Donald Trump's Cult of Personality

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For the past year, I’ve heard all the explanations of why about one-third of our population continues to support Donald Trump. Nothing he does or says shakes that support. Asked his view of Trump after revelations that he slept with a porn star just months after Melania gave birth to their son, Baron, an Evangelical leader said Trump gets a “mulligan” on that, a golf term meaning a do-over with no penalty.

I’ve spent some time trying to understand a relative’s continued support of Trump, pointing out the damage he has and continues to do to the environment, the poor, immigrants, our tax system, regulations designed to ensure our health and safety, his support of White Supremacists and on and on. None of it matters: he gets Mulligans on all that because Hilary would have been just horrible and we needed to “drain the swamp”.

So what is going on?

I think it’s time to consider the explanation that Trump has become the object of a cult of personality, crucially abetted by mass media including Fox, Breitbart News and the rest of the massive and powerful right-wing media. They portray him as always right, even when he contradicts himself, and worthy of a kind of worship. Cults of personality need not be religious. There are secular versions, but the leader is similarly the object of adoration even though he (and it has always been a “he” according to those who have studied the subject) is not religious at all.


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Am I going too far in saying Trump's followers “worship” him? I don’t think so. When Democrats failed to applaud his State of the Union address, Trump had the gall to call it treason.  This prompted Frank Bruni to write in the Feb. 7 New York Times that Trump’s “test of patriotism is this and only this: Do you worship me?” 

--> In his What is character and why it reallydoes matter, Thomas A. Wright wrote, "The cult of personality phenomenon refers to the idealized, even god-like, public image of an individual consciously shaped and molded through constant propaganda and media exposure. As a result, one is able to manipulate others based entirely on the influence of public personality..."


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We think of cults of personality as applying to dead leaders, most of them tyrants like Mussolini, Hitler, Stalin and Ferdinand Marcos of the Phillipines. Some were more benevolent figures like Mustafa Kamal Ataturk, who secularized the nation of Turkey and created a democratic Turkish Republic. And, perhaps, to Vladimir Putin, so admired by Trump.

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Trump’s cult of personality has not reached the level of any of these dictators, although Mike Lofgren, in the January 17, 2018 Washington Monthly, said, “The over-the-top image of Trump …is eerily similar to the cult of Joseph Stalin.” Thankfully, Trump has not been able to become a Joseph Stalin because we still do have independent, truth-telling media, and because defenders of our freedom are leaning heavily on the judicial branch of our government to prevent Trump from becoming a dictator.

But it’s not for lack of trying on his part, as we know from his firing of James Comey and his desire to fire Mueller. As psychologists have publicly pointed out, Trump is a classic narcissist, and narcissists share many characteristics with cult leaders:  It’s always us versus them. Outsiders are dangerous enemies, and this justifies extreme actions, like barring all Muslims from coming to the U.S.  Cult leaders answer to no one because they possess special wisdom, and their followers willingly see no evil, no matter what they do--even cozying up to Russia--as long as the cult leader is pursuing the goals they share with him, like ending abortion or cutting taxes on the rich. Even if the behavior violates prevailing standards for ethics and honesty, the cult followers don’t mind how many mulligans they give.

Because the cult leader is never wrong, there’s never a need to apologize, to the widow of a dead service member or his own wife, or so Melania’s behavior seems to be telling us. Questioning or criticizing the leader is punished, no matter how close the critic was before. Think Steve Bannon.

And so on, as detailed by Phd Dan Neuharth in his Psychcentral blog.

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Is there a cult of personality around Donald Trump? No other explanation fits the unshakeable loyalty of his followers. They hear no evil and see no evil no matter what he says or does, no matter how cruel or how selfish. And if he gets the military parade in Washington D.C. that he’s asked for, his full-blown narcissism will be there for all to see, with his followers swooning in worship.##