Dr. Steven Hassan, who founded the Freedom of Mind Resource Center, walked through the expanding indicators of cultism surrounding President Donald Trump.
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Frequently, the stereotype of cults is that people wear the same outfits, like uniforms, with matching hairstyles, robes and color-coded clothing, all to create a highly prescribed “look.” Dr. Hassan said that what’s become known as “Mar-a-Lago Face” is another representation of that.
The name has become an informal, usually mocking, label for a very polished, conspicuously cosmetic look associated with right-wing media and online culture around Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago social and political orbit in Palm Beach.
It’s a label given to people with very smooth, tight-looking skin showing signs of Botox, laser treatments or facelift procedures. They also have prominent, high or very full cheeks, sometimes associated with facial filler or fat transfer. Sharp, defined and plump lips add to strongly sculpted or angular jawline, lifted brows a narrow-looking nose bridge, very white, veneer-like teeth and heavy makeup, bronzer or spray tan, false lashes, dark eye makeup, contouring, and a high-gloss finish.
There are many qualities in the list that match those of Trump aide Natalie Harp, who has been in the news over the past several months since the release of the book Regime Change by Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan.
“My work is to really try to illuminate the mind and how undue influence can be exerted and the whole idea of cults all along the continuum from ethical tight-knit groups where there’s freedom to think and question and leave without fear or harassment,” Dr. Hassan said.
“… [W]e were talking about how so many MAGA people are getting plastic surgery, and they all look alike,” he said, explaining that when someone is “in a mind control cult, you want to look the right way to fit in [with] that idyllic image of Christian white nationalists.”
A listener asked a question about the “fusion of identity,” which in “Trumpworld” is the combination of Trump worship and Americanism. As someone who works with people coming out of cults, Hassan said it’s a “dissociative disorder where there is a cult-pseudo identity that’s programmed and yes fused with the cult leader etc., but the real self is still there.”
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“And so when people are using that ‘fusion of identity model,’ they’re not understanding that the person, whoever they were before, is still there neuronally and can be accessed and that there’s dissonance between the person’s real self and their cult self,” Hassen continued, adding that the method he teaches empowers the “real self” to “have perspective and question the cult.”
He pivoted to address the release of the letters Harp sent to Trump and the extent to which they indicate her love and worship.
One listener who identified themselves as a survivor of church abuse said that those letters were certainly something he could have written to the church leader while in the thrall of the priest.
The new reporting out in the past few weeks has been that she’s the one who posts the social media messages that he dictates. He found that concerning because she also has the power to exert her own influence on him, prompting him to wonder who in their relationship is controlling whom.
“She is the narcissist’s dream who just sucks up and says adoring, wonderful things all the time,” Hassan explained. “Is she a foreign agent? Honestly, if I were Russia, or China, or Iran, or North Korea, or Christian nationalists, or Nazis, she would be the ideal candidate. Someone who looks like Trump’s daughter, blonde hair, sycophantically adoring him, wanting to please him, sleeping on the floor when necessary.”
Another listener spoke about what Harp and Trump both get from the relationship. Given Harp’s history of losing her father to suicide, Hassan said it’s possible that she’s looking to him as a father figure. However, “but from some of her comments, it sounded more like she was like sexually attracted to him, which is really hard stretch…”
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