{"id":315286,"date":"2026-04-27T12:00:52","date_gmt":"2026-04-27T11:00:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=315286"},"modified":"2026-04-20T19:21:32","modified_gmt":"2026-04-20T18:21:32","slug":"trump-the-god","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2026\/04\/trump-the-god\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump the God"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Holy Shit – by Mr. Fish<\/p><\/div>\n

Trump\u2019s portrayal of himself as Jesus, or anointed by Jesus, is typical of cult leaders.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

20 Apr 2026\u00a0<\/em>–\u00a0During the two years I spent writing \u201cAmerican Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America,<\/a>\u201d I encountered numerous mini-Trumps. These self-proclaimed pastors \u2014 very few had any formal religious training \u2014 preyed on the despair of their congregants. They were surrounded by sycophants and could not be questioned. They merged fact with fiction, peddled magical thinking and enriched themselves at the expense of their followers. They claimed their wealth and ostentatious lifestyle, including mansions and private jets, was a sign of being blessed. They insisted they were divinely inspired and anointed by God. They were, within their hermetic circles of their megachurches, omnipotent.<\/p>\n

These cult pastors promised to use their omnipotence to crush the demonic forces that had created misery in the lives of their followers \u2014 unemployment and underemployment, evictions, bankruptcies, poverty<\/a>, addiction<\/a>, sexual and domestic abuse, and crippling despair. The more power the cult leaders possess \u2014 according to their followers \u2014 the more certain is a promised paradise. Cult leaders stand above the law. Those who desperately place their faith in them want them to be above the law.<\/p>\n

Cult leaders are narcissists. They demand obsequious adulation and total obedience. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.\u2019s claim<\/a> that Donald Trump is able to draw a \u201cperfect map\u201d of the Middle East, or White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt\u2019s statement<\/a> that Trump is always the \u201cmost well-read person in the room,\u201d are two of innumerable examples of the abject fawning required by those in a cult leader\u2019s inner circle. Blind loyalty matters more than competence.<\/p>\n

Cult leaders are immune from rational and fact-based critiques amongst those who invest hope in them. This is why Trump\u2019s hardcore followers have not abandoned him and will not abandon him. All the chatter about fissures in the MAGA universe misreads Trump cultists.<\/p>\n

All cults are personality cults. They are extensions of the prejudices, worldview, personal style and ideas of the cult leader. Trump, with his faux \u201cTrump crest,\u201d <\/a>revels in Louis XVI-inspired tasteless kitsch awash in gold Rococo<\/a> and glittering chandeliers. The women in Trump\u2019s court have \u201cMar-a-Lago Faces<\/a>\u201d \u2013 overinflated lips, taut, wrinkle-free skin, silicone gel-filled breast implants and chiseled cheekbones, capped off by gobs of make-up. They wear stiletto heels and garish outfits that Trump finds appealing. Trump\u2019s men, who in his eyes must be telegenic and from \u201cCentral casting<\/a>,\u201d dress like 1950s advertising executives. They sport Trump-gifted<\/a> Florsheim black shoes, specifically $145 Lexington Cap Toe Oxfords.<\/p>\n

Cults impose dress codes that mirror the style and taste of the cult leader.<\/p>\n

The followers of the Indian guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh<\/a>, also known as Osho, dressed in red and orange robes, often combined with a turtleneck and beads. Heaven\u2019s Gate members wore<\/a> Nike Decade trainers and black jogging bottoms. Men in the Unification Church, known as Moonies, wore crisp white shirts and pressed slacks. Women wore dresses. They looked<\/a> as if they were on their way to Sunday School.<\/p>\n

Like Jim Jones, who convinced or forced<\/a> over 900 of his followers \u2014 including<\/a> 304 children aged 17 and younger \u2014 to die by ingesting a cyanide-laced drink, Trump is aggressively courting our collective suicide.<\/p>\n

Trump dismisses<\/a> the climate crisis as a hoax. He unilaterally withdraws<\/a> from nuclear arms agreements and treaties. He antagonizes nuclear powers, such as Russia and China. He impetuously launches<\/a> wars. He alienates and insults U.S. allies<\/a>. He dreams of annexing Greenland<\/a> and Cuba<\/a>. He embraces holy crusade against Muslims. He attacks<\/a> his political opponents as enemies and traitors, belittling them with crude insults. He slashes<\/a> social programs designed to sustain the vulnerable. He expands an internal security apparatus \u2014 masked Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) goons \u2014 to terrorize<\/a> the public. Cults do not nurture and protect. They subjugate, annihilate and destroy.<\/p>\n

Trump employs the U.S. military without oversight or constraint. He presides, for this reason, over what the psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton called a \u201cworld-destroying cult.\u201d Lifton lists eight characteristics of \u201cworld-destroying cults\u201d that implant what he calls \u201ctotalistic environments.\u201d<\/p>\n

These eight characteristics are:<\/p>\n

1. Milieu control<\/em>. The total control of communication within the group.<\/p>\n

2. Loading the language<\/em>. Using \u201cgroupspeak\u201d to censor, edit and shut down criticism or opposing ideas. Followers must mouth the mindless Trump-approved clich\u00e9s and cult jargon.<\/p>\n

3. Demand for purity<\/em>. An us-versus-them view of the world. Those who oppose the group are wrong, unenlightened and evil. They are irredeemable. They are contaminants. They must be eradicated. Any action is justified to protect this purity. The goal of all cult leaders is to widen and make irreconcilable social divisions.<\/p>\n

4. Confession<\/em>: The public confession of past wrongs. In the case of Trump supporters, this includes the disavowal, as U.S. Vice President JD Vance and others have done, of past criticism of Trump, with public admission of their former wrong-thinking<\/a>.<\/p>\n

5. Mystical manipulation<\/em>. The belief that those in the group are specially chosen with a higher purpose. Those in Trump\u2019s orbit act as though they are divinely elected. They convince themselves that they are not coerced to embrace Trump\u2019s lies and vulgarities \u2014 or repeat cult jargon \u2014 but do so voluntarily.<\/p>\n

6. Doctrine over person<\/em>. The rewriting and fabrication of personal history to conform to Trump\u2019s interpretation of reality.<\/p>\n

7. Sacred Science<\/em>. Trump\u2019s absurdities \u2014 global temperatures are declining<\/a> rather than rising, the noise from wind turbines<\/a> cause cancer and ingesting disinfectants<\/a> such as Lysol is an effective treatment for the coronavirus \u2014 are presented as grounded in science. This scientific patina means Trump\u2019s ideas apply to everyone. Those who disagree are unscientific.<\/p>\n

8. Dispensing of existence<\/em>. Nonmembers are \u201clesser or unworthy beings.\u201d Meaningful existence means being part of the Trump cult. Those outside the cult are worthless. They do not deserve moral consideration.<\/p>\n

Trump is no different from past cult leaders, including Marshall Herff Applewhite and Bonnie Lu Nettles \u2014 the founders of the Heaven\u2019s Gate cult \u2014 the Rev. Sun Myung Moon \u2014 who led the Unification Church \u2014 Credonia Mwerinde \u2014 who led the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God in Uganda \u2014 Li Hongzhi \u2014 the founder of Falun Gong, and David Koresh, who led the Branch Davidian cult in Waco, Texas.<\/p>\n

Cult leaders are deeply insecure, which is why they lash out with fury at the slightest criticism. They mask this insecurity with cruelty, hypermasculinity and bombastic grandiosity. They are paranoid, amoral, emotionally crippled and physically abusive. Those around them, including children, are objects to be manipulated for their enrichment, enjoyment and often sadistic entertainment.<\/p>\n

Cults are characterized by pedophilia and sexual abuse. Those, including Trump, who were frequently in the orbit of pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, replicated the abuse endemic in cults.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople\u2019s Temple children were frequently sexually abused,\u201d writes Margaret Singer in \u201cCults In Our Midst: The Continuing Fight Against Their Hidden Menace<\/a>.\u201d \u201cWhile the group was still in California, teenage girls as young as fifteen had to provide sex for influential people courted by Jones. A supervisor of children at Jonestown had a history of child sexual abuse, and Jones himself assaulted some of the children. If husbands and wives were caught talking privately during a meeting, their daughters were forced to masturbate publicly or to have sex with someone the family didn\u2019t like before the entire Jonestown population, children as well as adults.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cults, Singer writes, are \u201ca mirror of what is inside the cult leader.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHe has no restraints on him,\u201d she writes of the cult leader:<\/p>\n

He can make his fantasies and desires come alive in the world he creates around him. He can lead people to do his bidding. He can make the surrounding world really his world. What most cult leaders achieve is akin to the fantasies of a child at play, creating a world with toys and utensils. In that play world, the child feels omnipotent and creates a realm of his own for a few minutes or a few hours. He moves the toy dolls about. They do his bidding. They speak his words back to him. He punishes them any way he wants. He is all-powerful and makes his fantasy come alive. When I see the sand tables and the collections of toys some child therapists have in their offices, I think that a cult leader must look about and place people in his created world much as the child creates on the sand table a world that reflects his or her desires and fantasies. The difference is that the cult leader has actual humans doing his bidding as he makes a world around him that springs from inside his own head.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The language of the cult leader is rooted in verbal confusion. Lies, conspiracy theories, outlandish ideas and contradictory statements, often made in the same statement or only minutes apart, paralyzing those attempting to read the cult leader rationally. Absurdism is the point. The cult leader does not take his or her statements seriously. They often deny ever making them, although they are documented. Lies and truth are irrelevant. The cult leader is not seeking to impart information or truth. The cult leader is seeking to appeal to the emotional needs of cult members.<\/p>\n

\u201cHitler kept his enemies in a state of constant confusion and diplomatic upheaval,\u201d Joost A.M. Meerloo wrote in \u201cThe Rape of the Mind: The Psychology of Thought Control and Menticide<\/a>.\u201d \u201cThey never knew what this unpredictable madman was going to do next. Hitler was never logical, because he knew that that was what he was expected to be. Logic can be met with logic, while illogic cannot \u2013 it confuses those who think straight. The Big Lie and monotonously repeated nonsense have more emotional appeal in a cold war than logic and reason. While the enemy is still searching for a reasonable counterargument to the first lie, the totalitarians can assault him with another.\u201d<\/p>\n

It does not matter how many lies uttered by Trump are meticulously documented. It does not matter that Trump has used the presidency to enrich himself by an estimated $1.4 billion over the last year, according to<\/a> Forbes. It does not matter that he is inept, lazy and ignorant. It does not matter that he stumbles from one disaster to the next, from tariffs, to the war on Iran.<\/p>\n

The traditional establishment, whose credibility has been destroyed because of its betrayal of the working class and subservience to the billionaire class and corporations, has little power over Trump\u2019s supporters. Their vitriol only increases his popularity. Political cults are the bastard children of a failed liberalism. Trump\u2019s approval rating may be at around 40 percent, as of April 20 \u2014 according to<\/a> an average of multiple polls collated by The New York Times \u2014 but his base remains unmovable.<\/p>\n

The Democratic Party, rather than pivot to address the social inequality and abandonment of the working class \u2014 which it helped orchestrate \u2014 has hit upon tax cuts<\/a> as a road to regaining power. It will, once again, reduce our social, economic and political crisis to the personality of Trump. It will offer no reforms to rectify our failed democracy. This is a gift to Trump and his followers. By refusing to acknowledge responsibility for inequality and proposing programs to ameliorate the suffering it has caused, Democrats<\/a> engage in the same kind of magical thinking as Trump cultists.<\/p>\n

There is no way out of this political dysfunction unless popular movements rise to cripple the machinery of government and commerce on behalf of a betrayed public. But time is running out. Trump and his goons are serious about invaliding or cancelling the midterm elections if they perceive defeat. If that happens, the cult of Trump will be unassailable.<\/p>\n

______________________________________________<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize\u2013winning journalist who was a foreign correspondent for fifteen years for\u00a0<\/em>The New York Times,\u00a0where he served as the Middle East Bureau Chief and Balkan Bureau Chief. He previously worked overseas for\u00a0<\/em>The Dallas Morning News,\u00a0The Christian Science Monitor, and<\/em> NPR. He used to be the host of the Emmy Award-nominated <\/em>RT America show\u00a0<\/em>On Contact.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Go to Original – chrishedges.substack.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

20 Apr 2026\u00a0–\u00a0Trump\u2019s portrayal of himself as Jesus, or anointed by Jesus, is typical of cult leaders.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":315287,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[1012,3197,3324,249,2200,70],"class_list":["post-315286","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-anglo-america","tag-food-for-thought-editorial-cartoon","tag-jesus-christ","tag-north-america","tag-trump","tag-us-empire","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315286","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=315286"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315286\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":315289,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315286\/revisions\/315289"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/315287"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=315286"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=315286"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=315286"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}