The Cult of Donald Trump

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Are there actually any Trump supporters left on WAB.

I don't believe so. Not enough of a welcoming echo chamber.

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Are there actually any Trump supporters left on WAB

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The local impact of Donald Trump: "They reshaped government in the MAGA image — and it caused chaos"



From the presidential election to the insurrection at the Capitol, Donald Trump and the MAGA movement are usually portrayed as a national news story. But the impact it's had on local politics is just as serious — and often quite devastating. Taking advantage of the low turnout at local elections, QAnoners, election deniers, and anti-vaccination extremists have been able to gain power on city councils and school boards, where they often proceed to wreak havoc on the local community.

In "Chaos Comes Calling: The Battle Against the Far-Right Takeover of Small-Town America," journalist Sasha Abramsky documents how two rural communities in the Pacific Northwest were overwhelmed by far-right radicals. It's a sobering story, but also one that offers hope. Concerned citizens in Clallam County, Washington, beat back the MAGA menace, offering a model for others looking to protect their communities, whether their immediate town or the nation. Abramsky spoke with Salon about his work and why it matters for the future.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

What communities did you decide to follow for this book, and why?

The book is focused mainly on two communities in the Northwest. One is in the far north of California, called Shasta County. The other one is on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington and the county is Clallam, where I focused on a small town called Sequim. They both had an extraordinary lurch rightward that gathered pace during the pandemic. Shasta County had long been right-wing, with a militia presence and the idea of seceding from the rest of California. Then the pandemic debates over social distancing and school closures and then the vaccines turbocharged everything. There was this purge, where moderate Republicans who had been in charge of the county beforehand lost out to the hard-right: Republicans who were aligned with the militia movement, who were spouting QAnon theories and who were very involved in the MAGA movement.

Sequim was historically a fairly liberal place but had low voter participation for local elections. So an organized hard-right seized power, simply because people weren't paying attention. In the pandemic era, the city government was taken over by somebody who was using city time and city resources to promote QAnon. It triggered a good governance backlash, where locals organized and pushed back successfully against QAnon and MAGA.

If you look at what happened in Shasta and you look at what happened in Clallam County, they provide a study of contrast, which has huge implications for our national story. A we going to be able to organize nationally, to push back against the MAGA movement? Or is the MAGA movement ascendant? It was a window into a much bigger story that was occurring nationally.

Even though these stories go in different directions, I was struck by a similarity: the dramatic emotional impact on the people these stories, because of their community tearing itself apart.

What happens when local communities get into this kind of political battle is neighbors turning against neighbors. It gets very bitter, very quickly. People on the left get embittered by people on the right. People on the right get embittered by people on the left. The room for a conversation disappears.

I was interviewing people on the left. I was interviewing people on the right. I was interviewing militia members. I have voices from across the community. And what I wanted to do was tell their stories in a complex way. I didn't want to reduce anyone to a caricature, because that defeats the objective. With what happened around the pandemic with the schools closing, with businesses shuttering, with the economic and social dislocation, I have sympathy with people on all sides, even those I disagree with. This was one of those issues that tore the country apart. It injected both irrational and rational anger into our politics. And it's still playing out today.

You can't understand the story I'm trying to tell without understanding three things. One of them was the rise of social media, which turbocharged the politics of rumor. The second thing was the rise of Donald Trump, which was intimately linked with the rise of social media. He injected a vast amount of anger into the politics of the country. The third thing was the pandemic, which just tore everybody apart, tore communities apart. I want people to understand the dislocation that was occurring and that still is occurring, not just at the national level, but on Main Street. Unless you understand that, it's impossible to navigate a way forward. And there has to be a way forward because the current moment is so dysfunctional. No democracy can survive that much anger over a prolonged period. For the sake of survival, we have to work out a more civil discourse.

A lot of us experience Trumpism and the MAGA movement as a national story. In these particular communities, it was felt on this granular local level. Why has this national story become such a localized phenomenon in some places?

Pragmatism used to define local politics: getting roads built, filling in potholes, making sure kids had safe spaces on the way to school. All of that local pragmatic politics got swamped by the sheer rage of the national discourse. But it goes the other way, too. The more local politics came to be defined by these increasingly angry battles, the more it played into a national narrative. A local story would be picked up by someone like Tucker Carlson, who would use it to whip up rage. Not just nationally, but because of social media, it would be picked up internationally.

One of the public health doctors that I focus on is a young woman named Alison Berry who was the public health officer for Clallam County. She was effective and smart. She came to grips with the local pandemic. When the state reopened for business, she noticed that there were these huge spikes in infections and that the spikes in infections were concentrated around bars and restaurants. And so she came up with this idea to impose a temporary vaccine mandate to sit indoors at a restaurant or a bar. Very rapidly the infection rates went down. It was a public health success, but it aroused a tremendous local backlash. Because of social media, the opponents were able to coordinate with people all over the world. And so Alison Berry, this anonymous, local public health official, suddenly was getting death threats from 10,000 miles away. You had the local anger. And then you had it amplified on bigger channels like Fox News. And then you had it amplified even more on social media. This is a toxic environment. Unless we get a handle on these technologies, unless we learn to use social media more responsibly, we're heading into a dark period where rumor replaces fact and that makes democracy extremely hard to function.

You retell a story from Forks, Washington, where rumors that "antifa" was coming to town got whipped up in 2020. An innocent family was threatened. What were people thinking, that they were ready to believe antifa was invading their small town?

You have to put yourself back in the mindset of the summer of 2020. We're in the depths of the pandemic. People have been socially isolating for months. People are dying every day by the thousands. So there was this terror of outsiders anyway. On top of that, you had the George Floyd protests, where all of this pent-up anger and frustration poured out onto the streets. And in small towns, there was a barrier mindset. People felt, "We've got to stop outsiders from coming in because we don't know who they are or where they're coming from or what their motives are."

In small towns around the country, these rumors took off that the big city anarchists were coming into the small communities to burn them down. Racial rumors started that people were coming to attack white folk. On the Olympic Peninsula, a few days into the protests, a rumor starts that a white school bus is going to come into town filled with people who are "antifa." And they're going to burn the local communities down. Unfortunately, this mixed-race family comes in looking only to camp and to escape from the pandemic a little bit in the woods. They get stopped by locals who are terrified that they are "antifa." They're followed into the woods by dozens of mainly young men on all-terrain vehicles with guns, in an incredibly remote part of the country. There's all the potential for a complete tragedy. There's all the potential for a lynching. Now it does get diffused in the end, after the sheriffs come in and convince the young guys to go home. But this family was at risk of serious physical harm because of this uncontrolled rumor mill.

It's tempting for many to believe this stuff is in the past, especially after the pandemic. But Donald Trump is seeding the idea that Democrats are gonna steal the 2024 election. He's signaling to local election officials that they need to interfere in the November election.

Donald Trump has fashioned a cultist political movement entirely around his personality and his rhetoric. Much of the Republican Party has been reduced to a one-man political cult. There's a warping of the idea of truth. There's a collapse of the idea that there is such a thing as an objective reality. Whatever Trump says goes. He can say one thing on Monday, he can say the exact opposite thing on Tuesday. In the minds of his followers, both things hold so. Trump's priming his followers for another election lie when he loses in November.

The case in point at the moment is Georgia, where the board of elections has been completely hijacked by a MAGA majority. Members of the board of elections are attending Donald Trump rallies, and Trump personally calls them out as heroes. They're already putting in place Election Day machinery where they can allow local counties and to avoid or delay certification. As far as I can tell, the idea Trump and his acolytes can sow enough chaos and enough distrust in the political system, and then just completely lock up the process. The Hail Mary is to throw it to the House of Representatives, which could produce a Republican president.

Now, I don't think that's going to happen. If Trump continues on the self-destructive path he's gone down over the last few weeks, there's a pretty good chance that he will lose so comprehensively that even the MAGA acolytes can't sow chaos to delay that. But it's hugely worrying that four years after the January 6 insurrection, the same man who prompted that insurrection is willing to try the same trick again in 2025 if he loses. I hope that people read the book and they realize that this is a story of our moment. This isn't a story of distant history. It's very much an ongoing story of our moment.

These two communities you write about had very different trajectories. What did you learn from this? How can we use this lesson to heal our larger national dysfunction?

In Clallam County, they set up what they called the Sequim Good Government League. They made sure it included a lot of Democrats, Republicans and independents. They fielded candidates who took on local figures who had embraced QAnon, including the mayor. They explained to the public just how dangerous this kind of ideology was. Over the course of two election cycles, they basically recaptured all of those spots in city government, on the council, and on school boards. There were some pretty conservative Republicans, and there were pretty liberal Democrats. But they agreed about the necessity of restoring local democracy. That worked very effectively. There wasn't the equivalent in Shasta County. Over the last few months, it's gotten better, but for years the vacuum was filled by the hard-right. The right gained control over the border county supervisors, they gained control over local school boards and they pushed this increasingly fringe agenda. They fired the public health officer. They fired the people who were in charge of county health services. They reshaped government in the MAGA image, and it caused chaos. It caused budgeting dysfunction. It caused tremendous upheavals in the provision of services.

Whatever one thought of the MAGA identity, it didn't work as a way to govern locally. The lesson here is when a community starts lurching far to the right, the most important thing is to organize and push back against that. Educate people. Knock on doors. Explain to people at community meetings just why this is a bad idea to let a local community slide into far-right chaos.

In Shasta, it's taken a long time, but belatedly, there is now pushback. The epicenter of this hard right revolt was a man named Patrick Jones. And Patrick Jones was recently defeated in this spring's primary election. Even in a place as right-wing as Shasta County, a critical mass of people did ultimately realize that this just isn't a good road to go down. The ultimate lesson here is that when people pay attention, most Americans just do not want to go down this road. It's ugly and it's dysfunctional and it promises nothing but chaos and upheaval.
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Of course it caused chaos. When the only qualification is loyalty to Trump, you're gonna have a bunch of uneducated, unqualified people suddenly in leadership. It's terrifying, especially when you consider the possibility of Trump winning again.

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Judge to approve auctions liquidating Alex Jones' Infowars to help pay Sandy Hook families

Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones ' Infowars media platform and its assets will be sold off piece by piece in auctions this fall to help pay the more than $1 billion he owes relatives of victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, under an order expected to be approved by a federal judge.

U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Christopher Lopez in Houston said during a court hearing Tuesday that he will approve the auctions that start in November. But he said he first must change a previous order to make it clear that the trustee overseeing Jones' personal bankruptcy case controls all the assets of Infowars parent company Free Speech Systems, which is owned 100% by Jones.

Despite the pending loss of his company, Jones vows to continue his talk shows through other means, possibly including a new website and his personal social media accounts. He also has suggested that Infowars' assets could be bought by his supporters, allowing him to continue hosting his show as an employee under the Infowars brand in their home city of Austin, Texas.

“It’s very cut and dry that the assets of Free Speech Systems, the website, the equipment, the shopping cart, all that, can be sold," Jones said on a recent show. "And they know full well that there are a bunch of patriot buyers, and then the operation can ease on.”

Jones and his company both filed for bankruptcy protection in 2022 — the same year Sandy Hook families won nearly $1.5 billion in defamation and emotional distress lawsuits against Jones for his repeatedly calling the 2012 school shooting a hoax staged by “crisis actors” to get more gun control legislation passed. Twenty first graders and six educators were killed in the Newtown, Connecticut shooting.

During two civil trials in Texas and Connecticut, parents and children of many of the victims testified that they were traumatized by Jones’ hoax conspiracies and his followers’ actions. They said they were harassed and threatened by Jones’ believers, some of whom confronted the grieving families in person saying the shooting never happened and their children never existed. One parent said someone threatened to dig up his dead son’s grave.

Jones is appealing the civil jury verdicts, citing free speech rights and questioning whether the families proved any connection between his comments, and the people who harassed and threatened the relatives. He has since acknowledged that the shooting did happen.

In June, Lopez converted Jones’ personal bankruptcy reorganization case into a liquidation, meaning many of his assets will be sold off to pay creditors except for his main home and other exempt property. The same day, Lopez also dismissed Free Speech Systems’ bankruptcy case after Jones and the families could not reach agreement on a final plan.

The sell-off order Lopez intends to approve would put Infowars' intellectual property up for auction on Nov. 13 including its trademarks, copyrighted material, social media accounts and websites. Jones' personal social media sites, including his account on the social platform X, which has 2.8 million followers, would not be included.

However, the trustee overseeing Jones' bankruptcy case, Christopher Murray, said Tuesday that he may soon seek court permission to also liquidate Jones' personal social media accounts and his other intellectual property — which Jones' attorneys have opposed. That issue could develop into another court fight in the bankruptcy case. Murray also is expected to sell many of Jones' personal assets.

The Sandy Hook families who won the Connecticut lawsuit want Jones to lose his personal social media accounts. Their lawyers further contend that the families should get a chunk of all of Jones' future earnings to help pay off his more than $1 billion debt.

Christopher Mattei, a lawyer for the Sandy Hook families in the Connecticut lawsuit, said the judge's signing of the auction order will be “a significant step forward” in the family's efforts to make Jones pay for his hoax lies.

“Alex Jones will no longer own or control the company he built,” Mattei said in a statement Tuesday. “This brings the families closer to their goal of holding him accountable for the harm he has caused.”

The rest of Infowars' assets, including computers, video cameras and other studio equipment, would be sold at a different auction on Dec. 10.

Jones has made millions of dollars over the years selling dietary supplements, apparel, survival gear, books and other items he promotes on his shows, which air on the internet and dozens of radio stations. It's unclear how much money would be raised by selling Infowars and Jones' assets, and how much money the Sandy Hook families would get.

Jones has about $9 million in personal assets, according to court filings. Free Speech Systems has about $6 million in cash on hand and about $1.2 million worth of inventory, according to previous court testimony.

Lawyers, financial experts and others who worked on Jones' bankruptcy cases — who have racked up millions of dollars in fees and expenses — are expected to be paid first.

A remaining legal dispute in the bankruptcy case is whether Free Speech Systems owes more than $50 million to another Jones-owned company, PQPR Holdings Limited. Free Speech Systems buys dietary supplements from PQPR to sell on the Infowars website. PQPR said it wasn't paid for many of the supplements and filed liens. Sandy Hook lawyers allege the debt is bogus.

If the debt is found to be valid, that could reduce any amount the Sandy Hook families ultimately get from the liquidations.
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That man and those like him are a boil on the ass of humanity.

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Sent by God
They’re gathering by the thousands. They’re growing fast.
They believe that Democrats are possessed by demons—and that Donald Trump must be president again at any cost.




On a sweltering evening in the thumb pad of Michigan’s mitten, a self-described prophet promised 700 Christians under a crisp white tent that they were about to cheat death.

They would do this by winning the swing state for Donald Trump.

The reasoning was simple: Each of the Christians assembled would soon feel a call to become a poll watcher or to knock on doors or to organize their church—to take part in some act that would aid the Republican presidential candidate. And that act would keep them safe, the prophet said, because God would not call them home before they had completed the task He had given them.

“The greatest argument you have with death is an unfulfilled assignment,” the man, Lance Wallnau, told the crowd.

This was the third stop of the “Courage Tour,” a traveling worship spectacle passing through key battleground states ahead of the upcoming presidential election. Organized by Wallnau, a sixtysomething Texas-based evangelical with a salesman’s persona, the three-day event was a marriage of the religious and the political, a swirl of prophecies and PowerPoints and speaking in tongues. It was a call to arms, a campaign strategy session, and—above all—an honest-to-God old-fashioned Pentecostal tent revival.

It was also a showcase of the power of a rapidly growing, militant right-wing movement in American Christianity.

Wallnau is a major leader in a coalition of Christians who believe that Trump is prophesied to play a critical role in the nation’s spiritual reformation—that the former president is destined to be a catalyst for the next Great Awakening, even. These Christians see Trump as a modern-day Cyrus the Great, the powerful empire builder and nonbeliever who is credited in the Old Testament with returning the Jews to the Holy Land. They believe that under Trump’s protection, American Christians will rise up, defeat their demonic enemies, and take their rightful place of power in the country.

This belief in a Trump prophecy has only grown stronger among the faithful since the former president survived an assassination attempt in July. It is so strong, in fact, that anything that could stand in Trump’s way—democratic or otherwise—is perceived as a force of evil that must be battled on a spiritual plane.

This has already played out once: After Trump lost the 2020 election, Wallnau held nearly daily rants about the stolen election on Facebook Live; he decreed in one online prayer call that God would overturn the election results. He spoke at a major rally for Christian election deniers in Washington on Dec. 12 of that year, warning that there was “a backlash coming” and announcing that it would be the “beginning of a Christian populist uprising.” He and other right-wing Christian leaders circled the Capitol while blowing shofars and praying for the election to be overturned, drawing clear parallels to the biblical story from the Book of Joshua in which the Israelite army marches around the city of Jericho, blowing horns until its walls crumble and the Israelites conquer the city and slaughter its inhabitants. The event, which preceded a night of political violence in the nation’s capital, drew thousands of attendees in what was widely seen as a precursor to the Jan. 6 riot.


Pro-Trump protesters gather in front of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, in Washington.

Wallnau did not participate in the storming of the Capitol, but he was at the Jan. 6 rally and was even slated to speak outside the building. He said that he and similar leaders in his movement had stayed up late at a D.C. hotel the night before the riot, looking—successfully, he claimed—for definitive evidence of “systemic national fraud.”

Though he later blamed antifa for the violence of Jan. 6—or, alternatively, dismissed negative media coverage of the riot as the works of the “false prophets of Baal”—Wallnau’s political rhetoric today is once again geared toward preventing another Trump loss at all costs. “We have to operate at a level where we can go against the gates of hell,” he told the crowd under the white tent in Michigan. “This is the room that can save the nation.”

For Americans unfamiliar with the evangelical world, it can be hard to grasp how rapidly this right-wing movement is changing Christianity in the U.S. and turning politics, in many Christians’ minds, into a zero-sum war between the forces of evil and the armies of God. Matthew Taylor, a scholar at the Institute for Islamic, Christian, and Jewish Studies, told me that in terms of influence, Wallnau may be “the most important political theologian of evangelicalism in this century so far.” Wallnau “has restructured how millions of evangelicals think about their life and their politics,” Taylor said. (Wallnau did not respond to requests for an interview or comment for this story.)

Wallnau’s ideas have taken off in particular among a group of Christians often referred to as neo-charismatics, evangelicals who speak in tongues and believe that the Holy Spirit has possessed them with supernatural gifts, including prophecy and healing; this religious cohort is also one of the fastest-growing segments of Christianity in the U.S. Now, four years after an election that many of these Christians continue to think was stolen, Wallnau and his faithful are on the campaign trail. “People don’t know. They’re going to look back on it in the future,” Wallnau promised the crowd in Michigan, “and they’re going to say the populist civic awakening began when believers prayed in Trump to disrupt the status quo.”

Wallnau and his cohort are doing everything they can to ensure that the prophecy is fulfilled. In Michigan, I began to see how far that could go.

As I pulled into the driveway of an inconspicuous host church outside Howell, Michigan, for the first day of the revival, I was welcomed by beaming children and women waving colorful, handmade signs: Jesus Is So Excited You’re Here. Today’s Your Day. Jesus Saves. The line of cars crawled toward the parking lot and into an overflow field abutting a baseball complex. Even with traffic-directing volunteers and access to open fields, it took a full 13 minutes to park.

The host church, Floodgate, is known in the area for its strident politics—according to an article in the Atlantic, its membership overwhelmingly comprises new arrivals attracted by its pastor’s anti-COVID ravings; pastor Bill Bolin told the magazine that “a lot of people from our church” traveled to D.C. for the Jan. 6 riots. Even still, it was clearly not prepared for the kinds of crowds Wallnau attracts.

At first, it would have been easy to forget that this was a political event if it hadn’t been for a cluster of vendor tents hosting groups such as the pro-Trump Turning Point USA. The main tent, an open-air structure filled with rows of folding chairs, exuded a festival-like atmosphere. The air was sticky with humidity, Christian rock blared from the speakers, and people were cheery. They were also, I noted with some surprise, not entirely retirement-age. In the crowd—overwhelmingly but not exclusively white—parents with young children hovered just beyond the tent, bouncing babies on hips or sprawled on blankets on the grass. T-shirts and shorts were the norm. No fussy church clothes here. Somewhere to the left of the tent, a group prayed in a huddle. When they broke apart, one of them blasted a shofar.

The event kicked off when a woman in a black T-shirt and jeans bounded across the stage, leading a band and the crowd in a spirited rendition of the 2023 Christian Billboard hit “Holy Forever.” Everyone knew the words. Over the next half-hour, the singer, a Georgia-based artist with 77,000 followers on Facebook, hit other contemporary evangelical hits, including 2019’s “Raise a Hallelujah” (sample lyric: “My weapon is a melody”) and 2023’s “Praise” (“My praise is a weapon”). In interludes, she pointed to individual attendees and passed along messages she’d received from God. “You feel like you can’t hold on that much longer,” she told a woman in a blue dress. “The Lord said”—and here her voice picked up into a yell, ready to break into the triumphant chorus—“ ‘I am going to renew her strength!’ ” The songs were catchy, and the energy in the tent was electric; I couldn’t help but join in, clapping to the beat.

After the musical portion of the night, Bolin, the host church’s pastor and a right-wing celebrity in this part of Michigan, spoke about his church’s explosion in membership over the coronavirus pandemic. He made fun of medical experts who supported COVID-19 vaccines, then, inexplicably, had the audience do the wave. (We were bad at it, but not for lack of enthusiasm.)


An hour into the event, Wallnau strode onto the stage with an easy and strikingly white smile. He worked up the attendees, eliciting murmurs of anger as he ranted about the left. He whipped them into states of anxiety (“Hell is more organized than we are”) and hope (“I received a word in Israel that Trump will be the next president”).

But he was warm. He poked fun at himself. During one short rant about the World Economic Forum and similar globalist threats, he winkingly said, “I can tell you’re an educated crowd of conspiracy enthusiasts.”

Over the next hour and a half, he primed the audience (and the 100,000 viewers he said were watching the livestream) for the hours of seminars ahead of them that weekend. There was a lot to cover; many hours would be dedicated to strategies for preventing the left from stealing the next presidential election. He called on the Christians to engage in “spiritual warfare,” a kind of religious practice meant to defeat evil forces through fervent prayer, praise, and other displays of faith. For neo-charismatics, these rituals are more effective when physically directed toward and in close proximity to the evil they are meant to address. This is why, ahead of the certification of the 2020 presidential election results, leaders in Wallnau’s movement traveled to D.C.: They felt called to pray as close as possible to the evil forces that were keeping the election from Trump. Many other Christians, inspired by this mission, followed them there.

What this kind of prayer does, according to Wallnau, is fortify God’s forces of angels against Satan’s armies. By speaking in tongues, throwing their hands up to the sky, singing God’s praises, anointing people with oil, blowing shofars, and calling upon God’s authority to defeat demons, neo-charismatics are commanding and assisting angels in the spiritual realm. Those angels, in Wallnau’s theology, are the ones waging the warfare against evil; earthbound Christians are aiding the army in a metaphysical sense. “We’re not warring with flesh and blood,” Wallnau told the crowd at the revival. “We’re warring with spirits working on people.”

Apostles and prophets like Wallnau are generals in this metaphysical army—they have the gift of being able to see, through prayer, into the workings of the spiritual realm and mobilize mass campaigns of believers to fight a strategic war on a supernatural plane.

More traditional conceptions of this kind of supernatural battle focus on personal stakes: praying to wage battle against whatever demonic force is causing depression or cancer or even a struggling marriage. Some Pentecostal churches choose to wage these spiritual battles against what they perceive as occult forces, such as freemasonry, new-age spirituality, and satanism. The neo-charismatic movement doesn’t dismiss prayer for individual struggles and certainly enjoys opposing the occult, but its real appetite is for national and ultimately global control of the earthly realm. Neo-charismatics who follow Wallnau and similar leaders want to use prayer to wipe civic and societal institutions clean of demonic forces, then populate those institutions with people who will implement and uphold a Christian society.

Wallnau ended the day on a loving note. He prayed for supernatural healing for those in pain: “In the name of the Lord, I rebuke Satan, get your hands off them,” he intoned. He told attendees to hug the person sitting next to them. Lightning rippled in the distant clouds, and he sat down at a keyboard and played his audience off with a jaunty show-tune performance of a song with lyrics pulled from the Book of Revelation. As the crowd streamed out of the tent, everyone was in high spirits.

The original Great Awakening was a series of 18^th- and 19^th-century religious revivals that swept through the American colonies and states, establishing evangelical Christianity as an enduring and powerful force in the country. The roots of the new Great Awakening Wallnau is hoping to kick off can be traced back to an evangelical project from about 30 years ago—but became supercharged during the pandemic.

In the 1990s, a cohort of evangelicals imagined a new revolution in Christianity—the group dubbed it the New Apostolic Reformation—that would reorganize worship around modern-day apostles and prophets who could hear directly from God and channel the divine into routine wonders. Most of these apostles and prophets were untethered to any larger organization or denomination. Some had their own churches; others, like Wallnau, served as itinerant preachers, taking messages to multiple congregations, as well as to TV and social media. But all these self-appointed prophets were relentlessly political. They warned of demons that threatened to harm Christians through laws and public schools and sinful movies, and they taught believers how to channel the Holy Spirit to fight off those demons. They urged followers to conquer the secular world and win it back from the forces of evil.

For years, the NAR remained on the fringes of evangelical Christianity. Few were comfortable with the incendiary talk of demonic possession and the stated push to totally erase the separation of church and state. But everything changed with Trump’s election.

At the beginning of his first presidential run in 2016, most mainstream evangelicals were wary of a thrice-married, philandering billionaire. But NAR leaders immediately praised Trump, a man they admired for his televangelistlike swagger. Wallnau in particular supported Trump long before he was taken seriously as a candidate, offering theologically contorted rationales for his devotion to the real estate tycoon. Once Trump became president, he drew prominent NAR members, including Wallnau, into his White House; his own spiritual adviser, Paula White-Cain, was one of them.

Trump knew little of doctrinal matters, but he could spot loyalty. His public favor boosted the NAR leaders; he also benefited from a message they began to spread that he had been divinely endorsed.

During the COVID pandemic, neo-charismatic churches run by NAR prophets swelled in numbers as they remained defiantly open despite lockdown rules. They attracted converts from mainstream Christian parishes that remained closed, and politically ambitious prophets in this network soon became Facebook celebrities. Some gained real-world influence: Sean Feucht, a Christian singer who led massive COVID-era worship events across the country, as well as a pro-Israel counterprotest at Columbia University this past spring, is an acolyte of the movement. So is Ché Ahn, whose Pasadena-based Harvest Rock Church successfully sued Gov. Gavin Newsom over the lockdown there in 2020.

As NAR leaders became the political power brokers of evangelical Christianity, their symbols and ideas proliferated. The “Appeal to Heaven” flag—a simple pine tree over a white background that has become a symbol of Christian nationalism and was flown at the insurrection, as well as by politicians including Speaker of the House Mike Johnson and Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito—was resuscitated by the NAR from its origins in the American Revolution. On Jan. 6, rioters blew shofars, Jewish ceremonial trumpets appropriated by neo-charismatics as a symbol of spiritual warfare, toward the Capitol and even into the broken windows of the Capitol building,summoning angels to engage in combat on behalf of Trump. When the Alabama Supreme Court briefly outlawed in vitro fertilization, its chief justice, Tom Parker, used terminology particular to the NAR to explain his reasoning. Powerful conservatives from varied Christian backgrounds have taken up the call to weaken the separation of church and state—a project that Wallnau and his ilk frame as going to battle for Christ’s kingdom on earth.

This is why, sweating in a black polo and khaki slacks, affable and smiling, Wallnau promised the members of the faithful in Michigan that they would be shortly hearing from God. “Every one of you has an assignment,” he said. “My job for all of you is to find your unfinished assignment, because America is too young to die.”


At an earlier point in his career, Wallnau was a motivational speaker, and on his professional websites and online merchandise stores he’s still described as a “strategist” and “futurist.” But over the past several decades, he has become most well known for resurrecting a niche, ’70s-era Christian call to arms: a mandate for believers to conquer the “seven mountainsof society”—family, religion, education, media, arts and entertainment, business, and government.

As Wallnau put it in an essay printed in the 2013 volume Invading Babylon, “We need more disciples in the right place, the high places. The world is a matrix of overlapping systems or spheres of influence. We are called to go into the entire matrix and invade every system with an influence that liberates that system’s fullest potential.”

And to Wallnau—and other similar charismatic evangelicals—the system’s fullest potential depends on Trump.

Taylor, the scholar and author of The Violent Take It by Force, a forthcoming book about the NAR’s influence on the Jan. 6 insurrection, has found in his research that more than 50 neo-charismatic Christian leaders were in Washington that day. Ahn, the California pastor, spoke at the main “Stop the Steal” rally on Jan. 5, calling it “the most important week in America’s history.” Another major NAR leader broadcast daily prayers ahead of the rally; in a predawn address hours before the insurrection, he too proclaimed on social media that it was “one of the most critical days in our history.” Taylor waded through hundreds of social media accounts from Christians involved in the Jan. 6 riot and noted that one of the most common denominators among them was interaction with these calls—and with Wallnau’s streamed rants.

Knowing all this, I had expected Wallnau in person to have a fiery personality to match his warlike rhetoric. And over the next few days, I would certainly see signs of Wallnau’s extremism, as when he reiterated that in the End Times, Jesus would be coming back “not as a therapist” but “in flames to wreak vengeance on his enemies.” Or when he warned that the predatory left was going to make children suicidal by “evangelizing” them into thinking they’re the wrong gender, at one point telling the crowd, “You’re authorized to take the Philistines out of position.”

But I also saw a man who was disarmingly goofy. Twice during the three-day event, Wallnau recounted, in full detail, a scene from the movie Gladiator. Sitting in a movie theater in 2000, watching Maximus and his band of slaves fend off men in chariots in the Colosseum, Wallnau said, he had sensed God telling him to pay attention. Onstage two decades later, in his lengthy retelling of the scene—employing an impressive Russell Crowe impression—Wallnau shared the significance of the gladiators locking their shields, moving and fighting as one. He told members of the cheering crowd to lift their right hand in the air and, on the count of three, yell “As one!,” chopping their arm as if they were “breaking the neck of the demon afflicting you.”

The Gladiator spiel reminded me of an incident from 2022. That September, a major Twitter account had posted a video of a rally for the Christian nationalist Pennsylvania gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano in which a man onstage had commanded attendees to lift their right hand in the air, proclaiming, “America will have a new birth of liberty.” (Mastriano would go on to lose badly to Josh Shapiro.) Liberal Twitter users who shared the viral video online expressed horror at a Nazi salute’s being performed in Pennsylvania. In my car, I searched for the old clip. Sure enough, the man in the video was Wallnau, and he was leading Mastriano supporters in an “As one!” Gladiator chop.

I was a little irrationally indignant on his behalf. And for a moment, before I remembered that the “Courage Tour” was laying the groundwork for another such violent attack in the event of Trump’s loss this year, I felt for Wallnau. The secular world had undeniably, in this instance, distorted a rather benign action. Toward the end of that first night, Wallnau shared a message he had received from God, an articulation of his particular assignment: “They have a caricature of who you are, they’ve got the ‘weird MAGA Christian-nationalist insurrectionist’ narrative out there. Your job is to contradict the narrative.”

Talking to evangelical scholars later, I realized what was so striking to me about Wallnau’s delivery. Against all evidence to the contrary, I had the feeling in that tent that he just wanted to heal the country, to bring us together. And I was, in a strange way, almost happy for the charismatics around me: They were being offered the promise of purpose in their lives, a pitch to be part of something big and exciting. “We often think of Christian extremism as about hate,” Taylor told me. “Wallnau has found a way to make it inspirational.”

When I arrived at Floodgate on the second morning, this time prepared for the heat with three full water bottles, the music was going again, and Wallnau, now in a more casual “Courage Tour” shirt and gray jeans, was busy laying hands on believers.

Just in front of the stage, a dozen or so attendees clustered around him, waiting to be anointed with oil. I watched as Wallnau grasped a woman by the back of the neck and prayed over her, forehead to forehead, murmuring. Then, suddenly, gripping her head in both hands, he blew on her brow. As if she’d been bowled over by a hurricane-force wind, the woman fell back into the arms of her fellow believers, who gently eased her to the ground, where she lay in the downy grass with four other siblings in Christ, overcome by the sublime presence of the Holy Spirit.

To their left, a hyenalike shriek pierced through the Christian rock. A woman had been possessed with holy laughter, which some of the faithful—after particularly intoxicating brushes with the Spirit—can by seized with for hours at a time. (The wife of the pastor of Floodgate, we were told, had once laughed for four straight days.) The possessed woman convulsed in her folding chair, heaving with laughter, drawing enraptured hand-laying from her compatriots.

That this kind of religious ecstasy preceded a day of seminars amazed me. Soon, Wallnau would be introducing the day’s first speaker, a Christian nationalist historian named Bill Federer, whose PowerPoint on U.S. history was both boring and packed with misleading assertions (for example, that many historic lynchings targeted Republicans who had registered Black people to vote) as well as many outright falsehoods (including that a 2023 reproductive health bill in California would have allowed people to kill babies 28 days after birth). (Federer did not respond directly to a request for comment but rejected the characterization of his presentation as misleading or containing falsehoods in a lengthy blog post about the Civil War, abortion, and religion.)

Federer was followed by representatives from the America First Policy Institute, Turning Point USA Faith, Moms for America, and a group for Black conservatives selling “MAGA Black” baseball caps, which I saw just white people wearing. “You’re the only people who go from divine-healing miracle service and getting filled [with the Holy Spirit] to precinct strategies,” Wallnau said approvingly to the crowd.

I sat through sessions that presented convoluted (and wildly incorrect) evidence that the 2020 election had been stolen. I watched a representative of the group My Faith Votes propose a letter-writing campaign. (Wallnau added that people should lay hands on the letters in prayer before sending them.) I saw one woman urge people to stop supporting “woke companies” and one man advise attendees to learn how to file FOIA requests.

The practical approach didn’t always go over well: When the America First Policy Institute representative posited that Trump had lost his election because Christian men over the age of 60 hadn’t turned out in high-enough numbers, a bearded man behind me repeatedly yelled, his voice hot with anger, “We didn’t lose!”

I had imagined a bifurcated experience based on the “Courage Tour” program: political lectures during the day, worship at night. But for the leaders of this movement, as with their goals for the country, the political and the spiritual could not be separated. One speaker, while displaying an image of Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, screamed, with true fire-and-brimstone energy, “I prophesy they’re going to jail!”

Another lecturer, a man named Joshua Standifer, came onstage the first day just as a soft rain began to fall, breaking the afternoon heat. “They say rain is a sign of blessing,” he said, to appreciative audience laughter.

The Lord, Standifer explained, had called on him to start a group called the Lion of Judah, which would serve as a kind of National Rifle Association for biblical values. The group’s goal was to install believers in polling places, “like a Trojan horse” in the enemy’s camp. To do that, he encouraged everyone to become an election worker so that they could document and report suspicious activity and lay the ground for potential legal challenges.

“There’s more of us than them,” he said, in language that echoed certain rioters on Jan. 6. “We can take back this nation, one county at a time. We’re going to win Michigan.”

In an email, Standifer later said that his organization was focused not on ensuring a particular electoral outcome but on getting Christians involved in politics. “Regardless of what the media or others may think, our cities need election workers who will stand for truth, justice and who have a moral compass rooted in the Lord,” he wrote. “The rhetoric and labeling of Christians as threats to democracy is wrong and dangerous during the uncertain times in which we live.”

After Standifer left the stage, Wallnau led a prayer to expose hidden works of darkness affecting the election, before asking those who felt energized to raise their hands in prayer. He was anointing them, he said, to become poll workers.

Watching Wallnau lead these Michiganders through a kind of spiritual oath to “protect” the election, I felt a deep sense of dread. This seemed far more dangerous than any hype man screaming about the evils of the secular world. Wallnau’s vision for his great revival hinged on another Trump administration. The stakes meant that there was no room for a divergent outcome—or for anyone, really, who might disagree.

As another headlining charismatic prophet at the event, Mario Murillo, put it, “It’s no longer about conservatives vs. liberals. It’s not Republicans vs. Democrats. Now it’s good vs. evil.”

Murillo was more serious in tone than Wallnau. A bearded man with a set grimness to his face, Murillo led the main worship session on the second evening. In his introduction, he launched into a story of a pastor being cured of Stage 4 cancer the previous night in Eau Claire. As his story wrapped, the air, which had felt stifling under the tent, began to stir. “I had asked for a cool breeze,” Murillo said simply. There was none of Wallnau’s winking. (Murillo did not respond to a request for comment.)



“We live in a moment that is precisely like that of America before the Civil War,” he thundered. “All of the features of abuse, dishonesty, and evil are present now.

“America has sinned,” he said.

“Amen!” the audience yelled.

“America has abandoned God,” he said.

“Amen!” the audience yelled, louder.

“There’s no sweeping under the rug the seeds America has sown,” he said.

“You are the lowest human being on the planet if you take a scalpel to a child to alter their gender.”

Around me, everyone got to their feet, furiously applauding.

“What they’re trying to do to our children should awaken us to war in Jesus’ name,” he roared. “We have got to declare war on the demons trying to come after our children.”

As a brassy hum picked up around the tent—the sound of multiple shofars being blown—Murillo proclaimed, “The Founding Fathers didn’t want us to be loyal to the government. They wanted us to be loyal to the truth.”

Then, more quietly, his voice creaking: “The power of God is on my body, so strong I’m barely able to stand.”

I looked up at the people on their feet around me, who just half an hour earlier I had seen happily singing about God’s grace. They were now yelling and cheering. Someone behind me screamed out, “War!”

According to neo-charismatic prophets, the assassination attempt on Donald Trump on July 13 had been foretold. Several months earlier, on March 14, an Oklahoma prophet with 359,000 subscribers posted a podcast episode to YouTube in which he discussed the spiritual ramifications of the impending solar eclipse. In it, he also mentioned a vision he’d had: “I saw Trump, rising up, and then I saw an attempt on his life,” the prophet said. “This bullet flew by his ear, and it came so close to his head that it busted his eardrum.”

After Trump did indeed survive an assassination attempt that wounded his ear, neo-charismatic evangelicals spoke of the incident as “proof” of “miracles.” Jentezen Franklin, the pastor of a Southern megachurch, compared the moment with Moses’ anointing Aaron as his high priest in Leviticus because the book mentions placing blood on Aaron’s ear. And as Wallnau would later tell his Facebook followers, when Wallnau learned of the assassination attempt, he went to his prayer closet, “where he keeps a cardboard cutout image of Trump,” and, “as he prayed, he cupped Trump’s cardboard ears with both hands.” He told his followers that he hadn’t yet known where Trump had been shot. It all added up to an irrefutable message to those plugged into this world: Trump was favored by God.

In some ways, though, the response to Trump’s miracle seemed almost perfunctory. It had been almost a decade since Wallnau and other NAR leaders first rallied behind the former president as a kind of savior figure; the consensus on his righteous role is nearly universal among that segment of charismatics. The event that actually brought new life to the right-wing charismatic world came soon afterward, when Kamala Harris replaced Joe Biden at the top of the Democratic ticket.

“She represents an amalgam of the spirit of Jezebel in a way that will be even more ominous than Hillary because she’ll bring a racial component, and she’s younger,” Wallnau said in a video about Harris. In another, he said that she appeared presidential only because of “witchcraft.” Murillo appeared on Wallnau’s podcast to discuss the “demonic power” at work in the new Democratic nomination. “That’s why God spared Trump’s life, for such a time as this,” Murillo said.

Because although Wallnau and his compatriots have paved the way for evangelicals to embrace Trump, their real power lies in how they vilify their enemies.

“They believe if God is not in control of something, automatically the devil is; it’s an either/or,” said Karrie Gaspard-Hogewood, a sociologist at Tulane University who studies neo-charismatic Christianity. “There’s no compromise with the devil.”

And when millions of Americans believe that Harris is literally possessed by a demon, or that her party is acting on behalf of the devil, that could have repercussions for how they expect their elected representatives to govern—and how they might treat a Trump loss. “God can’t be wrong; the prophet can’t be wrong,” Gaspard-Hogewood said. “It must be human error or some kind of nefarious act.”

This reality hit me in the tent that second night of the revival in Michigan. I could no longer conjure any cheer. My mood had been curdled by the transformation of such a friendly crowd, by Murillo’s raw anger, by the details from his diatribe: the way he said he was sick of Pride month, spitting out the word to hearty applause, or how he had the audience stand up and read the quote from American Revolutionary Thomas Paine: If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may have peace.

But where I heard warnings of violence, Murillo seemed to think he was spreading hope. He could see the agony of his fellow Americans as he traveled around to these events, he said. “The audiences are desperate. They’re broken. They’re coming to the tent because they read a card that said God could heal them. They’ve waited three to four hours in an emergency ward. They’ve been given drugs that have worse side effects than what’s actually wrong with them. They don’t have the money for their surgery. They don’t have the time to take off work to get well. They’re suffering. They’re in an American hell created by socialism. That compassion grips me. It consumes me.”

Then he pointed to a person in the crowd. “And then it hit me how God was healing a woman right over here,” Murillo said.

Quicky, he pointed again, to the back of the middle section of the tent. “God is healing a man, right somewhere near that pole. In your heart, in your chest. Heart disease is being healed.”

Again and again, he identified people who were being healed, with remarkable specificity. He directed a woman with a blond ponytail to place her hands on a second woman’s head and tell her that the Lord was curing her in her neck, back, chest, and legs in Jesus’ name. The healing, Murillo said, was backing up through the blond woman’s arm, in turn repairing her spine and eyes. The damage she had from a car accident, it’s all gone, he said. She began sobbing. “This is where cancer starts to vanish,” he cried out as the whole tent began speaking in tongues. “This is where diabetes starts to become a thing of the past.”

I watched an older woman grow overcome by the proclamation that a protrusion in her abdomen was being burned out of her body. I watched another woman, in a blue dress, cover her face, shaking and nodding, when Murillo told her that she had been scheduled for an operation but that that operation was canceled, all glory to Jesus Christ. I watched him tell another person that multiple sclerosis was leaving their body, then point around the assembled and declare that the other ailments he sensed—“cancer,” “heart disease,” “a lump in the throat that is scaring you to death”—had vanished.

The crowd was euphoric, and my earlier panic softened into a deep sadness. This was why this segment of Christianity was growing so rapidly, I realized. So many of these attendees were desperately seeking healing and answers. They were, in some way or another, deeply disappointed in society, misdirecting their anger onto immigrants, gay teachers, and transgender people. But they were bound together by shared suffering.

Murillo promised everyone that they would remember the healing they had experienced over the weekend. “You’re going to be talking about this 30 years from now,” he said, “the power of God, the way everyone got lost in Him.”

I had little doubt it would be true. And no doubt it did actually help some of those in pain: Medical experts have known for centuries that there are mysterious healing powers in belief. Everyone around me felt, with an undeniable intensity, a type of grace they weren’t getting from society.

Wallnau and Murillo seem to be true believers, invested in their flocks. But Wallnau, as a former strategist, also knows something important: The NAR will only grow, and gain more footholds in those seven mountains of society, if it continues to link its cause to genuine human despair. Wallnau can and does say remarkably incorrect and hateful things, but to those in his audience—suffering from the American medical system’s cruel and byzantine billing system or financial distress or the frightening absence of a safety net—what matters is that they feel, momentarily, in control.

On that final night, Murillo healed the whole tent. He had everyone lay hands on their neighbors, pray in tongues. He called on those who could not walk to move their legs, to stand. Some did. One woman abandoned her walker and took off. A man began running around. In the aisle next to me, another person stood, hidden by a cluster of people around him. They reached out their arms, touching him, wanting to be part of his miracle.

To the believers, the air in the tent seemed electric with signs of God’s favor. Come November, when it is time to keep the prophecies alive and secure the future of America, Wallnau and Murillo will know where to turn.
______

It's already here. Wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross

[tbm3fan]

Sent by God
They’re gathering by the thousands. They’re growing fast.
They believe that Democrats are possessed by demons—and that Donald Trump must be president again at any cost.
______

It's already here. Wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross

I'm sorry, but to be blunt, they are sick, sick, sick in the head. The last thing they need is a minister, who maybe heals through the power of belief, but with an ulterior motive. Just like Israel, with their Ultra-Orthodox, the religious with political power never goes well especially in a highly diverse country.

[statquo]

I just read that Sent by God article too. Wow.

I'm sorry, but to be blunt, they are sick, sick, sick in the head. The last thing they need is a minister, who maybe heals through the power of belief, but with an ulterior motive. Just like Israel, with their Ultra-Orthodox, the religious with political power never goes well especially in a highly diverse country.

I was going to say, what separates these radical evangelicals from the Ultra-Orthodox or Islamic fundamentalists? I guess they look like us.

[statquo]

Nearly 1 in 5 Republicans believe if Trump loses he should do ‘whatever it takes’ to put himself in White House

Nearly 30 percent of Republicans believe ‘true American patriots may have to resort to violence to save the country’

Nineteen percent of Republicans believe former President Donald Trump should do “whatever it takes” to return to power, even if that means calling the results invalid if he loses, a new national poll shows.

The group of Republicans willing to depart from democratic norms and possibly even use violence to get their way is getting bigger as Trump continues to falsely claim that the 2020 election was stolen from him and that November’s showdown has already been rigged.

The poll, conducted by the nonpartisan Public Religion Research Institute and the Brookings Institution, reveals how Trump has molded the Republican Party in his image as he motivates its most extreme members.

Democrats argue that Trump is a threat to democracy, and some in the party – 12 percent in the poll – say Vice President Kamala Harris should also reject the results if she loses.

The poll also shows that 29 percent of Republicans “believe that true American patriots may have to resort to violence to save the country.” Sixteen percent of independents and eight percent of Democrats say the same.

The president and founder of the research institute, Robert Jones, told Axios, “I’ve been doing this for 20 years, and these answers ... are keeping me up at night.”

He added those saying that the loser of the election should do whatever it takes to assume power are essentially backing a coup, calling it “pretty dark and worrisome.”

Forty-one percent of Americans who trust conservative news outlets back the idea of using political violence to acheive political goals – and 30 percent of loyal Fox News viewers support the idea, according to the survey.

Among those who don’t watch TV news, 18 percent said they would support political violence, and the same was true for 13 percent of those who said they don’t trust mainstream media.

There are also differences in support for political violence along racial and religious lines, with 33 percent of Latter-day Saints and 28 percent of white evangelical Protestants believing that “patriots” may have to resort to violence to “save the country.”

Among Hispanic Catholics, that figure was 18 percent, among Black Protestants, it was 14 percent, and 10 percent of Jewish Americans backed the idea of using political violence.

However, there are some issues that appear to unite most Americans, such as limiting Supreme Court Justices to serve until a certain age or a specific number of years instead of for life, which 73 percent of Americans agreed with, according to the poll.

Meanwhile, 68 percent of Americans are also united in opposing legislation that would make it illegal to use or receive FDA-approved drugs, such as the abortion pill mifepristone, in the mail.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[TopHatter]

Nearly 1 in 5 Republicans believe if Trump loses he should do ‘whatever it takes’ to put himself in White House

Nearly 30 percent of Republicans believe ‘true American patriots may have to resort to violence to save the country’
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Saw that. Wanted to throw up but then I realized it wasn't a surprise in the least.

[statquo]

Truth Social Users Are Losing Ridiculous Sums of Money to Scams

Donald Trump launched Truth Social in 2022 as a social media platform where the MAGA faithful could hang out without any liberals to spoil the fun. The biggest selling point? It was the only place where Trump was personally posting his unhinged screeds after getting banned from Twitter over that whole coup attempt. But new documents obtained by Gizmodo reveal the site has also been flooded with scammers who are swindling users out of enormous sums of money. We’re talking about people who’ve lost hundreds of thousands of dollars in a relatively short period of time.

Gizmodo submitted a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request with the FTC for consumer complaints about Truth Social filed in the past two years. The complaints to the federal agency include some stories from people who’ve been banned from the site (unjustly, they claim) and others who say they got signed up for mailing lists they never wanted to be on in the first place. But the complaints about scams are the most shocking, if only because there are such large sums of money involved. And we’re publishing a sample of the full, unedited complaints below.

One person who says they lost $170,000 explained they were initially scammed on a different site but met someone on Truth Social who claimed they could help get their money back. That turned out to be a scam as well. But more often, the victims are first contacted on Truth Social before being told to take the conversation somewhere else, like WhatsApp. Truth Social seems to be a target-rich environment for people who are easy to con.

Another thing that sticks out about the complaints filed with the FTC is that they seem to involve plenty of elderly fans of Donald Trump. One 72-year-old man who reported chatting with a “beautiful” woman on the site was scammed out of $21,000. His complaint ends with, “I haven’t told my wife about this blunder. She still doesn’t know about it.” Another person in their 60s said they lost $500,000 to scammers on Truth Social and seemed to think there might be a way they could get their money back, telling the FTC, “After I pay this they promise there will be no more fees and I will receive my assets.”

Many of the people don’t seem to understand that any amount they might see on their end that’s supposedly sitting in an account is completely fictitious. The scammers will often give the victim access to a website that shows a certain dollar amount in “their” account but the money is long gone. It’s not sitting there for them to withdraw. It’s simply a ruse for the victim to see their imaginary money grow, luring them into “investing” even more.

There are many different kinds of scams on social media sites. We recently explored the dating app sextortion scams on Ashley Madison and sextortion that’s happening on Grindr with FOIA requests to the FTC. But the scams happening on Truth Social appear to be most commonly pig butchering, a method of gaining someone’s trust while getting them to give you increasingly large amounts of money, all while making it seem like the victim is making wise investments. Truth Social, with its older user base of Boomers who have access to a lifetime of savings and retirement accounts, appears to be an attractive target for scammers running pig butchering operations.

The complaints below were redacted by the FTC before being released to Gizmodo, making it impossible for us to verify each individual claim. But we believe the patterns that emerge give some degree of confidence that these are real scams. And publishing these stories has the potential to help other people, identify when to be skeptical after they’ve met someone online, no matter the social media platform. To be clear, this doesn’t just happen on Truth Social. Pig butchering is a scam that’s happening across the internet, from Facebook to Instagram, and it’s possible for even intelligent people to get swindled. But if you were a scammer, who would you think might be the easiest marks on the planet, ready to believe anything a conman might say? If you said Trump supporters, you’re clearly not alone.

Gizmodo tried to contact representatives from Truth Social on Thursday, but after sending an email to the address listed for media organizations on the social media platform’s website, it bounced back as undeliverable. After finally getting a hold of someone at something called the MZ Group, which works for Trump Media & Technology Group, the owner of Truth Social, the representative said they have “a robust team that actively searches for scams and bots on the platform and bans them as soon as they’re found.” Follow-up questions did not receive a response.

1) “I paid a fee to get past this security risk.”

• Minnesota
• Total reported loss: $500,000
• Age: 60-64
• April 2024

Met on truth social. She said she was in the business of trading cryptocurrency. Got me to trade with a company called coincorner based in england. Money was sent via bank transfer to a crypto wallet then to coincorner. When i tried to withdraw money, i had to pay taxes up front. then site said i had one too many numbers in my bank account number and now a security risk. I paid a fee to get past this security risk. Then i was told i could not transfer my money by wire and i would be issued a check instead. Then they had a minimum amount they would write a check for and needed to fund up my account to reach the minimum. After this, i filed a report with the sheriffs office in Hibbing mn. Case[redacted]. Later i filed an online report with the FBI. On march 30 an [redacted] ph [redacted] contacted me. Says she is an accountant with coincorner and trying to get my funds returned to me. She tells me she is in oregon, but works for coincorner. My assets are now in a bank called Top City choice Bank. I need to pay a withdrawal charge of $10,000 wire transfer to [redacted]. Rte [redacted] acct [redacted]. Wells fargo. [redacted] new orleans la 70128. I made this payment. Then a COT cost of transfer fee $15,000. Same wire destination after that a bank account activation fee $25,000. Same wire address. Now they want $70,000 for an authentication transfer pin. After i pay this they promise there will be no more fees and i will receive my assets. This is unpaid. I have also texted with a guy that claims to be one of the 4 founders of coincorner, Phil Collins ph. [redacted]. This is where i am at today. [redacted]. Ph [redacted]

2) “After being scammed by another site…”

• Total reported loss: $170,000
• Tennessee
• March 2024

After being scammed by another site, i was given a link by a [redacted] on truth social social media to have them get my money back after she stated they could retrieve it! Supposedly they did, had me pay them 10% to go get it then told me there were no fees or limits to store my xrp and xlm their! When i got it in my account they said they were delivering a debit card for my account, it never came! I questioned it but they then said when my account reached 20,000 i would get one. I refused to add any more funds to my account after that! The lady is still harrassing me on truth social! Telling me to just pay it to get my card! I have snapshots of it all.

3) “Now that I want to withdraw my funds they are telling me I need to pay the taxes”

• Total reported loss: $168,920
• New York
• Age: 65-69
• September 2024

I fell victim to a cryptocurrency fraud and need guidance/help. I was contacted on the Truth Social media app, from a girl, she says her name is [redacted] phone [redacted] and lives in Queens supposedly and originally from russia, after talking for a few weeks she asked if I knew anything about bitcoin, I said I heard of it but didn’t know much about it, so she started explaining it to me and I was interested, she asked if I wanted to invest so I did I started out with a small amount, then asked to increase it a few more time for a total of $ 168,920.00, This was all a wire transfer from my bank account to coinbase into a USDT then since coinbase doesn’t USDT to trade she said I need to open a DeFi wallet now that I want to withdraw my funds they are telling me I need to pay the taxes to the DeFi wallet to be able to withdraw my funds, and coinbase does not receive USDT funds and they say I need to pay the DeFi taxes before I supposedly before they will do anything for me. I supposedly earned a total 1,061,155.26. the taxes they want me to pay is $196,972.69 at a 22%00 interest. the wallet is GDXTracex and the website is gdxtracex-web3.com. and they say I only have until 10/5/24 to pay them. or my account with them will be frozen

4) “…well-known investors namely President Trump (co-founder), Dan Bongino, Devin Nunes, and many more”

• Total reported loss: $150,000
• North Carolina
• Age: 60-64
• July 2024

August 2023 I was on the platform Truth Social interacting with [redacted] and what I thought was a response from him telling me to contact him for a chat on WhatsApp we talked and he proposed an investment opportunity in Crypto Currency. He referred me to Elite Republican Trades. I decided to check out the information. That is when [redacted] contacted me via WhatsApp and explained the platform and benefits for well-known investors namely President Trump (co-founder), Dan Bongino, Devin Nunes, and many more. We researched Mr. [redacted] and didn’t find any negative information. I was instructed to open a Crypto Account to invest in Crypto. Throughout the following 11 months I’ve been investing with this platform seeing profits daily as promised. As recently as May Mr. [redacted] came to me with a bigger investment opportunity with billionaire Carl Ichan, I checked out the information and what I was told was factual, and I was looking at gaining a 5000 profit on my account and was promised to make no less than 3M. I gave Mr. [redacted] 100K to put into this platform. In the beginning of July he notified me that I made 3.5M in profit. I requested a payout of my account at which time I found out I would get (1) bitcoin in my wallet per day until all profits were in place. At that time the money would be released–i.e. approximately August 2024 it would be released. A couple days later Mr. [redacted] contacted me and stated that he withdrew all the money from all the accounts I had invested with him because bitcoin was starting to rapidly lose money. He told me my account fell to 2.5M and he cashed it out and sent it to my Coinbase Wallet through Ethereum Meta Crypto. He used another platform to send the money to me the assets is on the BNB (Binance Smart Chain Network. I can see the money in my Coinbase Wallet but I cannot access the account to make transactions. July 11th Mr. [redacted] contacted me and told me I had to pay a fee of 50K for me to receive a code to open the wallet for me to access, that never happened, no code was received. I contacted Mr. [redacted] and asked him about the code, he said his manager would have to sign off on the letter releasing the code. Three days pass and I hear nothing, he’s unreachable. July 16th I finally hear from Mr. [redacted] and tells me that he plans to send money when the value goes back up. He then told me there was a slight problem I was being told I have to pay a fine because I had setup side accounts with Mr. [redacted] that they did not know about. I was not aware I had any side accounts, he told me it was all still part of the platform. Then he gave me a phone number to contact him manager to reduce the fine, I contacted the manager and he was not happy with me because he said I never paid the fee to withdraw 2.5M. He said I owed $250,000. He said Mr. [redacted] told him I could not afford this so he lowered it to $15,000. As of today 17 July 2024 they are wanting me to send this 15K today. I am not sending any more money that’s the reason for this fraud report. I have everything in detail, conversations, emails, bank wire records if they are needed. I would like this information shared with the FBI!

5) “I then thought things were legit.”

• Total reported loss: $133,000
• California
• Age: 60-69
• February 2023

I met [redacted] on Truth Social. Talked about stock market and i was experiencing losses. she took me to WhataApp. She then spoke of mdyscoin.com. Had me sign up and then do practice trading for a bit. I then invested $3000 to just try it out. I did a wire transfer from the bank to crypto.com then to mdyscoin.com. I used that money to do bids. when I made some I wired money back to my bank. I then thought things were legit. [redacted] then said to put more money in for bigger payoffs. I then invested $130,000 to work with. A week or so into it, I decided to remove my funds and work with just what I made. Mdyscoin said my account was frozen that I had joined a 500,000 vip club. I told them I did not join this and to take me off that, they said it was a done deal and if I didn’t come up with the rest of the funds they would freeze my account. I told [redacted] of this and she said she wired $150,000 to my account to help but I needed to com up with the rest to unlock the freeze. I didn’t have the rest of the funds. So now the account is frozen and I take it all monies lost because they won’t wire money back to my bank. I’ve tried. I then went to file a police report, they sent me to the DA’s office, which I filed a report to. Basically they said sorry for you loss. they looked into the web page and found it to be a scam site. I do have the crypto.com wallet address to were it went to. But I think now I seek help in what to do at this point.

6) “The more I write the dumber I feel that I would even fall for something like this.”

• Total reported loss: $120,000
• Oregon
• Age: 70-79
• February 2024

I was talking to this person on Truth Social for several months, then was asked if I ever ran a business. He said yes and this person asked if he would be open to help her run her late fathers businesses and help with her inheritance and would pay him to do so. He was sent certificates saying he was part owner of the gold and diamonds that her dad left her in exchange for helping her run the business and help sell her gold. We ended up paying for all the supposed customs fees, attorney fees etc. Always through 3rd party people, the Gold was coming from the UK, went to Canada Customs then to US customs Adding up to over 100K, the money we sent was always through third party people one in particular that took in at least 60K of that amount, we have a receipt with her name and the bank on it. I know what idiots we are. What can we do to investigate this? Every certificate and website she has given us turns out to be fake. We don’t know where to go from here. It is such a long story but this is it in a nut shell. The more I write the dumber I feel that I would even fall for something like this.

7) “I was misled by a person who claimed to be someone he is not on Truth social”

• Total reported loss: $110,000
• Iowa
• Age: 40-49
• March 2024

I was misled by a person who claimed to be someone he is not on Truth social who coached me to invest money into an invalid crypto wallet called qledger.live, based in Texas. Now the ledger will not release my funds except in small amounts every few days. Still do not know if I will be able to withdraw funds.

8) “I took $92,400 from my retirement account”

• Total reported loss: $100,000
• Arizona
• Age: 65-69
• September 2023

I got involved with [redacted] through Truth Social which turned out to be a romance scam. She convinced me to at first to invest $6000.00 which she also invested $6000.00 In Forex trading through [redacted]. The [redacted] Account Is solely in my name so she transferred her money into this account. The trade made $1500.00. after further convincing from [redacted] I took $92,400 from my retirement account and then wire transferred $94,000.00 to the [redacted] account. I was very reluctant at first but she again convinced me because she also put $200,000.00 in the [redacted] account to show she wasn’t trying to screw me out of my money. We did 2 Forex trades which grew the account to $447,000.00. In the meantime [redacted] wanted me to move to LA so her and I could purchase a house together in Huntington Beach. we needed to raise $1.75 million to purchase this house. She again convinced me to sell my house which that is in process now and to be very honest, I needed to anyway.

My concern which was brought up by my family, is the money that I invested was legal but the money [redacted] added may not be. And I don’t want to get caught in some sort of fraud. The Red Flag that caught my attention was [redacted] only wants her initial investment back of $206,000.00. I’d like to know or be insured that if I take my original investment of $100,000.00 out of the [redacted] account I won’t be committing a crime of some sorts.

9) “I invested $1,000 to start and eventually ended up investing $76,764.00”

• Total reported loss: $76,000
• Mississippi
• Age: 65-69
• June 2024

I met a lady on Truth Social and after several conversations I mentioned that I wanted to invest some money in the crypto market. She said that her and her uncle traded in Bitcoin and did pretty well and offered to show me how to get started. I downloaded the crypto.com app and their DeFi wallet app and by using screenshots back and forth between us I invested $1,000 to start and eventually ended up investing $76,764.00. I withdrew a small amount around $300.00 and it worked fine so I thought everything was safe and working. We only participated in trading bitcoin a few times and my account got up to $208,636.00 so I asked for a withdrawal of $100,000.00 to get my investment back and they said I needed to pay a tax of about $22,000.00 before I could withdraw that much money. I asked them to take it from the withdrawal and send me the balance. They said they wouldn’t do that and that I must pay it myself. This is making me very nervous because I don’t have much money left so I take out loan and pay the tax. Then they come back and say that I need to pay a deposit of $10,000.00 because I made so much money so fast that they were suspicious of money laundering. I didn’t have that much money so I sent $2,700.00 and my lady friend sent the balance directly to me account and they came back and said that the money had to come from my account. I told them that I only had $3,000.00 and they said would unlock my account if I sent it and they said would take up to 10 working days to process. I waited the 10 days and sent them a message (all communication with them is online) asking about the withdrawal and they said that they wouldn’t release my money unless I paid $6,000.00 and I asked to speak to a supervisor or their legal department and told them I was done sending money.

10) “…targeted by a pig butchering scam”

• Total reported loss: $73,500
• Michigan and Virginia
• Age: 60-64
• September 2024

[Redacted] was targeted by a pig butchering scam. In May 2024, [redacted] started chatting with an investment scammer on the Truth Social site they subsequently spoke via WhatsApp. The scammer goes by the name [redacted] (supposed DOB: [redacted]) she claims to be from Hong Kong she claims to be residing in San Franciso now (though the address she provided is in Rancho Palos Verdes in Southern California). She said they could make money by investing. [redacted] first invested $10,000.

11) “They keep trying to get me to invest more money…”

• Total reported loss: $51,000
• Texas
• Age: 60-64
• January 2024

I was contacted by a person claiming to be [redacted] after i made a comment to a post on truth social . I was given a contact number for Whatsapp [redacted] for [redacted] who in turn gave me another number to an account manager b(6) . I made 2 $500.00 transfers in august . My account was showing great returns and I became interested in investing more for my retirement . I made another transfer of $50,000.00 in december . My account was showing great returns then it stopped .When i contacted them about my account i was notified that i would need to pay $1,000.00 a week to keep an account manager who would invest my money .I was making over that each week and told them to deduct it from my account. They then told me it didn’t work that way and in order to continue I would need to upgrade to a high level by investing more money . I finally got in touch with the Real [redacted] who told me he was not involved with the investment firm and that it was a possibly a scam. They keep trying to get me to invest more money on a weekly basis. I have noticed that the first website is gone ,but the second link is for the site now. I told them my wife is dieing and that I will be getting an insurance settlement so i can upgrade my investment just to keep them hanging .

12) “I can only login and see my balance and I can’t do anything else with it.”

• Total reported loss: $40,000
• Michigan
• Age: 60-64
• March 2024

She reached out to me on truth social and after a few messages we moved the conversation to whatsapp and talked for a couple of weeks and then we moved to telegram and i was talked into doing short term spot gold trading on the Ivision Market through the ARADMAX APP , She told me that her uncle would let her know when to trade , so after making trades for a few weeks she decided I should withdrawal my funds , so while trying to withdraw funds I was told by Ivision Market I had to pay 30 of my funds balance to the monetary authority to authenticate my identity in order withdraw my funds and since I didn’t have the funds to pay it my account was locked and I can only login and see my balance and I can’t do anything else with it.

13) “None of this happened and the woman has been absent and unresponsive”

• Total reported loss: $34,500
• Age: 65-69
• California
• February 2023

A woman contacted me through Truth Social and requested money for a phone, her mothers medical costs and prescription, and then to pay delinquent storage fees and taxes on an inheritance. All this was based on developing a personal relationship with this person and a promise to repay everything along with interest when her inheritance could be liquified/sold. None of this happened and the woman has been absent and unresponsive. I’ve lent her a total of $34,500 since July/August 2022.

14) “He told me once the equipment was released he would fly to Austin where I live and so we could be together.”

• Total reported loss: $31,700
• Age: 50-59
• Texas
• June 2024

He friended me on Truth Social. Within a week we exchanged phone numbers. We chatted there for a few days then he told me he had to fly to Dubai he closed a contract he had been working on. Before he left he sent me a pic of his passport and private jet voucher. This all happened in late April 2024. By June he had mentioned that the equipment he purchased from China was being held up in customs in Dubai and needed help financially to release the equipment. He told me he paid for some a colleague paid for some but the remaining amount was $25k. He asked me to deposit the $ into bitcoin which in turn cost me $31,200 due to fees at the bitcoin machine. He also had me purchase a $500 Apple Card. He told me once the equipment was released he would fly to Austin where I live and so we could be together. We talked 2xs per day by phone by way of video chat but he indicated the rules on the oil rig were stricked so he had to black out his screen when we talked. Once he claimed the equipment was received on the oil rig he then stated the pilot he prepaid was not responding to his messages to return home to the states. He then asked me to pay $68,000 to get him and the equipment back to the US. I decided to disengage from him at this point.

15) “They were friends and blossomed into something more.”

• Total reported loss: $25,500
• Age: 60-64
• Wyoming
• February 2024

[redacted] met someone on Truth Social, [redacted] who was assisting him with trading. She claimed to be in Charlotte, SC. She sent him a picture that is supposedly of her. They were friends and blossomed into something more. He was setting up a liquidity mining through Truth Social. He spoke to this person about a month through Telegram (username: [redacted]). In Dec 2023, he invested $3,000 by transferring it to Kraken and it then went to Trust Wallet in an account ending in 07fd9 that they helped him set up. Crypto type was Ethereum. On Jan 26, 2024 he added $22,000 in the same manner to the same wallet address. The total balance in the wallet was $29,821.75 after he deposited the $22k. On Jan 30, 2024 – [redacted] got a notice in the Trust Wallet app saying he was a winner, and more money would be deposited into his account. The scammer told him that he had 30 days to come up with $107,000 more or he would lose the current $43,000 that was supposed to be in the Trust Wallet account. [redacted] did not want to be involved, and they threatened him to charge a penalty fee if he did not comply. [redacted] has reported it to Kraken. When [redacted] reached out to Trust Wallet, they refused to assist him and threatened legal proceedings against him if he continued to say they were scamming him. [redacted] has screenshots/documentation of this situation. Browser Address that [redacted] sees: defi.trust [redacted]

16) “At this point, I knew it was a fraud.”

• Total reported loss: $21,000
• Age: 70-79
• Missouri
• October 2023

Began a chat on Truth Social on August 12, 2023. The contact wanted to start a friendship. Her Truth Social name was [redacted]. The chat was friendly, but not romantic in nature. The person had a very beautiful photo and portrayed herself as a wealthy business owner. So I questioned immediately why she would want to be friends with me. It carried on from there and i looked into her background information. She had provided a link to Facebook and the name was [redacted]. It was the same picture as on Truth Social. She said that was her nickname to avoid predators. Unbelievably, I continued the chat. We ended up on WhatsApp and continued to the chat. After a while I saw others on Truth Social with the same picture. When I questioned her she said someone had hacked her accounts. She switched us to Telegram. Over weeks that passed she sent me numerous pictures that was the same person as originally shown. Sadly it turned a bit romantic and I developed feelings for her.

and of course she said she had feelings for me. The chat continued. She said she was harassed on Telegram, so she switched us back to WhatsApp. She eventually convinced me of an investment opportunity and to open an Account on Crypto.Com and transfer funds to Trust Wallet. I ended up sending $21,000. I can hardly believe I did that but she was very persuasive. I am 72 years old and probably just too gullible and lonely at this point in my life. After transferring the funds to Trust Wallet she convinced me to invest in a U Plan which was a smart contract on the blockchain. Last night she informed me that I needed to add $36,000 or I would lose my money. At this point, I knew it was a fraud. I should have know much sooner looking back. I was too confident with the Apps that I downloaded from Apple App Store. Crypto.com and Trust Wallet apps. I read online that Crypto criminals could modify the apps and make them look real. I suspect that she and her team modified the Trust Wallet app and stole my money. It was an elaborate scheme probably with a team which I suspect is very effective. It definitely worked on me. I saved all her photos and all our conversations. I haven’t told my wife about this blunder. She still doesn’t know about it.

17) “I believe now all 3 options are fake and rigged to draw one in further.”

• Total reported loss: $12,656
• Age: 60-64
• Texas
• December 2023

I was contacted by the person listed below on Truth Social. She started up a compelling conversation where she came across as a caring and trustworthy individual. Over time the conversation become more engaged and felt like there was a connection. She asked to continue the conversation on Telegram. We had a video call to confirm she was real. She sent me pictures of her which I now believe at least some are fake. I had suspicions but feared confronting her directly and rationalized it somehow.

As the relationship got as I perceived closer, she introduced XAUT.cc. site extolling the virtues of Tether gold (XAUT) and how she was getting great returns. And that I would be stupid to not get involved. Returns are made via Storage of XAUT tokens, Arbitrage (AI bots) or option trading. I believe now all 3 options are fake and rigged to draw one in further. I was very reluctant to get involved but she kept pushing and eventually helped me to set up a wallet. In hindsight she was very manipulative. Assured me it is all safe as it is all on the block chain. She talked about where she grew up in Singapore and how she moved to Switzerland, about friend b(6) and neighbor b(6) and all sounded so believable. She also talked about her mom and her dad and her uncles. What they did weekends around San Diego and what they had for dinner, etc. She indicated she works at a place in San Diego called ECOhomebuildersinc.com. She kept making a great case and questioned whether I cared about us. She kept pushing the stakes higher and higher. I realized eventually I was getting manipulated but did know how to get out safely. It all seemed so real, So continued to play along. All wanted to do is get my money back. I thought I could do it. I was wrong. They have threatened me. I wish I had known about this site to report fraud sooner. The info I have on the individual is what was volunteered to me and can not confirm it. I feel so stupid now and scarred of what they may do.

---------------------------------------------------------

Easy pickens on Truth Social by the looks of things

[tbm3fan]

Many don't even go through Truth Social as this CNN investigation points out. Long article.

https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2024...ction-invs-dg/

[TopHatter]

Trump's transformation into a religious totem turns Christian nationalism toxic



Public opinion polls show that 47 percent of registered voters support Donald Trump in the 2024 election. This appears to be both Trump’s basement and ceiling of support. Like a cult leader, he has a near-iron grip on his MAGA supporters and the Republican Party. Trump can attempt a coup, channel Hitler, be convicted of multiple criminal felons, publicly praise tyrants, promise to become America’s first dictator for “day one” of his return to power in 2025 and threaten his “enemies” with "retribution."

The adoration and loyalty that his MAGA supporters— and Republicans and right-leaning independents more broadly — show for Trump is a cause of great consternation and frustration for Democrats. While a new public opinion poll from CBS/YouGov shows that Kamala Harris continues to gain momentum, the race remains a statistical tie in the key battleground states that will determine the final outcome in the Electoral College. Experts continue to warn that the 2024 election, at this point, is the closest in recent history.

In an attempt to better understand this apparent political stalemate, what the actual data reveals as opposed to the mostly useless “vibes” that many are preoccupied with, and what it may all mean for the future of American democracy, I recently spoke with Robert P. Jones, president and founder of the Public Religion Research Institute. Jones is the author of the New York Times bestseller "The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy and the Path to a Shared American Future" (now available in paperback with a new afterword) as well as "White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity."

In this conversation, Jones explains the almost mythical and divine role that Trump occupies in the collective minds of white right-wing Christians. Jones also discusses his new research which shows the frightening overlaps between white right-wing Christians and support for authoritarianism and political violence as seen on Jan. 6 and its implications for the future of American democracy and society in the Age of Trump and beyond.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

What story are the polls telling us about the 2024 election?

So far in the 2024 election cycle, the polling for the presidential election has told us only one thing that we can say with confidence: The contest remains a dead heat.

Because of the Electoral College, the national polls are irrelevant. At the state level, despite the breathless headlines of “Trump leading by three” or “Harris up by two,” we have yet to see either candidate pull into a lead that is firmly outside the margin of error in the polling averages in any swing state. There are also typically 5-6 percentage points of respondents who either refuse the vote question or say they remain undecided. The state polls are also of limited help with understanding subgroups because of smaller sample sizes. For example, if you wanted to understand Black voters in Michigan, even with a poll of 1,000 voters, you’d likely have at most 150 African Americans in the sample and estimates of their opinions would have a margin of error of +/- 10 percentage points.

The most obvious, but perhaps also most surprising thing particularly given Donald Trump’s increasingly outright racist and erratic rhetoric, is how little the voting patterns have shifted since 2020 or even 2016. For example, despite everything Trump has done and even been convicted of, there’s no evidence of any erosion of support for Trump among white Christians or white frequent churchgoers. It’s a good indicator of what a death grip partisanship has on American voters.

The news media is obsessed with novelty and the “new” in the “news.” When you look at Trump and Trumpism in longer, and much more important historical and cultural terms, how are you making sense of this crisis?

As dangerous as Trump is for democracy, he is a symptom, not the disease. While we at PRRI are continually taking the pulse of contemporary public opinion, those results can only be fully understood when placed in historical context. There are clear historical throughlines. For example, the authoritarian tactics currently deployed by Trump have historical precedents both in the US and in early 20th century Europe. PRRI’s most recent study, "One Leader Under God: The Connection Between Authoritarianism and Christian Nationalism in America." tapped the sociological literature that arose to understand the rise of fascism in Europe in the early 20th century.

In "The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy and the Path to a Shared American Future," I also connected the dots between the threat of Christian nationalism we are facing today and 500 years of Christian doctrine going back to the European colonial period. This deeper historical context helps us see that many of the perplexing features of our current conflicts are new occurrences of old unresolved questions. Today, the changing demographics of the country has thrown us back to a fundamental question: Are we a pluralistic democracy, in which everyone stands on equal footing regardless of race or religion, or are we a white Christian nation, a kind of promised land for European Christians?

What do we know about Trump’s messianic martyr appeal for his White Christian right-wing followers?

Trump has long played into the idea that he was specially chosen by God to save the country from evil and destruction. This appeal is straight out of the authoritarian playbook. Even before the two attempts on his life, he was using language that directly compared himself to a messianic figure who was being wounded and persecuted on behalf of his righteous followers. He made this case overtly last spring in a speech to the National Religious Broadcasters, an organization created by leaders of communications outlets that operate specifically in the white evangelical world. His language was not subtle: "I'm a very proud Christian, actually. I’ve been very busy fighting and, you know, taking the the bullets, taking the arrows. I'm taking 'em for you. And I'm so honored to take 'em. You have no idea. I'm being indicted for you….And in the end, they're not after me. They're after you. I just happen to be standing in the way.”

He’s continued to use this language that evokes the theological logic of substitutionary atonement, where he bravely offers himself to be sacrificed on behalf of his followers. But Trump the messiah promises to bring not love or righteousness, but the restoration of power to white Christians in a changing America. In the same speech, Trump made a promise to his white evangelical followers: "I get in there, you're gonna be using that power at a level that you've never used it before. It's gonna bring back the churchgoer…. We're gonna bring it back. And I really believe it's the biggest thing missing from this country. It's the biggest thing missing. We have to bring back our religion. We have to bring back Christianity in this country.” Trump’s white Christian base has largely remained with him not because they necessarily believe he is one of them but because they believe he’ll restore what they see as their rightful place of power in a white Christian America. At root, Trump’s appeal to white Christians is not his values, but his value for achieving their Christian nationalist ends.

Donald Trump is a symbol, not just a man. Trumpism and American neofascism will exist for a long time after he is gone. The hope-peddlers and happy-pill sellers in the news media and political class are doing the American people a great disservice by not emphasizing this fact.

I recently wrote about the social psychology of this phenomenon. The transformation of Trump from a person to a symbol is the key to understanding the power of the MAGA movement and the internal logic of its upside-down world. It is true that every presidential candidate becomes, to some extent, a symbol or totem. We read into their biographies and project onto their bodies a broader set of principles, values and worldviews. But typically, in healthier times than ours, the connection between a candidate’s character and actions on the one hand, and their idealized symbolic projection on the other, remains visible and therefore functional. Any significant misstep may be enough to break the magical, often fragile social spell that binds the person to the symbol.

When the leader becomes the totem, no transgression is capable of separating him from his acolytes. A totem can’t lie or be vulgar. A totem doesn’t have marriage vows that can be violated. A totem can’t sexually assault a woman. A totem can’t commit fraud. A totem can’t betray an oath to the Constitution. A totem has no innate human characteristics at all. It is a mirror, reflecting the collective fears and aspirations of the group, who both generate its image and receive it back reinforced. And this is why Trump the totem, much more than Trump the man, poses such a unique danger to democracy and the rule of law.

Your new polling and other work examine the role of the authoritarian personality in support for Donald Trump and his neofascist MAGA movement, specifically among white Christians. How do you define “authoritarianism” in this new research? What do we know about authoritarianism and “conservatives” in the Age of Trump?

PRRI recently released a groundbreaking new study, "One Leader Under God: The Connection Between Authoritarianism and Christian Nationalism in America," based on more than 5,000 interviews with Americans this summer. Revisiting work first developed over concerns about the rise of fascism in early 20th century Germany and Italy (e.g., in Theodor Adorno et al’s 1950 classic "The Authoritarian Personality"), PRRI developed a Right-Wing Authoritarianism Scale (RWAS) based on agreement with four highly correlated measures of authoritarian attitudes. PRRI finds that 43% of Americans score high or very high on the RWAS, compared with 37% who score low or very low; two in ten Americans qualify as having mixed opinions (20%).

But these attitudes are not evenly distributed across the political or religious landscape. Republicans are clear outliers. Two-thirds of Republicans score high on the RWAS (67%), compared with only 35% of independents and 28% of Democrats. Notably, Republicans who hold favorable views of Trump are nearly twice as likely as those with unfavorable views of Trump to score high on the RWAS (75% vs. 39%). In short, this study demonstrates how overwhelmingly the authoritarian impulse has taken over the Republican Party.

Donald Trump’s strongest supporters have consistently been white Christians. What does your new research reveal about authoritarian values and members of that group?

White evangelical Protestants (64%) are the religious group most likely to score high on the RWAS, followed by slim majorities of Hispanic Protestants (54%) and white Catholics (54%). As a reminder, each of these groups also strongly supported Donald Trump in the 2020 election: 84% of white evangelical Protestants; 56% of other non-white/non-Black Protestants, and 57% of white Catholics. No other religious groups have majorities scoring high on the RWAS.

The PRRI study clearly shows how these authoritarian orientations — so pronounced among Republicans and their white evangelical Protestant base—translate into concrete attitudes and support for actions that undermine our democracy. Just two examples. First, nearly half of white evangelical Protestants (48%) and nearly four in ten Republicans (39%) agree with the theocratic vision of Christian dominionism, that “God wants Christians to take control of the ‘seven mountains’ of society, including the government, education, media and others.” Second, nearly half of Republicans (49%) — and a majority of Republicans with a favorable view of Trump (55%) — agree that “Because things have gotten so far off track in this country, we need a leader who is willing to break some rules if that's what it takes to set things right.” Four in ten white evangelicals (40%) also support rule-breaking by a strong leader.

How is support for authoritarianism correlated with support for political violence among White Christians?

About one-quarter of Republicans (27%) — and 32% of Republicans with a favorable view of Trump — agree that “Because things have gotten so far off track, true American patriots may have to resort to violence in order to save the country.” Republican support for potential political violence is twice as high as Americans overall (14%) and three times higher than Democrats (8%). Nearly one in four white evangelical Protestants (23%) also express potential support for political violence.

The PRRI authoritarianism survey also provided two disturbing measures of the lengths Trump’s base supporters may be willing to go to ensure he returns to power.

• One in four Republicans (24%) — 29% of Republicans with a favorable view of Trump—and one in five white evangelical Protestants (20%) agree that “If Donald Trump is not confirmed as the winner of the 2024 election, he should declare the results invalid and do whatever it takes to assume his rightful place as president.”
• One in four Republicans (24%) — and 27% of Republicans with a favorable view of Trump — agree that “if the 2024 presidential election is compromised by voter fraud, everyday Americans will need to ensure the rightful leader takes office, even if it requires taking violent actions.” One in five white evangelical Protestants (18%) also agree with this sentiment.

Is Christian nationalism, at this point, a violent ideology? Is support for violence as a means of bringing about the end of multiracial pluralistic secular democracy and society almost a prerequisite for such beliefs?

Christian nationalists are more likely than other Americans to think about politics in apocalyptic terms and are about twice as likely as other Americans to believe political violence may be justified. Nearly four in ten Christian nationalism adherents (38%) and one-third of sympathizers (33%) agree that “Because things have gotten so far off track, true American patriots may have to resort to violence to save the country,” compared with only 17% of Christian Nationalism skeptics and 7% of rejecters.

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The danger of the Christian nationalist worldview is that it raises the stakes of political contests exponentially, transposing political opponents into existential enemies. Politics are no longer understood to be disagreements between fellow citizens of goodwill but to be apocalyptic battles over good and evil, fought by agents of God against agents of Satan. Political opponents should not just be defeated in fair electoral contests but should be jailed, exiled, attacked, or even killed.

How does your new research inform our understanding of Project 2025 and the larger neofascist plan that Trump and his MAGAfied Republicans will implement to end America’s multiracial pluralistic democracy?

The most disturbing thing about Project 2025 isn’t its extreme policy and political recommendations but the way it marshals Christian nationalist commitments to distort beyond all recognition fundamental American values like life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The following passage in the Foreword should send chills up the spines of all Americans who value our Constitution and the freedoms we hold dear in our democracy:

When the Founders spoke of the “pursuit of Happiness,” what they meant might be understood today as in essence “pursuit of Blessedness.” That is, an individual must be free to live as his Creator ordained — to flourish. Our Constitution grants each of us the liberty to do not what we want, but what we ought. This pursuit of the good life is found primarily in family — marriage, children, Thanksgiving dinners, and the like.

If you read this passage quickly, it’s possible to miss the rhetorical sleight of hand at play here — one that substitutes an impoverished conception of liberty that is captive to a conservative Christian nationalist determination of the good life for true individual liberty that is determined by each citizen. There is a powerful normative white Christian worldview lurking in those images (and a non-coincidental resonance with JD Vance’s problematic claims about marriage and children). If Trump succeeds in getting elected and implementing Project 2025, I’m sure he’ll still speak about life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. But the rest of us will only be free to do what they believe we ought.

What positive role, if any, can “Christians” play in the pro-democracy movement?

While the authoritarian and Christian nationalist MAGA movement has captured a supermajority of white evangelical Protestants and majorities of both white non-evangelical Protestants and white Catholics, these Trump-leaning white Christian groups are not the only face of Christianity in America. In fact, even combined, all white Christians only comprise 41% of Americans today. Approximately one in four Americans are nonwhite Christians who have a very different history, one that supports rather than opposes an inclusive democracy. And even within white Christian contexts, there are groups such as Christians Against Christian Nationalism that are facing this threat to democracy and to the Christian faith itself directly.

The good news is that while three in 10 Americans are either Christian nationalism adherents or sympathizers, two-thirds of the country rejects this anti-democratic ideology. And among Americans under the age of 50, opposition rises to nearly three-fourths. So, this is not an ascendant movement but a desperate, last-ditch effort to secure minority rule in the face of a rapidly diversifying nation.
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[TopHatter]

She escaped the religious sect she grew up in. Now she says Trump’s MAGA movement is eerily similar



A woman has drawn similarities between Donald Trump’s MAGA movement and the apocalyptic, religious sect she escaped from.

In the autumn of 1974, as former president Richard Nixon resigned and the US was still entrenched in the Vietnam War, Cyd Chartier and her parents were introduced to the fundamentalist religious organization The Move of God.

The Move was founded by Sam Fife after he was allegedly booted from the Baptist church for adultery.

As the sect’s enigmatic and autocratic leader – up until his death in 1979 – Fife wrote a Divine Order doctrine in 1974 in which he claimed God had put The Move in place as a “many-membered manchild to govern the world.”

Now, five decades after she joined the religious sect as a child, Chartier has spoken out about the eerie resemblances between the group and Trump’s loyal fanbase setting out to “make America great again.”

“Mom and Dad bought it all: Fife’s lies, delusions and conspiracies,” Chartier writes in an Huffington Post essay.

Chartier says she saw the same thing happen when Trump announced he was running for president in 2016.


Sam Fife, the leader of The Move of God, believed that God sent him to help restore order to the world (Andresforeroc/Wikimedia Commons)

“Under the guise of a politician with a fake tan and bad haircut was an angry man, an arrogant man, a dark and dangerous man – a man so like Sam Fife that I immediately knew I was facing the same threat I had faced as a young woman all those years ago,” she writes.

“Then, in 2015, as I watched Donald Trump float down the Trump Tower escalator to announce his candidacy for the US presidency, I felt a stab of recognition.”

After leaving The Move behind, some of Chartier’s family upheld their conservative values and threw their support behind the Republican presidential candidate.

“After he won the election, I saw more and more Fife whenever Trump opened his mouth,” Chartier continues.

T
Trump holds a campaign rally in Indiana, Pennsylvania, on September 23 in front of adoring MAGA fans (REUTERS)

“The lying, misogyny, apocalyptic language, fear-mongering and the enthusiastic embrace of conspiracy theories all set off ancient alarms inside of me. I fell into a deep depression.”

Trump has often called for the MAGA crowd to battle (metaphorically), urging them to “fight” numerous times including in his January 6 2021 rally, during the attempt on his life in July and at his speech at the Republican National Convention. He has also called the Capitol rioters “warriors.”

Chartier recalls hearing similar language in Fife’s sermons where he declared that “God had selected him and his congregation to serve as warriors in the ultimate and final battle against worldly evil.”

Fife also believed God selected him for a greater purpose.

The former president has often shared his belief that divine intervention spared his own life so that he might be able to save America after he survived two assassination attempts in as many months.

“If I win that, that would really serve to say that if there’s some incredible power up there that wanted me to be involved in saving [the US] – and maybe it’s more than saving the nation. Maybe it’s saving the world,” he said in an interview with Dr Phil in August after he was shot in the ear at a Butler, Pennsylvania rally in July.

After the second attempt on his life last month at his West Palm Beach golf club, Trump said in an X Spaces livestream: “I mean, perhaps it’s God wanting me to be president to save this country; nobody knows.”

Chartier says she is now bracing as Trump vies to be elected president for a second term.

“Now that Trump once again threatens to take the reins of the federal government, the possibility of living under the eye of another misogynistic authoritarian regime feels frighteningly real,” she said.
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[JRT]

Several weeks after the election, Don Johnny Trump's red hatted minions and sicophants get together to yet again celebrate Trump's victory.

Saturday, 30 November 2024
Mob Performs The ‘Trump Dance’ In Staten Island, New York, To Celebrate Victory
(2 min, 58 sec)

Yesterday (Friday, 29 November 2024), Trump supporters in Staten Island, New York, did the "Trump Dance" in celebration of his victory over Vice President Kamala Harris.

"Why?", you may ask. The video below provides a clear and succinct explanation.

[Officer of Engineers]

Why would any VET want to fight in a meat grinder?