This Amanda Marcotte brilliant take is too bad (good) not to share, By Hal M. Brown

This is the best description of the month, maybe so far in 2025, of a Trump action: "Last day of Waco decline"

I looked at RawStory before looking as Salon this morning. (I would have eventually seen Amanda Marcotte’s column because I always check out Salon) The RawStory article “Trump's latest 'meltdown' has hints of 'last day of Waco' decline” jumped out at me. It summarizes Marcotte’s Salon column Trump blinks on tariffs in face of GOP resistance — but he hasn't given up on his cult leader dreams "BE COOL": Trump is still giving "last days of Waco" vibes despite a 90-day "pause" on tariffs

RawStory did all the work for me summarzing two crucial points which she makes:

• "We're getting a compelling illustration on the national stage of how a cult leader can induce his followers to stick by him, even as he loses his mind and his behavior becomes too erratic and dangerous to defend. Almost every Republican on Capitol Hill knows that Donald Trump's tariff plan is political suicide, but few are willing to admit that Dear Leader fully intends to see this idiocy to the very end."

• "Trump has a messiah complex, which has only grown since that missed assassin's bullet from July was hyped by his followers into 'proof' that he's the Chosen One, Even as he blinks momentarily on his tariff mania, his behavior is getting even more erratic in a way that's got 'last days of Waco' vibes from a president who has already unsubtly compared himself to David Koresh. His Truth Social meltdown when announcing the 'pause' indicates a decline in Trump's already-fragile mental state."

• With Trump writing, "They are dying to make a deal. 'Please, please sir, make a deal. I’ll do anything sir,'” Marcotte called it "...a moment quite reminiscent of how late-stage cult leaders experience a total collapse between reality and their grandiose fantasies," before pointing to Trump also boasting, "Everything is going to work out well. The USA will be bigger and better than ever before!"

• "It all feels like the final stage of a cult, when the leader's frantic efforts to retain control result in escalating dictates and prophecies that become increasingly hard for followers to make sense of," she wrote before adding, "Republicans would be foolish to treat this 90-day pause as a victory big enough to justify scurrying back to their holes, to hide from the wrath of Dear Leader. He is spiraling and sees these tariffs as the final proving ground of his total conquest of the GOP. He will keep going back to that well — which means economic tumult, more stock market crashes, and more panicked constituents — unless this tariff nonsense is put to bed entirely.

From the RawStory comment section:

This is from:

Know how people often use "drinking the Kool Aid" as a metephor for undying loyalty? Referencing the Jonestown incident? That is, in fact, incredibly inaccurate. What happened at Jonestown was not mass-suicide, it was mass-murder.

Most of the cultists did not kill themselves willingly, survivors of the event claim that most were forced to drink the stuff at gunpoint, and those who refused were shot.

As far as this story goes, Jones' health had indeed degenerated by then, was informed of a possible lung infection, upon which he announced to his followers that he had lung cancer – a ploy to foster sympathy and strengthen support within the community. He was said to be abusing injectable Valium, Quaaludes, stimulants and barbiturates.Audio tapes showed he was complaining of high blood pressure, small strokes, losing forty pounds within the span of two weeks, temporary blindness, convulsions, impotence, and, in his final month, grotesque swelling of the extremities.

Yeah, he was a sick, crippled, pathetic lunatic, and if he hadn't whacked himself he'd have been dead anyway within a few month, tops. And I'd put money on the end of Trump's "reign' being even less dignified.

Below is an animation:

I won’t go into how and why Trump has developed a following that is often be called and analyzed by experts as a cult. Cult expert Steve Hassan appeared on TV and has writen at book, “The Cult of Trump” (review) about this.

A web search of “Trump cult” will come up with numerous articles.

Above is from this DuckDuckGo search.

I apologize to my Substack readers who count on me to try to come up with an original slant on an issue. Amanda Marcotte did all the heavy lifting for me today.

My previous Substacks hopefully have a semblance of originality.

Recommend reading from Mary Trump