The Trump Cult: Trump, God, and Narcissism

“I am the Chosen one,” said Trump, glancing up to the sky while speaking to reporters. Backtracking a few days later in his signature gaslighting style, he tweeted it was just a joke. But the grandiosity displayed in the statement is not a joke. In his book The Art of the Deal, Trump explained that he knows exactly what he is doing when he inflates his ego: “I play to people’s fantasies. People may not always think big themselves, but they can get very excited by those who do.”

There is no more dangerous group to whose fantasies of greatness Trump can play than religious leaders (and their tens of millions of followers) who feel small about themselves and long for God-like grandiosity. They know a thing or two about playing to people’s fantasies of omnipotence by invoking the name of God (in vain). Just read the popular end-times Left Behind series (over 60 million copies sold), where Jesus ends up exterminating his “enemies” with neutron-bomb-like capabilities. The dynamic of omnipotent inflation of self fuels the fatal attraction between Trump and the Trump evangelicals who see him as the Chosen one. Here reality collapses into ultimately destructive omnipotent fantasies. This is something we see in cults again and again.