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Cults, Culture & Coercion with Dr. Steve Hassan

Messianic Con Men, Past and Present: Cult History and the Cult of Trump with Don Lattin

Cults, Culture & Coercion with Dr. Steve Hassan

Dr. Steven Hassan

Self-improvement, Society & Culture, Education

4.7843 Ratings

🗓️ 15 December 2025

⏱️ 56 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

One of the most troubling aspects of cult dynamics is the way they generate self‑reinforcing histories that can become chaotic and fragmented, leaving individuals disoriented within the broader narrative. We need knowledgeable guides who can help us navigate these stories while providing a grounding in their historical context. I wrote Chapter Three of my book, The Cult of Trump, about the parallels with Jones, Moon, and Hubbard. Don Lattin, this week’s podcast guest, concurred, though he personally likened Trump more closely in his mind to Jim Jones, whose leadership culminated in the historic tragedy at Jonestown. Lattin is a long-established and award-winning religion reporter. His work has been published in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The San Francisco Chronicle. Both of us agreed that Trump exhibits traits of malignant narcissism and appears to be steering the United States toward escalating threats and harms.   The MAGA movement itself is a cult, is led by cults, and has demented authoritarian leadership written all over it. Don Lattin is a journalist who has specialized in writing about religions, cults, psychedelic history, cultural norms, and other fascinating topics since the 1970s. He’s written seven books, including Jesus Freaks – a True Story of Murder and Madness on the Evangelical Edge and Changing Our Minds: Psychedelic Sacraments and the New Psychotherapy. He is also the author of The Harvard Psychedelic Club: How Timothy Leary, Ram Dass, Huston Smith, and Andrew Weil Killed the Fifties and Ushered in a New Age for America. I had the great pleasure of listening to his Substack channel recently and am honored to bring him on for an episode of Cults, Culture & Coercion. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

Hello, I'm Dr. Stephen Hassan with another episode of my podcast, cult culture and coercion.

0:12.1

And I am excited to reconnect with a journalist that I've known for decades.

0:20.7

Don Latin recently started a substack, and I said, that I've known for decades.

0:28.9

Don Latin recently started a substack, and I saw him posting, and we reconnected, and I said,

0:34.1

you've written so many amazing books and know about Colts for so long.

0:35.5

Let's do the pod.

0:39.8

And so I'm just going to read your bio, Don, before we get going.

0:46.0

You're an award-winning journalist, author of seven books. Your work has appeared in dozens of U.S. magazines and newspapers, including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, San Francisco

0:51.7

Chronicle, where you worked as a staff religion writer for more

0:55.8

than two decades. And earlier this year, you started a weekly series on substack titled,

1:03.9

funnily, Messiahs I Have Known, Ha Ha, sorry, about his misadventures covering cults on the religion beat.

1:14.8

Those stories have investigated such cult leaders as Guru DaFri John, known at Franklin Jones

1:22.4

and his crazy wisdom, the Nicole de Dadeone, the now-in-prison imprisoned founder of the One Taste Orgasmic Meditation

1:32.0

Movement.

1:32.6

You did a series of posts on that.

1:37.0

It also includes posts comparing the messianic tactics of Donald J. Trump to those of people like Jim Jones and some young moon.

1:48.4

And of course, Jim Jones was from San Francisco and the whole horror of Jonestown, November 18th.

1:56.7

We're actually doing a cult awareness day.

2:04.6

We try to pass a bill to memorialize it.

2:11.4

Congress and Leo Ryan was killed, and his aide, Jackie Spears, went on to become a congresswoman.

2:19.0

But I was rereading, Don, the congressional report on Jonestown.

2:24.9

They have a whole section on the brainwashing tactics of Jim Jones, all the things that,

...

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