MSNBC national security analyst Frank Figliuzzi said Monday on “Deadline” that former President Donald Trump’s followers were members of an “extremely disturbing” cult with a death count.
Figliuzzi said, “When you combine the characteristics of a cult with all the trappings of a religion, you’ve got a very volatile, dangerous scenario on your hands. I frequently refer to the MAGA movement as a form of cult, but clearly, if you watch this Youngstown, Ohio, rally and if you were to take Trump out of the video, listen to at audio in the last moments of the rally and watch the crowd, that kind of one word, that one finger gesture hands raised to the heaven, you would think you’re in the final moments of an evangelical worship service in some mega church that’s gone mad. All that it was missing was the altar call at the end. There is a religiosity about this that’s extremely disturbing.”
He continued, “When you do that, you get people who are absolutely willing to sacrifice their souls and their lives because it’s no longer about politics anymore. It’s about where they’re going to spend eternity, and if you’ve convinced people that this is the man, this is the man you’ve got to adore and worship because it’s your very soul at stake and the soul of the nation, then you’re in a very dangerous situation if power is taken from him, whether it’s through an indictment or another lost election. It becomes extremely dangerous.”
Figliuzzi added, “It’s that combination of religion and cult status that gets people to the point where they will martyr themselves. We do have a Trump death count. I wrote a column on this for MSNBC daily, where I start counting up the people who died, from the guy who walked into the FBI Cincinnati field office to people killed at the Capital on January 6 and others who died because of their beliefs. That’s more than a cult. There is this religious aspect that’s extremely disturbing. ”
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