Donald Trump is a master manipulator who exhibits the same behaviors as dangerously famous cult leaders who spread confusion and fear while demanding absolute loyalty and creating alternative ‘facts’ and realities to attack critics.

‘These are the same methods used by Sun Myung Moon, L. Ron Hubbard, David Koresh, Lyndon LaRouche and Jim Jones’, writes noted cult expert and Harvard Medical School teacher Steven Hassan in his upcoming book The Cult of Trump, published by Free Press.

Once a member of the dangerously manipulative Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church in the 70s, Hassan escaped the Moonies and believes that ‘Trump has gotten where he is today because he has exploited that same cult leader playbook – with his absolute confidence, grandiosity of “Only I can fix this”, sowing fear and confusion, lying about the facts and belittling critics’.

Following the cult leader profile, Trump commands devotion from his audience at rallies, uses patriotic music to herald his appearance while supporters wearing his hats stand cheering behind him on camera.

He harangues endlessly about how misunderstood he is by the media that he now labels as ‘corrupt’ and not just ‘fake news’, and repeats how great his followers are and how much he loves them.

President Trump uses rallies that he ostensibly attends to help other Republicans get elected as charging stations where he can demonize his perceived enemies

Once a member of the dangerously manipulative Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church in the 70s, author Hassan escaped the Moonies and believes that ‘Trump has gotten where he is today because he has exploited that same cult leader playbook

The author likens Trump to cult leaders like David Koresh who had an absentee mothers and that created ‘insecure parental attachment’ as well as narcissism

Hassan maintains the president sounds like cult leader Jim Jones, who directed a mass suicide and murder of more than 900 followers at Jonestown in Guyana in 1978 In his dying breath, Jones said it was ‘all the media’s fault. Don’t believe them’

Hassan writes that the Trump presidency can be evaluated by studying the psychology of mind manipulation and influence from these past cult leaders so that we don’t ignore the lessons of history – of Jonestown and other destructive groups --- at our own peril.

It is fear that defines Trump’s philosophy, his personality and his presidency, according to the author.

One of his first campaign issues was to build a great Wall along the Mexican border to ‘insulate, isolate and elevate America’ from the rest of the dangerous world.

The Cult of Trump is published by Free Press and is available on Amazon October 15

The concept of the Wall allowed Trump to play on images of murderers and rapists gathering at the southern border -- instilling fear in people’s minds of the danger posed by these presumed unruly and hostile immigrants – and that included Mexicans and even Muslims -- all part of the vast migrant caravan.

He pumped up the immigration crisis at the border trying to get funding for the wall and belief in the fear he conjured up.

Trump’s other enemies include globalists, radical left-wing Democrats, socialists, Hollywood actors, and the liberal media.

According to him, they all want to destroy America.

Trump has copied dictators and cult leaders throughout history with his fear mongering and playing on existing fears, amplifying those fears and distorting them with competing versions of reality and then using the tag line, ‘Trust me’, or ‘Believe me’.

He now sounds like cult leader, Jim Jones, who directed a mass suicide and murder of more than 900 followers at Jonestown in Guyana in 1978. In his dying breath, Jones said it was ‘all the media’s fault. Don’t believe them’.

Trump is a master media manipulator who never played by traditional political rules.

He called media outlets to insult his opponents, brag and lie about his own accomplishments while getting billions of dollars worth of free publicity because of the outrageous things he was willing to say.

Cult leader and presidential hopeful Lyndon LaRouche gestures at a news conference saying the nomination of Judge Robert H. Bork to the Supreme Court and the Senate Chairman, Senator Joseph Biden were both, 'two evils'

The 11 cult leader tactics Trump uses 1. Absolute confidence Cult leaders come across as self-assured and all-knowing, leading their followers to have confidence in them too. 2. 'Only I can fix this' grandiosity Trump follows the pattern by teasing secret information or playing up the problems his supporters have, then uses the tag line, ‘Trust me’, or ‘Believe me’ to instill faith in him. 3. Sowing fear and confusion Trump has copied dictators and cult leaders throughout history with his fear mongering and playing on existing fears, amplifying those fears and distorting them. 4. Lying about the facts Lies are standard operating procedure and by 2017, Trump had told 2000 lies but that number climbed to 10,000 two years later. Again, lies are ‘right out of the Cult Leader Playbook’, writes Hassan, and are used to stoke fear and hold onto power – just a business strategy to keep people watching. 5. Belittling critics Trump is known for coming up with insulting nicknames for his opponents such as Crooked Hillary and Pocahontas for Elizabeth Warren. 6. Commanding devotion Trump uses the same arsenal of indoctrination techniques to grab attention and devotion – ‘shunning, shaming, expulsion and physical punishment’. His supporters wear his gear, copy his phrases and are vocal about their admiration. 7. Claiming he's misunderstood Trump rails against the media for not understanding him. Jim Jones, who directed a mass suicide and murder of more than 900 followers at Jonestown in Guyana in 1978. In his dying breath, Jones said it was ‘all the media’s fault. Don’t believe them’. 8. Praising his followers and boasting about how much he loves them 9. Use of music, vocal patterns, repetition of phrases Trump's clichés and the loaded language from ‘lock her up’, build the wall, are all for mind control. 10. Us vs. them mentality Trump uses rallies where he can demonize his perceived enemies, from the media, globalists, radical left-wing Democrats, socialists, Hollywood actors, and the liberal media. 11. Sense of entitlement Trump exhibits the same sense of entitlement in evading paying tax, just like Sun Yung Moon, as well as a serious lack of empathy after Puerto Rico was wiped out by Hurricane Maria in 2017 and he refused to send money but instead went down and tossed out rolls of paper towels. Advertisement

The clichés he uses and the loaded language from ‘lock her up’, build the wall, and insulting nicknames for his opponents from Crooked Hillary and Pocahontas are all for mind control – to fan fear and implant phobias.

He consciously lied about questioning President Obama’s birth certificate – to grab headlines.

All of these techniques are just another bullying behavior of an impulsive, incompetent president who rants on through his barrage of daily tweets sowing confusion and distorting reality, according to Hassan.

Trump uses these rallies that he attends to help other Republicans get elected to office as charging stations where he can demonize his perceived enemies.

He exhibits the same sense of entitlement in evading paying tax, just like Sun Yung Moon, as well as a serious lack of empathy after Puerto Rico was wiped out by Hurricane Maria in 2017 and he refused to send money but instead went down and tossed out rolls of paper towels.

He expressed envy when he witnessed the massive number of people admiring North Korea’s Kim Jong-Un and Russian President Putin under their regimes.

‘He knows the cult playbook tactics’, writes the author.

He uses false enemies citing the Mexicans, Muslims and media to reinforce the us-versus them thinking.

He sets up mass rallies with supporters wearing slogans on wardrobe and chanting slogans and he continually fans fear and implants phobias.

Lies are standard operating procedure and by 2017, Trump had told 2000 lies but that number climbed to 10,000 two years later, according to the Washington Post that’s keeping a close tab.

Again, lies are ‘right out of the Cult Leader Playbook’, writes Hassan, and are used to stoke fear and hold onto power – just a business strategy to keep people watching.

Trump has reinvented himself many times, and the latest from being a brash and controversial reality TV star to the most powerful person on earth, solely thanks to the Apprentice.

He had no ideal ideology other than the one he had as a businessman – which was winning.

Fred Trump first rescued his son and took him under his authoritarian wing when his cold mother cared little about her children.

Cult leaders Charles Manson, Jim Jones and David Koresh all had an absentee mothers and that created ‘insecure parental attachment’ as well as narcissism, writes Hassan.

Fred exposed his son to religion through Norman Vincent Peale, considered a cult leader when Peale claimed he was God’s salesman.

Fred regularly took Donald into NYC to hear Peale speak and it was a highlight of Trump’s youth spent in Queens.

‘If you believe in yourself 100 percent and pray for financial success, God will grant you blessings’, Peale preached.

Peale used repetition and rhythmic vocal cadences as well as vivid imagery in his preaching and that effect remained with Trump all his life that he regurgitated for use with ‘the Wall’ and ‘dangerous foes’.

Fred Trump pumped up Donald by telling him, ‘You are a killer. You are a king’.

But when the little ‘king’ who was an aggressive little bully started collecting knives, Fred packed him off to military school where he continued to bully other kids and teachers as well.

One teacher from his military school recently remembered Trump as a troublemaker in school: ‘Even then he was a little sh*t’.

The Rev. Moon Sun Myung, at center, performs a mass wedding ceremony for 1,800 couples from 20 countries at Seoul's Changchung gymnasium on February 8, 1975

Trump wanted to be recognized as handsome and charming but those two descriptions never came up in his profile description.

He had always been fascinated with Hollywood and movie making and desperately wanted to attend USC but he was rejected because of lousy grades so he turned to Fordham University in the Bronx, a Jesuit school.

After two years, he transferred to the Wharton school at the University of Pennsylvania where he graduated without honors.

From there it was business with dad who had a longstanding reputation for being a swindler who went after mid and low income housing in New York’s outer boroughs.

L. Ron Hubbard was the founder of the Church of Scientology

Fred had a reputation of being mobbed up and made use of mob-owned construction companies.

He was pals with Roy Cohn, Senator Joseph McCarthy’s chief council and fixer during his communist and homosexual witch hunts in the ‘50s.

Cohn became Trump’s lawyer and fixer in the early eighties when he was looking to escape his father’s outer-boroughs empire and move into Manhattan’s real estate world.

But first Trump had to borrow more than $60 million from dad to start his business in New York, hang out at trendy nightclubs and bars with models – and learn the ways of Cohn.

Cohn had a reputation for attacking, never apologizing, stopping at nothing to reach his goals, distracting his opponents as well as lying and cheating.

‘Those are the rules of war. Donald learned that from Roy’, stated Trump adviser and Cohn protégé, Roger Stone.

When Trump was cast as host of the Apprentice, he was labeled as a D-lister. He was a clown-like figure who couldn’t be taken seriously.

‘We knew Trump was a fake...but we made him out to be the most important person in the world, made the court jester the king’, stated the show’s supervising editor, Jonathan Braun.

The smoke and mirrors rehabbed Trump’s image into a ‘Master of the Universe’ and the show was the single biggest factor that put Trump in the national spotlight.

Author Steven Hassan is a noted cult expert and Harvard Medical School professor

Damaging racist and sexist remarks are purported to be on those Apprentice tapes that have been secreted away.

Shows were also reportedly heavily edited because Trump was not articulate.

Trump ran with the notoriety of the show after fourteen years to promote his self-branded companies and seek out licensing deals.

Following the cult leader profile, Trump is known to lie, cheat and steal with no empathy, no conscience in his own businesses.

‘The question is to what extent does Trump exhibit a similar malignant narcissistic profile of a destructive cult leader just like Moon’, asks the author.

He uses the same arsenal of indoctrination techniques to grab attention and devotion – ‘shunning, shaming, expulsion and physical punishment’.

Trump has more than 3500 litigations in the courts that he has used to harass and discourage people. He was the plaintiff in 1900 cases.

Tony Schwartz, Trump’s ghostwriter, wrote, ‘Trump felt compelled to go to war with the world. It was a binary, zero-sum choice for him: you either dominated or you submitted. You either created and exploited fear or you succumbed to it’.

Now the Republican Party under Trump has been transformed into its opposite. It used to be about deficit spending but since taking office, Trump has racked up a trillion dollar federal deficit.

There are a variety of cults, according to Hassan, including political cults that ‘deceptively recruit, indoctrinate, and ultimately control the lives of their members’.

‘It may be hard to view the president of the United States in this light --- but the warning signs are in plain sight’.

‘It’s not their beliefs that define these groups as cults but the way they deceptively recruit, indoctrinate and ultimately control the lives of their members’, writes Steven Hassan, who warns again not to ignore the lessons of history.

