curious if you agree or disagree with. I asked why so many Trump supporters enjoy "owning the libs," and he attributed it to what he called the dark triad of personality: psychopathy, Machiavellianism, and narcissism. Do you share that analysis?
HASSAN: That's interesting. That's a very well-used model, the dark triad. I personally like malignant narcissism, which was the concept [German social psychologist and psychoanalyst] Erich Fromm came up with analyzing [Nazi leader Adolf] Hitler. And I did that in chapter three of "The Cult of Trump," comparing Trump with [Peoples Temple founder and Jonestown mass murder] Jim Jones, Moon, and [L. Ron] Hubbard of Scientology. And I'll also add, Matthew, that there's a new article I just read that uses a dark tetrad, adding sadism to Machiavellianism, psychopathy, and narcissism. A researcher up in Canada wrote about nihilism, which is a whole subcategory of Trump supporters — the [Tesla CEO] Elon Musks and the [Palantir co-founder] Thiels and the people with a whole, you know, 'go to outer space' agenda.
ROZSA: I think that's interesting. I'm more interested, though, in the ordinary people who support Trump, because as I see it, they are voting against their economic self-interest — because he deflects attention from how he is raising their prices and instead redirecting it toward vilifying various groups. I'm curious how you explain the psychology behind people who fall for that.
HASSAN: We are social beings, and we're emotional beings primarily. So a key point in my BITE [Behavior, Information, Thought and Emotional] model of authoritarian control is information control. I emphasize how these destructive groups, like the Trump movement, are lying all the time. And part of the appeal is really about using emotionally leading rhetoric to scare people, to create "the other," to demonize. I'll quote Eric Hoffer's 1951 book, "The True Believer." He said, "The strength of a mass movement is proportionate to the vividness and tangibility of its devil." We know that, evolutionarily, we're going to overreact to anything that's a perceived danger or threat to us. So "owning the libs" means that they are a danger, and he's going to save people from them.
A lot of his messaging was, "I'm doing this for you." So he was getting people to identify and create a pseudo-identity as "Trumpers" to follow him. And then there are millions of Americans in these religious cults called the New Apostolic Reformation, where they're actually following a man or woman who claims to be a prophet or an apostle. And those are the ones telling followers that God is using Trump as a King Cyrus figure — yes, he's a sinner, but God is using him to go after Satan. So I think people who try to simplify this using social psychology, if they don't understand that we're really in World War III right now with Russia and China and other bad actors trying to take down the United States — this has been a fifty-year project, not something that just came in with Trump. That's what I wrote that book about.
ROZSA: I think that's a great observation. Now I'd like to ask you: what separates the Trump movement from a normal political movement? Eric Hoffer's book, which I love, talks about "true believers" — anyone who is an idealist. And very often, although they are passionate about their political or religious views, they don't literally become cultish. What separates simply being an ideologue from being a cultist, and why do Trump supporters fall into the cult category?
HASSAN: For me, I have an "influence continuum" graphic — I'm sure you've seen it before. Ethical influence to unethical influence. You can take a look at it again on my freedomofmind.com website, under "Learn." I talk about cults being spread across the entire continuum. There are a lot of cultish groups, but they give informed consent and encourage people to follow their conscience — they don't tell people what they can and can't read, et cetera — all the way to authoritarianism. And I see the people following Trump as largely being mind-controlled through information: through their social media posts, whether on Facebook, Telegram or WhatsApp, or through Fox News.
So, going back to your initial question about how people are voting against their self-interest — it really comes down to what information sources they're relying on and who their network is that they identify with. So if they really love Joe Rogan, they're going to follow a lot of his views. And consequently, when he turns against Trump, Trump loses a lot of followers. What I'm trying to convey is that we're living in an age of digital manipulation that's never been seen before, with people's personal data being used to silo information — to drive them further left if they're already progressive-leaning, or further right if they're already Republican or conservative-leaning. And it's quite strategic in its use of algorithms. So it's not simply about looking at personality type, Matthew — the disposition of a person who becomes a Trump follower — but the social and information environment people are being subjected to.
ROZSA: I think that's a valid point in terms of how these cult-like environments are formed. I want to go back to your observation about Joe Rogan, because in my experience — not only researching him, but talking to people who follow his program — they seem to view him as anti-establishment, even though he is friends with the president and with several billionaires, has the world's number-one podcast and repeatedly espouses views on economic issues that serve the wealthy at the expense of the poor. They don't seem to see any of that. I'm curious how.
HASSAN: Because it takes a certain degree of training and perspective not to just emotionally, habitually listen to somebody. Again, it's about packaging. And you, for instance, were able to look at it from a perspective that recognizes he's promoting a lot of things that Trump wants him to promote. Of course, he had Trump on the podcast during the last election cycle. By the way, I was on Joe Rogan in 2015, and he loved me, and he invited me back. But when "The Cult of Trump" came out, he didn't want me on again.
ROZSA: [sarcastically] But I thought Joe Rogan was a truth-speaker who was willing to just ask questions! Apparently, when the questions criticized Trump, he suddenly stopped being the man who speaks truth to power.
HASSAN: Well, yeah — that's what I want the followers of Joe Rogan to know. When I tell Trump supporters that Joe Rogan had me on and loved me, and give them the link, they're shocked and surprised. But that's why I go on shows like that. I was also on Megyn Kelly's show at one point, because she wanted me on. She didn't want me to mention "The Cult of Trump," so that got edited out. But she had me on as a cult expert and platformed me. It was interesting.
ROZSA: So is there any way to deprogram these people? Is there any way for people who are in the cult to get out of the cult?
HASSAN: A thousand percent. I don't care for the term "deprogram," because it evokes a computer-mind image, and it evokes notions from the '70s when people were being abducted. I like to phrase it more as helping people to reality-test and start thinking for themselves. I did a TEDx talk on how to know whether you yourself have been brainwashed. But I wrote a whole book called "Freedom of Mind" on how to talk to people in cults. It starts with the assumption that it's a dissociative disorder — brainwashing — where, for example, "Steve Hassan" the real person is replaced by a "Steve Hassan the Moonie" identity that got created and installed in someone's head. When you're talking to a cult member, never attack the leader, the doctrine, or the policies head-on — especially with facts or logic — because it will empower the cult identity to defend itself and shut down, and it will make the cult member perceive you as the enemy.
What works best is a warm, respectful, curious, questioning approach: "Help me step into your shoes," or "I'm really curious what you think about this or that." Referencing other cults that the person knows — Trump supporters will listen to conversations about Chinese communist brainwashing, and they'll be open to learning about Lifton's model [for helping people reform their ways of thinking]. Many of them who got into Trump through the QAnon psyop are open to hearing about traffickers and pimps, and how they recruit, groom and indoctrinate people to become sex slaves or labor slaves. So what I'm trying to convey is that an indirect approach is the most effective way to help people in the cult of Trump start reality-testing. And warmth — I'm telling everybody: reach out to your family, friends and coworkers who are Trump supporters. If you've cut them off, say, "How are you? I miss you. I want you back in my life." And don't argue politics at first. Just reestablish warmth and safety, because a lot of people are having doubts now. A lot of people are accessible. It's human-to-human contact — not so much on social media — that's going to help people exit.
ROZSA: I had an interview with the comedian Sam Brown in 2020, shortly before Trump was defeated by Joe Biden in that election. Brown predicted: “The sad thing is that this isn’t going to die. Even if Trump loses, these people that are still like, ‘No, it was cool having a dumb guy president’ are still going to be out there. ‘He’s a dumb piece of s*** like me!'” Do you agree with that analysis?
HASSAN: No, I don't think it's helpful to call followers of Trump dumb. I really don't. I think a lot of people [who support Trump] are very intelligent — I know people who are MDs, lawyers, and others who are supporters of Trump. But they were single-issue voters — whether they supported Israel blindly, or were anti-gay blindly. But as I mentioned before, Matthew, there are millions of people in these [New Apostolic Reformation] cults, with apostles and prophets who perform mind control on them, and they're following their prophet or apostle — not Trump. But they are doing what the apostle or prophet tells them to do. I don't think it's a matter of being dumb.
ROZSA: Trump has said that he prefers less-educated voters.
HASSAN: Well, he's said a lot of things. And yes, I'd say — ignorance makes it much easier to manipulate information with people who don't understand social psychology or malignant narcissism.
ROZSA: If I may quickly interject — people also resent those who are successful in intellectual fields, like climate scientists, vaccine scientists and professors who study race and gender theory. I think a lot of that is anti-intellectualism.
HASSAN: Yeah, I buy that, but I also wrote in "The Cult of Trump" about fourth-generation psychological warfare, which is aimed at demoralizing populations. That was a concept from our military intelligence used on other countries, and it's been used on us. The theme with fourth-generation warfare is to attack experts, attack science, and attack democratic institutions and faith in democratic institutions. There's been an all-out assault on anyone who's an expert. It's part of a psychological warfare campaign where you want to confuse the population, overwhelm them, disorient them, distract them, so they can carry out their nasty deeds to dismantle democracy.
ROZSA: All right, and my final question: is there anything else important about this subject you'd like to say that I haven't given you the chance to say so far?
HASSAN: I think we should be messaging things that resonate with everybody, like a return to law and order as a platform for candidates. I think we should be encouraging twenty- to thirty-year-olds to get active, to register people that age who haven't been registered, to get them motivated that their vote matters. A lot of what Trump has been saying is meant to dissuade people from thinking their vote matters, because he's going to have his way no matter what. But we want an overwhelming vote count in every single state. We want to get more people active as citizens, because this is a long-term fight we're in right now, and we need to cultivate active resistance, at least through 2028. So even with the threats of declaring elections fraudulent or whatever, we need to mobilize people to care, to come out, to register anyone they meet who may not be registered and to persuade them of the importance of voting.
