So two weeks after Trump lost the election, he and his followers still claim victory.

President Trump is doubling down on his refusal to concede.

Writing in all caps last night, the president tweeted that he won the election.

Jeff Charlotte, who has been covering the election for Vanity Fair, credits two Christian-adjacent ideas for these claims.

The first is the so-called prosperity gospel, the notion that, among other things, positive thinking can manifest positive consequences,

even electoral victory in the face of electoral loss.

You can think your way to failure and misery, but you can also think your way to success and happiness.

The world in which you live is not primarily determined by outward conditions and circumstances,

but by the thoughts that habitually occupy

your mind. That's Trump's childhood pastor Norman Vincent Peel, whose runaway bestseller

the power of positive thinking is thought to be Trump's personal gospel. But the problem with

prosperity thinking, like day-and and date rapture prophecies,

is that when the bets don't pay off, it's egg on a lot of faces.

For I hear the sound of victory. I hear the sound of victory.

I hear the sound of victory.

Trump's spiritual advisor, Pastor Paula White, the day after the election.

As Prosperity Gospel loses its edge for Trump, another strain of fringe Christianity,

this time dating back nearly two millennia, is flourishing.

Charlotte, a professor of English at Dartmouth College, says it has animated QAnon conspiracies and Trump's base.

It's called Gnosticism.

Jeff, welcome back to the show.

Hi, Bob. Good to be with you.

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