First, on the Lincoln Project podcast, we’re joined by special guest Stephen Hassan to talk about his new edition of his amazing book, The Cult of Trump.
This is the supernatural they are attributing to Trump:
Please take the time to read this.
Someone recently asked me why I like Trump. My answer was that I don't like Trump. I don't like the way he speaks. But this election is not about choosing the most likeable person.
We are voting between two vastly different ideologies. We are voting for the country we want to leave our children and grandchildren.
Trump represents that future and has proven that he can deliver. He is a patriot to the core and even served his country for 4 years without pay.
After being asked this question a few times by colleagues and friends, even family members, I thought about actually putting it in writing. Then I came across this....( I'm sure it's been copied and edited and pasted many times, but it's a start.
That moment when someone says,
"I can't believe you're voting for Trump". I simply reply, “I'm NOT voting for Trump.”
I'm voting for the First Amendment and freedom of speech. I'm voting for the right to speak my opinion and not be censored.
I’m voting for secure borders and LEGAL immigration. I am voting for election integrity to include mandatory voter ID. (Why would anyone vote against this?)
I'm voting for the Second Amendment and my right to defend my life and my family.
I'm voting for the police to be respected once again.
I am voting for law & order and an end to allowing protesters to trespass and burn our cities, destroying innocent small business. (Tim Walz)
I am voting for personal responsibility and the end of the revolving door where criminals are being put back on the street. (Kamala Harris)
I'm voting for the next Supreme Court Justice(s) to protect the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
I’m voting for a return of our troops from foreign countries and the end to America’s involvement in foreign conflicts.
I'm voting for the Electoral College and for the Republic in which we live.
I’m voting for the continued appointment of Federal Judges who respect the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
I’m voting for keeping our jobs to remain in America and not be outsourced all over the world - to China, Mexico and other foreign countries.
I am voting for doing away with all of the freebies given to all of the illegals and not looking after the needs of the American citizens and homeless veterans.
I'm voting for the military & the veterans who fought for this country
I'm voting to keep men out of women's sports.
I’m voting for peace progress in the Middle East.
I’m voting to fight against human/child trafficking.
I'm voting for Freedom of Religion.
I am voting for the return of teaching math, history, and science instead of the indoctrination of our children.
I'm not just voting for one person.
I'm voting for the future of my Country.
I'm voting for my children and my grandchildren to ensure their freedoms
America is the greatest country in the world, hense why everyone wants to immigrate here. So why do you want to change it?
Why do politicians want to enact policies that have failed in other countries throughout history?
I think this person, whose post you forwarded to us, is looking thru the wrong end of his/her telescope! They should be voting FORr democracy which gives them the right to speak freely...jus' saying...
You are a signal example of the prescience of George Orwell. Every single thing you wrote is a DoubleSpeak inversion of the truth. You don't even know what America _is._ The happiest countries on earth are the Nordic social democracies. They're not "socialist," they're mixed economies with robust social safety nets. The worst countries in the world are the quasi-autarkies that resist immigration and are in long-term decline because their populations are aging out like Japan and Russia. Or would you prefer those Second Amendment paradises of Somalia and El Salvador, which are the only two countries with more guns per capita than the US? You are voting to ensure that your female children and grandchildren don't have the same rights over their own bodies that you did when you were of breeding age.
I could go on, but it's so clear you exist in a world of alternate facts that it's pointless. You are supporting a fascist regime whose entire raison d'etre is to deprive people of their rights.
Throw away your devices, delete your accounts and go touch grass.
If you read my first sentence you will see that I am forwarding another’s post . I saw this today on Facebook. It just confirms how they are not able to discern the truth
Oh I'm sorry, Becky. It's not at all clear where you left off and where they begun, but I see it in proper context now. Thanks for posting that; it's painful but educational.
Personally, I'd try a Socratic dialogue. I'd ask them how they know that their premises are true. I'd ask them why they trust the information sources they do. I'd ask them if they're okay with having a 12-year-old bear her stepfather's child. I'd ask them if the police should have been respected on January 6, 2021. I'd ask them if they knew that the First Amendment applies to the government and not private entities and what they thought of banning books that a handful of parents don't like. I'd ask them if they thought that Haitians are eating cats and dogs and if they didn't, why is it okay to accuse them of doing so?
I could go on and on, but you get the general approach.
I was just engaging one person who had posted about the taxes on unrealized gains- saying how it would affect us- I replied that it only affects those with $100 million or more a year- and I sent a link to a tax site that had a really clear way to explain the law… the answer I received was “I just don’t trust her” - I couldn’t help myself so I answered- “but you’ll trust a felon, philanderer and narcissist “ I expect I’ll be blocked in the future
Everything you wrote is a bunch of blinded nonsense, however I’m going to address ONLY one - you are not voting for Freedom of Religion, you already have that & no one is trying to take that away. What you are voting for is for the Christian religion to be forced onto everyone else who believes a different religion or chooses no religion at all. You are voting to get rid of the separation of church & state.
People like you love to insist that the USA is a Christian nation, but that is a lie. Our founders were very clear that they did not want government involved in pushing any particular religion.
I guess my first sentence that said “this is the supernatural they are attributing to Trump, doesn’t show I am just forwarding what I am seeing from Trumpers in my social networks-
My error; sorry, that completely slid past my reading comprehension at the time I was reading it,🙁 perhaps the product of me being up too late at night reading.
I think what Trump realizes is that people create a narrative to understand their world, and then believe things that fit the narrative and disbelieve things that do not. What this leads them to do is to even cheerlead things they know to be lies because they can be held up as evidence of some greater truth.
The book "Thinking, Fast and Slow" elucidates other important factors in a scientific way. It describes two "Systems" in the operation of the brain. System 1 is based on emotion and instinct, and processes every input fast. System 2 is analytical but slow and (often) lazy. System 1 makes lots of mistakes. System 2 is needed to avoid fucking things up totally.
Trump has his voters in System 1 all the time. He works at it. Sparking irrational fear helps keep them there. So "Haitians eating pets" or "Mexican rapists" serves his ends with his supporters. Truth or falsehood is irrelevant. Slowly moving caravans are the best.
Like other autocratic personalities, he works to maintain a close, almost personal, relationship with his supporters. Chavez used to give frequent, rambling addresses to Venezuelans (I think he had a Sunday talk show where he would go on for up to 8 hours at a time). Trump does the same thing by constant "Truthing" or "Tweeting". It's all fucking nonsense but he keeps their brains in System 1 and focused on what they believe is his fight for them. Or his vicariously-felt injustices ("They are trying to put me in prison!") and slights ("I know all the best words!").
Hulk Hogan ripping his shirt off at the convention or an utterly unmusical guitar lick from Ted Nugent will keep you in System 1 too.
I don't understand anything about mechanisms of "brain washing" but it was interesting to listen to the podcast all the same. Maybe what I see him doing is basically brain washing. I don't know.
NLP as the 'pedia notes is not any more real than homeopathy as a therapy but it does offer communications strategies. It sounds to me like the psychobabble version of New Age creative visualization. We all know the Trump family was close to Norman Vincent Peale and Trump may have gotten his own variety of the schtick from Peale's The Power of Positive Thinking. You can see it operative in the way Trump justifies himself so much more successfully than other political grifters.
Take, for instance, Mark Robinson's denial of his comically lurid posts on a porn site. He may not be pushed off the ballot, but his candidacy will not survive this scandal. I mean, it's one thing to say that some people need killin'. Quite another to say that you're a black Nazi who'd like to own some slaves ;)
He denied this the way your typical sociopathic politician would deny it. The way George Santos would deny it. He looked straight into the camera, bursting with confidence, and lied to his constituents. He called it an oppo dump by his opponent (it was a carefully researched K-File investigation that sussed out the identity of his nom-de-porn) because Josh Stein is "desperate" and doesn't want to talk about the issues but rather "tabloid trash." When Stein is up in the polls ;)
And he topped it off with an exquisite flourish, likening himself to Clarence Thomas who endured a "high-tech lynching" in his confirmation. Hint to Mark: You ain't gonna win friends and influence people these days by likening yourself to Clarence Thomas for _any_ reason; that ship has sailed, LOL
What Trump does, much differently, is that he implicates his audience. That's the link to what I've gathered to be neuro-linguistic programming (or creative visualization or positive thinking).
If it were Trump instead of Mark, first, he'd launch a broadside attack on the Fake News Media for even reporting it. He'd doubtless personally attack Josh Stein for even imagining he'd have the character to use something like this against Trump. And he might well scoff at the very idea that a mac daddy like himself would ever feel the need to visit a porn site. But what he _wouldn't_ do, unlike Mark Robinson, is to pretend to his audience that he simply doesn't have the character to say such disgusting things.
And _that_ is what his superfans mistake as his "honesty" and his "telling it like it is." He implicates his audience because he knows that these are the things that they wish they could get away with saying.
Earlier this evening I heard a fellow on the news saying that Trump likes to gaslight? To me, that means he likes to lie. According to Hassan that is what woke him up, that Son Young Moon was a liar. Instead of saying gas light we need to say liar! And we need to quit referring to them as Republicans and start calling them rethuglicans. And quit calling them conservatives when they are fascists. We are lying when we call them phony names. They need to be called what they are now not what they used to be, in my humble opinion? I'm sure that, there are more examples, we have to try to snap these bird brains out of it! We could also ask them if they believe "thou shalt not bear false witness", or"It t is easier to fit through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God", or ask them to paraphrase, "The sermon on the Mount". I'm not religious and abhore religious indoctrination. Good luck all!
I agree with every word you wrote. We all know it is much easier to bring religious people into a cult because they are already been taught to believe a “leader” & to believe fantastical things that can’t be proven
Steven Hassan sounded a little fringy. He's not wrong that there's a cult-like aspect to MAGA and Trumpism, but the mechanism might not be quite the way he describes it.
Here's a different take on the neurolinguistic programming he claims is the glue that holds Trump's cult together:
"Neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) is a pseudoscientific approach to communication, personal development and psychotherapy, that first appeared in Richard Bandler and John Grinder's 1975 book The Structure of Magic I. NLP asserts that there is a connection between neurological processes, language and acquired behavioral patterns, and that these can be changed to achieve specific goals in life.[1][2] According to Bandler and Grinder, NLP can treat problems such as phobias, depression, tic disorders, psychosomatic illnesses, near-sightedness,[a] allergy, the common cold,[a] and learning disorders,[3][4] often in a single session. They also say that NLP can model the skills of exceptional people, allowing anyone to acquire them.[5][b]
NLP has been adopted by some hypnotherapists as well as by companies that run seminars marketed as leadership training to businesses and government agencies.[6][7]
There is no scientific evidence supporting the claims made by NLP advocates, and it has been called a pseudoscience.[8][9][10] Scientific reviews have shown that NLP is based on outdated metaphors of the brain's inner workings that are inconsistent with current neurological theory, and that NLP contains numerous factual errors.[7][11] Reviews also found that research that favored NLP contained significant methodological flaws, and that there were three times as many studies of a much higher quality that failed to reproduce the claims made by Bandler, Grinder, and other NLP practitioners.[9][10"
NLP probably hasn't really been studied thoroughly in scientific, controlled settings, partially because of ethical considerations. It has, however, been demonstrated extensively in "the field," in its very simplest and most effective way, brainwashing.
Stripping people of their defenses and pushing a different set of beliefs is used in numerous interrogation techniques, and religious and pseudo-religious settings, like cults around the world. It takes time and resources, or a gullible audience, such as people who are preprogrammed via fundamental religion or other types of severe authoritarianism.
This isn't an American phenomenon, it's a global one, and well-known in circles with questionable ethics.
It's pseudoscientific as a therapy, but that's not the context that Rick and Stephen Hassan are referring to. NLP is also a manipulative communications strategy that has directly influenced Anthony Robbins and other so-called motivational speakers and self-help grifters.
I've already seen 4-5 pictures of them together, at various events & on his plane. Or someone's plane... Was Ditty on Epstein's list? Trump said he's never met him. And later that he doesn't Think he's ever met him.
Has anybody considered what happens if the Republikkkans shut down the government, don't pass the CR before the election, and coordinate a few dozen Springfields across the US?
it's the fascist playbook right out loud: stir people up with lies (name your conspiracy theory), give them scapegoats to hate (add Haitians to the list), use fear and intimidation (Springfield Ohio), use violence (Jan.6).
This is the supernatural they are attributing to Trump:
Please take the time to read this.
Someone recently asked me why I like Trump. My answer was that I don't like Trump. I don't like the way he speaks. But this election is not about choosing the most likeable person.
We are voting between two vastly different ideologies. We are voting for the country we want to leave our children and grandchildren.
Trump represents that future and has proven that he can deliver. He is a patriot to the core and even served his country for 4 years without pay.
After being asked this question a few times by colleagues and friends, even family members, I thought about actually putting it in writing. Then I came across this....( I'm sure it's been copied and edited and pasted many times, but it's a start.
That moment when someone says,
"I can't believe you're voting for Trump". I simply reply, “I'm NOT voting for Trump.”
I'm voting for the First Amendment and freedom of speech. I'm voting for the right to speak my opinion and not be censored.
I’m voting for secure borders and LEGAL immigration. I am voting for election integrity to include mandatory voter ID. (Why would anyone vote against this?)
I'm voting for the Second Amendment and my right to defend my life and my family.
I'm voting for the police to be respected once again.
I am voting for law & order and an end to allowing protesters to trespass and burn our cities, destroying innocent small business. (Tim Walz)
I am voting for personal responsibility and the end of the revolving door where criminals are being put back on the street. (Kamala Harris)
I'm voting for the next Supreme Court Justice(s) to protect the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
I’m voting for a return of our troops from foreign countries and the end to America’s involvement in foreign conflicts.
I'm voting for the Electoral College and for the Republic in which we live.
I’m voting for the continued appointment of Federal Judges who respect the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
I’m voting for keeping our jobs to remain in America and not be outsourced all over the world - to China, Mexico and other foreign countries.
I am voting for doing away with all of the freebies given to all of the illegals and not looking after the needs of the American citizens and homeless veterans.
I'm voting for the military & the veterans who fought for this country
I'm voting to keep men out of women's sports.
I’m voting for peace progress in the Middle East.
I’m voting to fight against human/child trafficking.
I'm voting for Freedom of Religion.
I am voting for the return of teaching math, history, and science instead of the indoctrination of our children.
I'm not just voting for one person.
I'm voting for the future of my Country.
I'm voting for my children and my grandchildren to ensure their freedoms
America is the greatest country in the world, hense why everyone wants to immigrate here. So why do you want to change it?
Why do politicians want to enact policies that have failed in other countries throughout history?
I'm not voting for just Trump.
I'm voting for America!!
Copied and pasted, keep it going!🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸
I think this person, whose post you forwarded to us, is looking thru the wrong end of his/her telescope! They should be voting FORr democracy which gives them the right to speak freely...jus' saying...
thanks Becky, but I'm guessing that a lot of folks will think this is YOUR rant, rather than the Trump-supporter's rant that you're simply forwarding.
The scary thing is how it is happening on such a large scale!
What does that say about America?
You are a signal example of the prescience of George Orwell. Every single thing you wrote is a DoubleSpeak inversion of the truth. You don't even know what America _is._ The happiest countries on earth are the Nordic social democracies. They're not "socialist," they're mixed economies with robust social safety nets. The worst countries in the world are the quasi-autarkies that resist immigration and are in long-term decline because their populations are aging out like Japan and Russia. Or would you prefer those Second Amendment paradises of Somalia and El Salvador, which are the only two countries with more guns per capita than the US? You are voting to ensure that your female children and grandchildren don't have the same rights over their own bodies that you did when you were of breeding age.
I could go on, but it's so clear you exist in a world of alternate facts that it's pointless. You are supporting a fascist regime whose entire raison d'etre is to deprive people of their rights.
Throw away your devices, delete your accounts and go touch grass.
If you read my first sentence you will see that I am forwarding another’s post . I saw this today on Facebook. It just confirms how they are not able to discern the truth
Oh I'm sorry, Becky. It's not at all clear where you left off and where they begun, but I see it in proper context now. Thanks for posting that; it's painful but educational.
I missed the colon :(
So I have MANY people in my social network who believe this… and I’m at a loss as to how to approach this nonsense.
Personally, I'd try a Socratic dialogue. I'd ask them how they know that their premises are true. I'd ask them why they trust the information sources they do. I'd ask them if they're okay with having a 12-year-old bear her stepfather's child. I'd ask them if the police should have been respected on January 6, 2021. I'd ask them if they knew that the First Amendment applies to the government and not private entities and what they thought of banning books that a handful of parents don't like. I'd ask them if they thought that Haitians are eating cats and dogs and if they didn't, why is it okay to accuse them of doing so?
I could go on and on, but you get the general approach.
I was just engaging one person who had posted about the taxes on unrealized gains- saying how it would affect us- I replied that it only affects those with $100 million or more a year- and I sent a link to a tax site that had a really clear way to explain the law… the answer I received was “I just don’t trust her” - I couldn’t help myself so I answered- “but you’ll trust a felon, philanderer and narcissist “ I expect I’ll be blocked in the future
Everything you wrote is a bunch of blinded nonsense, however I’m going to address ONLY one - you are not voting for Freedom of Religion, you already have that & no one is trying to take that away. What you are voting for is for the Christian religion to be forced onto everyone else who believes a different religion or chooses no religion at all. You are voting to get rid of the separation of church & state.
People like you love to insist that the USA is a Christian nation, but that is a lie. Our founders were very clear that they did not want government involved in pushing any particular religion.
I know is ridiculous
Again the first sentence should tell you I am not writing this but forwarding what a “Trumper”posted
Amen, PJ.
I guess my first sentence that said “this is the supernatural they are attributing to Trump, doesn’t show I am just forwarding what I am seeing from Trumpers in my social networks-
My error; sorry, that completely slid past my reading comprehension at the time I was reading it,🙁 perhaps the product of me being up too late at night reading.
I know it’s ridiculous
I think what Trump realizes is that people create a narrative to understand their world, and then believe things that fit the narrative and disbelieve things that do not. What this leads them to do is to even cheerlead things they know to be lies because they can be held up as evidence of some greater truth.
The book "Thinking, Fast and Slow" elucidates other important factors in a scientific way. It describes two "Systems" in the operation of the brain. System 1 is based on emotion and instinct, and processes every input fast. System 2 is analytical but slow and (often) lazy. System 1 makes lots of mistakes. System 2 is needed to avoid fucking things up totally.
Trump has his voters in System 1 all the time. He works at it. Sparking irrational fear helps keep them there. So "Haitians eating pets" or "Mexican rapists" serves his ends with his supporters. Truth or falsehood is irrelevant. Slowly moving caravans are the best.
Like other autocratic personalities, he works to maintain a close, almost personal, relationship with his supporters. Chavez used to give frequent, rambling addresses to Venezuelans (I think he had a Sunday talk show where he would go on for up to 8 hours at a time). Trump does the same thing by constant "Truthing" or "Tweeting". It's all fucking nonsense but he keeps their brains in System 1 and focused on what they believe is his fight for them. Or his vicariously-felt injustices ("They are trying to put me in prison!") and slights ("I know all the best words!").
Hulk Hogan ripping his shirt off at the convention or an utterly unmusical guitar lick from Ted Nugent will keep you in System 1 too.
I don't understand anything about mechanisms of "brain washing" but it was interesting to listen to the podcast all the same. Maybe what I see him doing is basically brain washing. I don't know.
I think you're onto something, Patrick. It's all about the amygdala at the expense of the frontal cortex.
NLP as the 'pedia notes is not any more real than homeopathy as a therapy but it does offer communications strategies. It sounds to me like the psychobabble version of New Age creative visualization. We all know the Trump family was close to Norman Vincent Peale and Trump may have gotten his own variety of the schtick from Peale's The Power of Positive Thinking. You can see it operative in the way Trump justifies himself so much more successfully than other political grifters.
Take, for instance, Mark Robinson's denial of his comically lurid posts on a porn site. He may not be pushed off the ballot, but his candidacy will not survive this scandal. I mean, it's one thing to say that some people need killin'. Quite another to say that you're a black Nazi who'd like to own some slaves ;)
He denied this the way your typical sociopathic politician would deny it. The way George Santos would deny it. He looked straight into the camera, bursting with confidence, and lied to his constituents. He called it an oppo dump by his opponent (it was a carefully researched K-File investigation that sussed out the identity of his nom-de-porn) because Josh Stein is "desperate" and doesn't want to talk about the issues but rather "tabloid trash." When Stein is up in the polls ;)
And he topped it off with an exquisite flourish, likening himself to Clarence Thomas who endured a "high-tech lynching" in his confirmation. Hint to Mark: You ain't gonna win friends and influence people these days by likening yourself to Clarence Thomas for _any_ reason; that ship has sailed, LOL
What Trump does, much differently, is that he implicates his audience. That's the link to what I've gathered to be neuro-linguistic programming (or creative visualization or positive thinking).
If it were Trump instead of Mark, first, he'd launch a broadside attack on the Fake News Media for even reporting it. He'd doubtless personally attack Josh Stein for even imagining he'd have the character to use something like this against Trump. And he might well scoff at the very idea that a mac daddy like himself would ever feel the need to visit a porn site. But what he _wouldn't_ do, unlike Mark Robinson, is to pretend to his audience that he simply doesn't have the character to say such disgusting things.
And _that_ is what his superfans mistake as his "honesty" and his "telling it like it is." He implicates his audience because he knows that these are the things that they wish they could get away with saying.
Earlier this evening I heard a fellow on the news saying that Trump likes to gaslight? To me, that means he likes to lie. According to Hassan that is what woke him up, that Son Young Moon was a liar. Instead of saying gas light we need to say liar! And we need to quit referring to them as Republicans and start calling them rethuglicans. And quit calling them conservatives when they are fascists. We are lying when we call them phony names. They need to be called what they are now not what they used to be, in my humble opinion? I'm sure that, there are more examples, we have to try to snap these bird brains out of it! We could also ask them if they believe "thou shalt not bear false witness", or"It t is easier to fit through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God", or ask them to paraphrase, "The sermon on the Mount". I'm not religious and abhore religious indoctrination. Good luck all!
I agree with every word you wrote. We all know it is much easier to bring religious people into a cult because they are already been taught to believe a “leader” & to believe fantastical things that can’t be proven
Very engaging especially about how to reason with someone
The MAGA heads are working out the authoritarian playbook. It is precisely what has happened in other countries.
Steven Hassan sounded a little fringy. He's not wrong that there's a cult-like aspect to MAGA and Trumpism, but the mechanism might not be quite the way he describes it.
Here's a different take on the neurolinguistic programming he claims is the glue that holds Trump's cult together:
"Neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) is a pseudoscientific approach to communication, personal development and psychotherapy, that first appeared in Richard Bandler and John Grinder's 1975 book The Structure of Magic I. NLP asserts that there is a connection between neurological processes, language and acquired behavioral patterns, and that these can be changed to achieve specific goals in life.[1][2] According to Bandler and Grinder, NLP can treat problems such as phobias, depression, tic disorders, psychosomatic illnesses, near-sightedness,[a] allergy, the common cold,[a] and learning disorders,[3][4] often in a single session. They also say that NLP can model the skills of exceptional people, allowing anyone to acquire them.[5][b]
NLP has been adopted by some hypnotherapists as well as by companies that run seminars marketed as leadership training to businesses and government agencies.[6][7]
There is no scientific evidence supporting the claims made by NLP advocates, and it has been called a pseudoscience.[8][9][10] Scientific reviews have shown that NLP is based on outdated metaphors of the brain's inner workings that are inconsistent with current neurological theory, and that NLP contains numerous factual errors.[7][11] Reviews also found that research that favored NLP contained significant methodological flaws, and that there were three times as many studies of a much higher quality that failed to reproduce the claims made by Bandler, Grinder, and other NLP practitioners.[9][10"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuro-linguistic_programming
NLP probably hasn't really been studied thoroughly in scientific, controlled settings, partially because of ethical considerations. It has, however, been demonstrated extensively in "the field," in its very simplest and most effective way, brainwashing.
Stripping people of their defenses and pushing a different set of beliefs is used in numerous interrogation techniques, and religious and pseudo-religious settings, like cults around the world. It takes time and resources, or a gullible audience, such as people who are preprogrammed via fundamental religion or other types of severe authoritarianism.
This isn't an American phenomenon, it's a global one, and well-known in circles with questionable ethics.
It's pseudoscientific as a therapy, but that's not the context that Rick and Stephen Hassan are referring to. NLP is also a manipulative communications strategy that has directly influenced Anthony Robbins and other so-called motivational speakers and self-help grifters.
I hear t monster going down with Diddy. Anyone else hear that? Not that it will matter.
I've already seen 4-5 pictures of them together, at various events & on his plane. Or someone's plane... Was Ditty on Epstein's list? Trump said he's never met him. And later that he doesn't Think he's ever met him.
🤭 it doesn’t matter what he says, EVER! Even if video or recording. He cannot tell the truth. He doesn’t know the difference between fact and fiction.
I feel lucky to get 8 minutes worth of real news out of a half hour mainstream media news
half hour nowadays!
Has anybody considered what happens if the Republikkkans shut down the government, don't pass the CR before the election, and coordinate a few dozen Springfields across the US?
It could make a horrible mess, perhaps delay the election??
it's the fascist playbook right out loud: stir people up with lies (name your conspiracy theory), give them scapegoats to hate (add Haitians to the list), use fear and intimidation (Springfield Ohio), use violence (Jan.6).
MAGA is nothing but a CULT. They assign supernatural qualities to Trump.
To them, Trump is INFALLIBLE, all things that he does - and has ever done - are PERFECT.
Just a reminder that if you go to church and your pastor compares Donald Trump to Jesus Christ, you officially belong to a cult. 🤣
Can't wait to celebrate Harris victory wearing this funny t-shirt on November 5th! 👇
libtees-2.creator-spring.com/listing/bye-don24w
Rick, I wish you could get Project 2025 in front of Union voters and Social Security recipients. Where’s AARP when you need them?
Biden saved union pensions, and now union members support Trump?
Too many Americans suffers from mental illness.
Both scary, but I’m grateful for the adults in the rooms.
I wrote about my moron MAGA cousin. I think it’s funny. https://open.substack.com/pub/swardandplume/p/dear-lord-santa?r=2k3qfj&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Thank you for the info. I did share your entire comment to Threads, FB, & X or Twitter if you prefer
thanks for your hard work to save America from Trump's neo-fascist terror.