WEBVTT - The Cult of Trump (with Steven Hassan) 0:00:01.440 --> 0:00:04.560 I'm John Cipher and I'm Jerry O'sha. I was a 0:00:04.600 --> 0:00:07.880 CIA officer stationed around the world in high threat posts 0:00:07.920 --> 0:00:09.640 in Europe, Russia, and in Asia. 0:00:09.680 --> 0:00:12.760 And I served in Africa, Asia, Europe, the Middle East 0:00:12.840 --> 0:00:16.919 and in war zones. We sometimes created conspiracies to deceive 0:00:17.000 --> 0:00:17.919 our adversaries. 0:00:18.160 --> 0:00:21.840 Now we're going to use our expertise to deconstruct conspiracy 0:00:21.880 --> 0:00:23.640 theories large and small. 0:00:23.920 --> 0:00:24.800 Could they be true? 0:00:25.079 --> 0:00:26.400 Or are we being manipulated? 0:00:26.920 --> 0:00:36.440 This is mission implausible. Today's guest is Steve Hasten. He's 0:00:36.440 --> 0:00:39.159 an author and an expert on the issue of cults. 0:00:39.320 --> 0:00:42.200 His latest book is called The Cult of Trump. He's 0:00:42.240 --> 0:00:45.280 a former member of the Unification Church, associated with the 0:00:45.320 --> 0:00:48.040 Reverend Moon and escape the church and then created a 0:00:48.080 --> 0:00:50.279 group to help people leave the church and since then 0:00:50.360 --> 0:00:53.360 become a real expert on cults and helping people leave cults. 0:00:53.440 --> 0:00:58.120 Welcome Steve, Thanks John, and I'm an admirer of yours 0:00:58.200 --> 0:01:01.560 and all you're speaking out of the many years since 0:01:02.200 --> 0:01:03.480 Trump's first election. 0:01:03.800 --> 0:01:05.520 Yeah, I don't know how much good it does, but 0:01:05.720 --> 0:01:07.360 it's better than being complicit of. 0:01:07.400 --> 0:01:08.360 That's what I say. 0:01:08.480 --> 0:01:10.800 If you're an admirer of John, you've already sown some 0:01:10.880 --> 0:01:12.120 bad judgment here, Stave s. 0:01:12.840 --> 0:01:15.160 But let's go back and start from the beginning. Tell 0:01:15.240 --> 0:01:18.080 us about your experience with the Unification Church in the movies. 0:01:18.319 --> 0:01:22.039 I'm gonna just correct you and say, I don't think 0:01:22.040 --> 0:01:26.199 it's fair to call them the Unification Church, because when 0:01:26.240 --> 0:01:31.480 there was a Congressional subcommittee investigation into CACIA activities in 0:01:31.520 --> 0:01:36.080 the US, the investigation said, there are so many front 0:01:36.080 --> 0:01:40.200 groups of this group. Unification Church is one of hundreds. 0:01:40.440 --> 0:01:43.480 We think it's fairer to call them the moon Organization 0:01:43.880 --> 0:01:44.720 or the Moonees. 0:01:45.000 --> 0:01:47.760 And they own one of our newspapers in Washington, d C. 0:01:48.200 --> 0:01:53.000 Washington Times, which the founding editor was from the Council 0:01:53.080 --> 0:01:56.520 for National Policy, was put into place. But back to 0:01:56.560 --> 0:02:00.120 my story. When I got recruited, it was actually the 0:02:00.160 --> 0:02:04.919 same month Patty Hurst got abducted by the Simonese Liberation Army. 0:02:04.960 --> 0:02:08.560 It was February of nineteen seventy four. No one had 0:02:08.600 --> 0:02:12.080 heard of the Moonies. I certainly didn't. I was a 0:02:12.120 --> 0:02:16.720 student at Queen's College and my situational vulnerability was my 0:02:16.800 --> 0:02:19.920 girlfriend dumped me abruptly and I was sitting in the 0:02:19.960 --> 0:02:23.880 cafeteria waiting for classes to start and three women started 0:02:24.200 --> 0:02:27.840 flirting with me. Later I learned it's called honey potting, 0:02:27.919 --> 0:02:31.960 but I was just naive. I asked them, are you students, yes, 0:02:32.240 --> 0:02:33.440 which was a lie. 0:02:33.680 --> 0:02:35.080 Are you part of a religious group? 0:02:35.160 --> 0:02:35.359 Oh? 0:02:35.440 --> 0:02:36.600 No, not at all. 0:02:36.800 --> 0:02:40.359 But within a few weeks, I was believing the Messiah 0:02:40.480 --> 0:02:43.800 was on the earth, that I was selected to help 0:02:43.919 --> 0:02:47.360 save the world from Satan. I was Jewish and I 0:02:47.400 --> 0:02:50.760 didn't believe in Satan a few weeks earlier, and I 0:02:50.840 --> 0:02:54.799 went in this rabbit hole of brainwashing. And I should 0:02:54.800 --> 0:02:59.720 say I came from a very stable, normal upbringing. My parents, 0:03:00.080 --> 0:03:03.880 ever divorced, didn't have affairs, they didn't drink, they didn't smoke. 0:03:04.080 --> 0:03:06.880 We lived in the same house. I was an extra 0:03:06.960 --> 0:03:10.040 honor student, and my vulnerability was I thought I was 0:03:10.120 --> 0:03:13.360 too smart to ever fall for a scam or for 0:03:13.639 --> 0:03:18.320 a cult. And for whatever reason, they selected me, Maybe 0:03:18.320 --> 0:03:21.440 because I'm six feet tall and I was smart, I 0:03:21.480 --> 0:03:24.680 don't know, but they selected me to be an American leader, 0:03:25.240 --> 0:03:27.560 which meant I had no power. But I was a 0:03:27.600 --> 0:03:31.680 front person who could recruit and indoctrinate people and be 0:03:31.720 --> 0:03:35.120 a good face for the cult. And I was in 0:03:35.200 --> 0:03:39.120 meetings with Moon personally, with the other leaders as he 0:03:39.320 --> 0:03:42.880 was saying, we're going to infiltrate the government, and God 0:03:43.000 --> 0:03:46.800 hates democracy. We're going to put a theocracy into place, 0:03:47.280 --> 0:03:50.600 and when we take power, we will amend the constitution 0:03:50.760 --> 0:03:54.160 and make it a capital offense if people don't accept 0:03:54.200 --> 0:03:58.880 our rules around the mass weddings and the sexual things. Anyway, 0:03:59.000 --> 0:04:01.560 I was a true believer, and I was sent to 0:04:01.720 --> 0:04:05.840 Washington to fast for three days for Richard Nixon during Watergate, 0:04:05.920 --> 0:04:09.360 and I hated Nixon beforehand, but I was like, but 0:04:09.480 --> 0:04:11.200 God wants him to be president. 0:04:11.400 --> 0:04:11.560 Dad. 0:04:12.000 --> 0:04:14.480 But my story is I fell asleep at the wheel 0:04:14.600 --> 0:04:15.560 of a Moonie van. 0:04:16.200 --> 0:04:17.440 I was sleeping three. 0:04:17.200 --> 0:04:20.200 To four hours a night, normally seven days a week, 0:04:20.240 --> 0:04:23.120 but this occasion I fell asleep and woke up as 0:04:23.160 --> 0:04:25.679 I drove into the back of a tractor trailer truck 0:04:25.720 --> 0:04:29.320 at eighty miles an hour. And after getting Pride out 0:04:29.360 --> 0:04:32.560 of the wreckage, having two weeks away from the cult, 0:04:32.800 --> 0:04:37.719 sleeping and eating and nursing my wounds, I didn't. 0:04:37.400 --> 0:04:39.760 Have any continuous indoctrination. 0:04:39.920 --> 0:04:44.400 This was way before cell phones got created, but led 0:04:44.440 --> 0:04:48.120 to me calling my sister, which led to her telling 0:04:48.160 --> 0:04:52.039 my parents, which led to a deprogramming which I was 0:04:52.120 --> 0:04:54.839 sure I wasn't brainwashed and I wasn't in a cult. 0:04:55.040 --> 0:04:58.240 But my father cried and said, how would you feel 0:04:58.240 --> 0:05:01.280 if it was your son who I met a controversial 0:05:01.320 --> 0:05:04.479 group and disappeared from your life. Wouldn't you be worried? 0:05:04.600 --> 0:05:07.800 And I could see he genuinely cared about me. I 0:05:07.880 --> 0:05:11.039 thought he was brainwashed by the Communist media. That was 0:05:11.120 --> 0:05:14.240 my mooney mind speaking, But I wanted to prove that 0:05:14.360 --> 0:05:17.080 I was thinking, so I agreed to talk to the 0:05:17.160 --> 0:05:21.840 ex members and learn about Chinese communist brainwashing, and it 0:05:21.920 --> 0:05:24.920 was that that started turning the lights back on in 0:05:25.000 --> 0:05:28.640 my mind. The following day was my wake up moment, 0:05:28.720 --> 0:05:32.120 where the ex members handed me one of Moon's speeches 0:05:32.160 --> 0:05:35.279 to congressmen and senators, and all they did was hand 0:05:35.320 --> 0:05:37.240 it to me and say, read this and tell us 0:05:37.279 --> 0:05:40.760 what you think. And that formed the basis for forty 0:05:40.880 --> 0:05:44.560 nine years of my professional career. That said, the way 0:05:44.600 --> 0:05:47.160 to get people out of these groups is not trying 0:05:47.240 --> 0:05:50.599 to persuade them they're wrong, ask them what they think, 0:05:50.960 --> 0:05:55.560 feed them questions in a respectful way that's strategic, that 0:05:55.680 --> 0:05:58.440 gets them back to who they were before the group. 0:05:59.080 --> 0:06:02.479 Everything I believe was based on the presupposition he was 0:06:02.520 --> 0:06:05.919 the Messiah and he was going to save the planet 0:06:06.000 --> 0:06:08.880 Earth from all the mess we're in. And once that 0:06:09.240 --> 0:06:12.599 bubble popped, I was like, what happened to my mind? 0:06:13.200 --> 0:06:17.280 So now you're meeting me having written four books. 0:06:16.800 --> 0:06:17.960 And I have a PhD. 0:06:18.240 --> 0:06:21.240 And how to use trafficking law to update and apply 0:06:21.480 --> 0:06:24.919 to the legal system because it's not a slippery slope. 0:06:24.960 --> 0:06:28.240 And my model that I did my dissertation on looks 0:06:28.240 --> 0:06:33.200 at behavior control, information control, thought control, and emotional control. 0:06:33.680 --> 0:06:36.719 I call it the Byte model of authoritarian control. I 0:06:36.760 --> 0:06:40.279 say you can control those four variables. You can control 0:06:40.320 --> 0:06:44.719 people's identities and make a pseudo identity that's dependent and 0:06:44.800 --> 0:06:47.880 obedient on any person or ideology. 0:06:48.160 --> 0:06:51.960 We use words like culton religion, and there's the old 0:06:52.040 --> 0:06:55.360 saw that the difference between the culton and religion is 0:06:55.360 --> 0:06:59.440 an IRS ruling. Could you give us a working definition 0:06:59.520 --> 0:07:01.800 that we can news for what is a cult or 0:07:01.800 --> 0:07:02.360 a sect? 0:07:02.839 --> 0:07:07.480 Say there are cults along the continuum from ethical religious groups, 0:07:07.560 --> 0:07:12.239 political groups, fan groups, whatever, all the way to authoritarian 0:07:12.360 --> 0:07:16.440 mind control cults. People laugh and say, I'm in a 0:07:16.440 --> 0:07:19.480 book called the Cult of Mac as a true believer, 0:07:19.600 --> 0:07:22.480 because I only have used Mac since nineteen eighty two, 0:07:22.840 --> 0:07:26.720 or I'm in the cult because I've done four teTeX talk, 0:07:26.920 --> 0:07:29.400 so I joke about that. But there are groups that 0:07:29.440 --> 0:07:32.600 are healthy and you can question them, you can leave 0:07:32.640 --> 0:07:36.680 without fear or harassment. They're not remaking your conscience and 0:07:36.760 --> 0:07:41.680 your identity. My definition is that it's a pyramid structured 0:07:41.800 --> 0:07:48.640 authoritarian regime that uses deceptive recruitment, so no informed consent. 0:07:49.080 --> 0:07:52.400 Does it have to be religious correct In my model, 0:07:52.760 --> 0:07:56.960 it can be a one on one controlling relationship to 0:07:57.440 --> 0:08:01.640 a bad therapist who's making the person dependent on them, 0:08:01.960 --> 0:08:05.800 to a large group awareness training program, or a multi 0:08:05.920 --> 0:08:12.240 level marketing. It applies to trafficking, sex trafficking, and labor trafficking, 0:08:12.440 --> 0:08:17.560 which I call commercial cults, political cults, as I refer 0:08:17.680 --> 0:08:20.600 to the cult of Trump, and I believe China is 0:08:20.600 --> 0:08:23.920 a mind control authoritarian cult, as is Russia. 0:08:24.080 --> 0:08:26.520 Does it require a charismatic leader. 0:08:26.680 --> 0:08:29.920 No, some of my colleagues say that it does, and 0:08:30.200 --> 0:08:34.280 that's not my experience. And there are many cults that 0:08:34.320 --> 0:08:40.000 are ideological cults. They're mimetic indoctrination things. And then there 0:08:40.000 --> 0:08:43.920 are cults that start with one person. They die and 0:08:44.160 --> 0:08:48.800 the group morphs and their beliefs change and their practices change, 0:08:49.200 --> 0:08:52.640 but you don't need a living leader. What I learned 0:08:52.920 --> 0:08:57.480 starting in nineteen eighty when I started studying hypnosis, and 0:08:57.559 --> 0:09:02.400 I should say during the MKO Trump days, I studied 0:09:02.559 --> 0:09:06.439 NLP and then I learned Eric Sonian hypnosis. And that's 0:09:06.480 --> 0:09:10.719 what I'm seeing everywhere on the internet, and I talk 0:09:10.800 --> 0:09:13.000 about it in the book The Cult of Trump that 0:09:13.559 --> 0:09:17.800 it appears Tony Robbins has taught Donald Trump some NLP. 0:09:18.600 --> 0:09:21.440 You mentioned mk ultra in the nineteen fifties when there 0:09:21.480 --> 0:09:25.360 was such concern that somehow the Soviets had mastered mind 0:09:25.440 --> 0:09:28.120 control because some soldiers were coming back from the Korean 0:09:28.160 --> 0:09:30.000 War and other places that were saying what we thought 0:09:30.000 --> 0:09:32.160 were crazy things and thought that they had been given 0:09:32.280 --> 0:09:35.360 drugs that controlled their minds. So the CIA got involved 0:09:35.400 --> 0:09:37.559 in experimenting with these things, looking to see if there 0:09:37.640 --> 0:09:40.440 was some sort of and it's actually a shameful period. 0:09:40.480 --> 0:09:44.760 You can understand why it happened, but so could involve 0:09:45.120 --> 0:09:48.400 potentially drugs or some sort of thing like this as well. 0:09:48.880 --> 0:09:52.839 Absolutely, I'm a human rights guy, I'm a license mental 0:09:52.960 --> 0:09:56.720 health counselor. So my leane is just I want people 0:09:56.800 --> 0:09:59.560 to be healthy, I want them to control their own minds. 0:09:59.600 --> 0:10:03.560 I want them to understand that it doesn't just happen 0:10:03.600 --> 0:10:07.440 a week stupid, uneducated people, that bright people can have 0:10:07.559 --> 0:10:11.680 their minds acted, and that we are wired as human 0:10:11.760 --> 0:10:15.840 beings to follow who we think are legitimate leaders, and 0:10:15.960 --> 0:10:20.000 we're wired as human beings to conform to people we 0:10:20.160 --> 0:10:24.840 identify with. And we know this from the Ash Conformity Study, 0:10:24.880 --> 0:10:29.240 the Milgram obedient Study, the Zimbardo prison study. People are 0:10:29.280 --> 0:10:32.040 walking around thinking it can never happen to me. I'm 0:10:32.080 --> 0:10:35.800 too smart, and it happens to them. They're even more vulnerable. 0:10:36.200 --> 0:10:39.079 But on the other side of it is it's not permanent. 0:10:39.600 --> 0:10:44.360 And even people born in these authoritarian regimes realize they're 0:10:44.400 --> 0:10:48.560 being lied to, they're being exploited, and when they're given 0:10:48.600 --> 0:10:52.760 an opportunity to have access to non members and leave 0:10:53.120 --> 0:10:56.160 and go somewhere else, they want to come to the US. 0:10:56.600 --> 0:11:01.040 They want to leave totalitarian regimes are they're born into 0:11:01.080 --> 0:11:06.199 these extremist, authoritarian religious cults, and they realize, I don't 0:11:06.240 --> 0:11:08.880 have to believe this. There are phobias that have been 0:11:08.880 --> 0:11:12.559 put in my mind to make me dependent and obedience. 0:11:12.840 --> 0:11:16.359 But if you use their critical thinking, you can analyze 0:11:16.400 --> 0:11:19.440 this is a technique of emotional mind control. 0:11:19.720 --> 0:11:31.640 We'll be right back in a moment. John and I 0:11:31.720 --> 0:11:33.800 when we were serving in the Agency, we've served in 0:11:33.880 --> 0:11:38.199 authoritarian countries with authoritarian governments. So I was in Zimbabwe 0:11:38.440 --> 0:11:42.119 and you would think when you were there that Mugabi 0:11:42.240 --> 0:11:45.760 at the time was incredibly popular. They built a cult 0:11:45.800 --> 0:11:49.439 around him, his family, his picture, his photograph was everywhere, 0:11:49.840 --> 0:11:52.520 the legends that he was involved in during the war 0:11:52.559 --> 0:11:56.480 of Independence from Rhodesia. And yet when Mugabi was dethroned 0:11:56.480 --> 0:12:00.160 and eventually died, he was immediately forgotten about. And I 0:12:00.240 --> 0:12:03.640 were both in Eastern Europe when the Brillin Wall was 0:12:03.679 --> 0:12:06.320 starting to come down and people were leaving. So I 0:12:06.400 --> 0:12:09.000 was in West Berlin and we were looking at the 0:12:09.040 --> 0:12:12.400 East Germans and we would have sworn a month before 0:12:12.400 --> 0:12:14.720 the wall came down that the East Germans were loyal, 0:12:14.840 --> 0:12:17.560 that they believed in their leader. And yet really within 0:12:17.760 --> 0:12:21.560 days millions of people finally said, yeah, we've just been 0:12:21.600 --> 0:12:24.400 faking it this whole time. Talking to them afterwards, they 0:12:24.400 --> 0:12:27.160 were saying no. At the time, we were sort of 0:12:27.280 --> 0:12:29.920 hit two points of two notions at the same time. 0:12:30.200 --> 0:12:34.000 We were both loyal and believed, but deep down in 0:12:34.040 --> 0:12:38.400 our brain we didn't. So what's your sense of Trump beside? 0:12:38.440 --> 0:12:42.680 But of political cults and when they're genuine and when 0:12:42.679 --> 0:12:44.640 they're sort of enforced time people. 0:12:45.040 --> 0:12:50.600 You're describing the phenomenon that I have verified for forty 0:12:50.679 --> 0:12:54.920 nine years of practice with clients from all types of 0:12:55.080 --> 0:12:59.320 political and religious cults. And I should say my mentor 0:12:59.480 --> 0:13:02.040 who's helped me get out of the Moonies. 0:13:02.320 --> 0:13:02.800 Robert J. 0:13:03.040 --> 0:13:07.000 Lifton wrote a book called Thought Reform in the Psychology 0:13:07.040 --> 0:13:11.240 of Totalism in nineteen sixty one about his interviews with 0:13:11.320 --> 0:13:15.240 people coming out of mao's thought reform programs in the 0:13:15.360 --> 0:13:19.080 outlined eight criteria. He later wrote a book on the 0:13:19.160 --> 0:13:24.120 Nazi doctors, and he described what he called doubling. Before 0:13:24.160 --> 0:13:27.760 that book came out, I had described my subjective sense 0:13:27.920 --> 0:13:31.240 is that there were two Steves. There was the real Steve, 0:13:31.280 --> 0:13:34.560 who was born of Flushing Queens, New York, and then 0:13:34.640 --> 0:13:39.079 the Steve, the Mooney, whose parents were moon and his wife. 0:13:39.320 --> 0:13:40.920 And when I got out, it. 0:13:40.960 --> 0:13:44.600 Was like a flip happened, like a switch happens, like 0:13:44.679 --> 0:13:49.320 I was still indoctrinated, but the real me took executive control, 0:13:49.440 --> 0:13:52.800 or like malware takes over your computer and then you 0:13:52.840 --> 0:13:56.319 put software in it and get rid of the malware. Oh, 0:13:56.440 --> 0:14:00.959 my operating systems back their key points. And for me 0:14:01.040 --> 0:14:05.679 as a human being doing this where people had to survive. 0:14:06.040 --> 0:14:09.200 So they had a public face because they didn't want 0:14:09.240 --> 0:14:11.719 to be turned into the regime, they didn't want to 0:14:11.760 --> 0:14:15.880 get tortured, thrown into jail or worse. But then they 0:14:16.080 --> 0:14:19.480 had their private thoughts that was like this is bs 0:14:19.640 --> 0:14:23.160 or they said the opposite last week that they're saying today. 0:14:23.840 --> 0:14:26.960 And so there's what Lifton called the psychology of the 0:14:27.080 --> 0:14:30.480 pawn while you're still in the environment. But once the 0:14:30.680 --> 0:14:35.080 environment walls go away and you have access to non 0:14:35.240 --> 0:14:40.120 cult people, you start to realize, WHOA, there's a whole 0:14:40.120 --> 0:14:43.680 lot of colors. World is not black and white, and 0:14:43.760 --> 0:14:46.440 follow the regime or don't. It's oh, there were all 0:14:46.440 --> 0:14:51.720 these other options and choices. And so with political cults, 0:14:52.080 --> 0:14:55.120 one of my theses in the Cult of Trump is 0:14:55.160 --> 0:15:01.560 not only does Trump display the stereotypical cult leader and 0:15:01.600 --> 0:15:08.400 I used Eric Frohm's definition malignant narcissist in chapter three, 0:15:08.520 --> 0:15:12.160 and I compared Trump with Jim Jones of the People's 0:15:12.200 --> 0:15:17.160 Temple and Moon, my former cult leader and Hubbard of scientology. 0:15:17.560 --> 0:15:21.440 It is a cult of personality that he has had 0:15:21.480 --> 0:15:25.080 his whole life, with his business and people he's work with. 0:15:25.440 --> 0:15:28.560 And I should add Eric Frum came up with this 0:15:29.120 --> 0:15:33.280 trying to understand Hitler, so that this was not coming 0:15:33.320 --> 0:15:36.280 out of thin air. This was post World War two, 0:15:36.320 --> 0:15:40.400 and like, how could we describe the mindset of somebody 0:15:40.560 --> 0:15:40.880 like this? 0:15:41.520 --> 0:15:42.320 But then when I. 0:15:42.320 --> 0:15:46.600 Started researching it, I realized there were actual authoritarian cults 0:15:46.720 --> 0:15:49.720 that comprise the cult of Trump. I talk about a 0:15:49.760 --> 0:15:54.240 cult called the Family that's operated in DC for decades. 0:15:54.280 --> 0:15:57.440 They do the National Prayer breakfasts, and they like to 0:15:57.480 --> 0:16:01.440 recruit Democrats and Republicans to do their bidding. And then 0:16:01.480 --> 0:16:04.600 I talk about Opus Day and William Barr was a 0:16:04.600 --> 0:16:09.600 member of that. The Russians hacked our counter terrorist Anson 0:16:10.240 --> 0:16:12.960 I should add with Opus Day, he was an Opus 0:16:12.960 --> 0:16:16.480 Stay member. But there are bigger groups like what is 0:16:16.560 --> 0:16:21.040 called the New Apostolic Reformation MEGAS. And these are the 0:16:21.280 --> 0:16:25.800 people who say they're Christian, but in terms of their practices, 0:16:26.680 --> 0:16:29.560 they claim to be a prophet or an apostle who 0:16:29.560 --> 0:16:33.040 can speak directly to God and God told them. Trump 0:16:33.080 --> 0:16:36.880 won the twenty twenty election and this is thirty to 0:16:36.880 --> 0:16:42.280 forty million Americans who think, because their leader said so, 0:16:42.960 --> 0:16:46.040 that Trump is being used by God. He's a king 0:16:46.200 --> 0:16:47.120 Cyrus figure. 0:16:47.480 --> 0:16:49.440 I was just in Oklahoma and someone was telling me 0:16:49.440 --> 0:16:52.920 a story about a family member who saw a picture 0:16:52.960 --> 0:16:56.320 of Trump pulling someone from a flood, clearly a fake picture, 0:16:56.800 --> 0:16:58.640 and this person was saying, that's why we need to 0:16:58.640 --> 0:17:00.440 support him. He's such a good man and all this 0:17:00.520 --> 0:17:02.600 kind of stuff. So there are real believers of this 0:17:03.240 --> 0:17:07.040 fake stuff. But clearly these politicians that support him in Washington, 0:17:07.080 --> 0:17:09.919 they go to Yale and Harvard and JD. Vance and 0:17:09.960 --> 0:17:11.919 all of these guys, they are now saying, oh, the 0:17:11.920 --> 0:17:14.080 twenty twenty election was stolen. In January sixth was a 0:17:14.160 --> 0:17:16.400 day of love. They know that not to be true. 0:17:16.400 --> 0:17:19.600 Can you be part of a cult when in fact 0:17:19.640 --> 0:17:20.920 you know you're lying? 0:17:21.480 --> 0:17:25.560 The answer is, I'd have to study case by case, 0:17:25.880 --> 0:17:28.639 and most people in a mind control cult, or what 0:17:28.720 --> 0:17:32.120 I call fringe members, they really have no clue what 0:17:32.440 --> 0:17:35.359 is actually going on inside the group, much less at 0:17:35.400 --> 0:17:38.560 the leadership level. And so when people say, do you 0:17:38.640 --> 0:17:41.200 think everyone who voted for Trump isn't a cult? 0:17:41.280 --> 0:17:42.480 It's like, how can. 0:17:42.320 --> 0:17:44.840 I say that a lot of people just vote whatever 0:17:44.920 --> 0:17:48.399 party their parents voted, what they voted in the past. 0:17:48.560 --> 0:17:50.600 But you know better than most. 0:17:51.240 --> 0:17:56.080 You can turn someone ideologically, you can buy somebody off, 0:17:56.200 --> 0:17:58.440 you can blackmail somebody. 0:17:58.720 --> 0:18:01.520 It's also in their interest. Ted Cruises and the jdvange 0:18:01.760 --> 0:18:03.880 even if whether they believe it or not, they benefit 0:18:03.920 --> 0:18:05.880 from it because they're at the top of that pyramid. 0:18:06.040 --> 0:18:08.639 I was at the top of the pyramid. I didn't 0:18:08.640 --> 0:18:12.880 have power, but I was being promised my own mansions 0:18:12.920 --> 0:18:15.919 and security guards and all the rest. I was twenty 0:18:16.040 --> 0:18:19.359 years old, twenty one years old. It was crazy, but 0:18:19.520 --> 0:18:24.280 I really couldn't think negative thoughts. It was deemed evil 0:18:24.440 --> 0:18:28.080 spirits trying to invade me. So I was taught thought 0:18:28.160 --> 0:18:33.359 stopping techniques to shut down any negative thought. And is 0:18:33.400 --> 0:18:38.160 it possible that Elon Musk has been radicalized? I think 0:18:38.200 --> 0:18:43.720 it is possible. Is it possible JD Vance has been radicalized? Yeah, 0:18:43.800 --> 0:18:45.000 I think it's possible. 0:18:45.160 --> 0:18:49.920 I don't know. But my solution is to. 0:18:49.640 --> 0:18:54.680 Teach everyone about the influence continuum, the bite model, let 0:18:54.680 --> 0:18:58.800 their family and friends who knew them before learn about it, 0:18:58.840 --> 0:19:02.640 and let them interact and ask questions in a respectful 0:19:02.720 --> 0:19:06.680 way to get at what's true and what's real. 0:19:07.200 --> 0:19:09.920 Whether it's true or not. There's also the punishment model 0:19:09.960 --> 0:19:15.480 as well, so you know, cults obviously involved shunning or exclusion. Right, 0:19:15.520 --> 0:19:18.480 So even if you know something's wrong, you still sit 0:19:18.520 --> 0:19:22.040 there and think, if I say this and this goes 0:19:22.040 --> 0:19:24.560 for religion, and yeah, I'll actually back this up with Trump, 0:19:24.880 --> 0:19:28.439 even if you don't believe that the election was stolen 0:19:28.520 --> 0:19:30.520 or you see no evidence for it. But the very 0:19:30.560 --> 0:19:34.399 fact of you saying that out loud glued you because 0:19:34.400 --> 0:19:37.440 it is totally in or totally up, which for a 0:19:37.480 --> 0:19:39.760 little bit of both sides. Rism isn't like that. On 0:19:39.800 --> 0:19:42.840 the other side, if you're a Democrat and you say, well, 0:19:42.920 --> 0:19:45.080 I don't think Biden did that greater job, it's not 0:19:45.160 --> 0:19:47.320 the end of you. But if you say I don't 0:19:47.320 --> 0:19:50.240 think Trump did a good job, or this is a failure, 0:19:50.320 --> 0:19:52.400 then you're out. It's an in or and out sort 0:19:52.440 --> 0:19:52.680 of thing. 0:19:52.760 --> 0:19:57.560 It's a spot on and I interviewed David Weisman for 0:19:57.640 --> 0:20:01.879 the Cult of Trump, who is a self per first magatroll. 0:20:02.560 --> 0:20:06.159 He was an Army vet who would meet and be 0:20:06.320 --> 0:20:09.919 sent out to harass libtards and people who were in 0:20:09.960 --> 0:20:13.600 the Cult of sorrows, and he had an interaction with 0:20:13.680 --> 0:20:18.840 the comedian Sarah Silverman, who instead of just blocking him 0:20:19.040 --> 0:20:22.800 or calling him names, she said, I think it was 0:20:22.880 --> 0:20:25.840 on Twitter. Oh you are a veteran, thank you for 0:20:25.880 --> 0:20:30.280 your service. And he was like shocked that she even 0:20:30.560 --> 0:20:34.919 recognized he existed. And he had been harassing her around 0:20:34.960 --> 0:20:39.040 gun control stuff because of school shootings, and so she 0:20:39.920 --> 0:20:43.080 asked him. She said, so you're a serviceman, what's your 0:20:43.200 --> 0:20:47.280 solution to the gun problem where kids are being shot 0:20:47.359 --> 0:20:51.119 up at school? And he realized he had never thought. 0:20:51.560 --> 0:20:55.719 He doesn't have his own ideas about what would solve it, 0:20:55.720 --> 0:20:59.440 but it changed his life because he started questioning it. 0:21:00.040 --> 0:21:03.240 And the reason I'm sharing this is to confirm your point, Jerry. 0:21:03.680 --> 0:21:07.960 As soon as he started questioning it publicly, everybody turned 0:21:08.000 --> 0:21:10.840 on him in the Trump call, he was a pariah, 0:21:10.920 --> 0:21:13.919 he was evil, and that confirmed for him there was 0:21:13.960 --> 0:21:19.520 something wrong. Very recently, the humanist chaplain at MIT and Harvard, 0:21:19.560 --> 0:21:24.840 greb Epstein, just published a book called tech Agnostic, saying 0:21:24.960 --> 0:21:28.600 that big tech is now the new world religion and 0:21:28.840 --> 0:21:35.439 outing these billionaires' ideologies of transhumanism and long termism and 0:21:36.000 --> 0:21:41.320 accelerationism and crypto saying like they want to remake the world, 0:21:41.640 --> 0:21:46.040 and I'm an agnostic. I don't believe that's like real, 0:21:46.440 --> 0:21:48.879 That's what we should live our lives to go to 0:21:48.960 --> 0:21:56.119 Mars and sacrifice humans for future ai androids that will 0:21:56.400 --> 0:21:59.720 populate all the galaxies. And I'm with him on. 0:21:59.560 --> 0:22:02.160 That them on that job. So, based on your experience, 0:22:02.200 --> 0:22:04.000 what is the best way to help people who want 0:22:04.040 --> 0:22:04.920 to leave cults. 0:22:05.160 --> 0:22:08.320 I'm going to first say what you shouldn't do, and 0:22:08.520 --> 0:22:13.040 almost everybody does. They try to argue with the person 0:22:13.680 --> 0:22:17.879 with fact and persuade them, and they attack the leader 0:22:18.000 --> 0:22:22.000 the doctrine or the policy which is guaranteed to reinforce 0:22:22.080 --> 0:22:26.120 the cult identity and make them feel like you're persecuting them. 0:22:26.720 --> 0:22:28.720 So that's what you'd never want to do. 0:22:28.720 --> 0:22:30.120 Which is what we do on that Pope. 0:22:30.280 --> 0:22:32.600 Yeah, it is, but this we can certainly tell you 0:22:32.680 --> 0:22:33.520 it is ineffective. 0:22:33.600 --> 0:22:37.919 Yeah, it's effective for your base who want to listen 0:22:38.000 --> 0:22:40.320 to you, but it's not going to help the people 0:22:40.359 --> 0:22:43.720 that we're trying to rescue. And what we and what 0:22:43.880 --> 0:22:46.960 most people have done with their family and friends who've 0:22:46.960 --> 0:22:51.080 gotten into Mega world is block them. Er say, I 0:22:51.119 --> 0:22:53.399 never want to talk to you about politics, like we 0:22:53.480 --> 0:22:57.440 can meet for Thanksgiving, but we'll talk about sports or whatever. 0:22:57.880 --> 0:23:01.439 And for me, that's the biggest thing we could be 0:23:01.520 --> 0:23:05.520 doing is training people how to talk with people in 0:23:05.600 --> 0:23:11.040 mind control cult respectfully, with curiosity, with active listening. But 0:23:11.160 --> 0:23:14.080 the most powerful technique is what was done with me, 0:23:14.920 --> 0:23:18.080 is to ask their a question that makes the think 0:23:18.560 --> 0:23:21.840 and then follow up with another question, but not from 0:23:21.880 --> 0:23:25.640 a I'm right, you're wrong, but I'm just curious how 0:23:25.720 --> 0:23:28.880 you make sense of this. Then you can ask them 0:23:28.920 --> 0:23:31.439 to go back in time to their first memory of 0:23:31.480 --> 0:23:34.439 Donald Trump and they'll say, Oh, I saw him on 0:23:34.480 --> 0:23:36.560 the Apprentice. What do you think I thought he was 0:23:36.600 --> 0:23:40.480 an asshole. Oh that's interesting, you thought he was an asshole. 0:23:40.640 --> 0:23:44.080 So tell me walk me through slowly how you came 0:23:44.160 --> 0:23:48.520