Many of you are aware that I have been writing a large number of blogs concerning the current President of the United States, Donald Trump. I have been working tremendously hard on an extremely short deadline to produce a book that connects the dots with my involvement with the Moon cult since 1974 and my fasting on the Capitol stairs for President Richard Nixon because “God wants Nixon to be President” despite Watergate and calls for impeachment. Sun Myung Moon was brought to meet Nixon right after the Family’s National Prayer Breakfast in 1974. Jeffrey Sharlet wrote about this group in two books, The Family and C Street. Recently, Netflix put online a docuseries on the Family which is a must see. My book goes into much, much more than this one group.

When my book agent suggested the book and thought it should have this exact title, I had a range of reactions. My main reaction was that Trump displayed the same stereotypical profile of most of the cult leaders I have encountered in my forty-year career. Furthermore, pathologically lying, almost never apologizing or admitting a mistake, blaming everyone else and demanding blind loyalty are all very disturbing characteristics he displays. When framing what I thought was important to include in this book, I decided that the Influence Continuum, the BITE model, Lifton’s 8 criteria, and social psychology material were crucial to understanding what has happened to elect Trump and allow his takeover of the Republican Party, thus posing a formidable base of over 60 million Americans.

As I read many books, articles, watched numerous documentaries and conducted many interviews, I realized there was so much more that would be covered in this book that had never been described before. I learned about actual cultish people, many of them billionaires, with their own political and financial agendas. Putin and Russian oligarchs, as well as groups whose leaders were involved in getting Trump elected, were influencing policies. The media was incorrectly describing Trump’s base as White Christian Evangelicals. Some of the groups I describe are Opus Dei, The Family (also called The Fellowship), The New Apostolic Reformation (some 10 million Americans strong and over 300 million internationally), Libertarians, the NRA, White Power and Alt-right extremists, to name just a few. I must mention the Moon organization and Scientology as two high profile cult groups that support Trump as well.

I learned about Fourth Generation Warfare, which was developed as a concept by an American military strategist William Lind and put into operation by the Christian right with Paul Weyrich. It is a strategy of delegitimizing leaders and institutions, sowing confusion, overload, conflict, and conspiracy theories in order to make people numb so they give up and surrender to the confident voice of a demagogue. I go into details about propaganda methods, Neuro-Linguistic Programming and communication strategies that come out of Ericksonian hypnosis.

Most importantly, I want people to stop the polarization and distrust. Instead, they should start taking practical steps to reclaim critical thinking, follow the rule of law, hold officials accountable and help wake everyone up to the reality of cult mind control. The future of the world depends on people waking up to the social influence processes being used on them by society’s institutions and churned out by propaganda mills and media. To be clear, my reason for writing this book is to bring my life’s work to fruition where human rights are respected, the earth’s fragile environment is protected, and where we do not allow dictators to rule through fear, threats, and control.

My hope is that all former cult members and their friends and family step up and share their knowledge with those people who do not yet understand that controlling behavior, information, thoughts, and emotions (BITE) can turn people into radically different folks. My hope is that if you have family or friends (who support Trump or hate Trump), that respectful relationships are rebuilt and real sharing starts taking place, rather than name-calling.