'He's going full Jim Jones': Rachel Maddow and The View share new Trump fear
"The View's" co-host Joy Behar is concerned that Donald Trump is building a cult not unlike that whose members followed Jim Jones to Jonestown — where most committed mass suicide.
"The View" welcomed MSNBC host Rachel Maddow on Tuesday to promote season two of her podcast — and she quickly got sidetracked onto Trump's recent hush money trial.
"I mean, there's [adult movie actress] Stormy Daniels wearing a bulletproof vest to get into the courthouse," Maddow said as the show ran footage from the court.
"Once you have political violence, you have fascism following that," explained Behar. "You've characterized some of Trump's rhetoric as being 'pornographically violent.' That's a good phrase; I like it."
She then pivoted to a speech he made in New Jersey on June 9.
"In just the last weeks, he's joked about his supporters committing suicide. Listen to this! Did you catch this? He tells them — wouldn't it be better to commit suicide than to vote for [President Joe] Biden?
"He's going full Jim Jones now, you know? It's like the Kool-Aid thing. Is he losing it or what?"
Jones was a cult leader in what was formally called The Peoples Temple in the late 1970s. Democratic Rep. Leo Ryan (CA) went to the settlement after constituents called, fearful that their children had been unwillingly pressured into the cult. After some members attacked and killed Ryan, Jones enforced a mass suicide.
Read Also: Trump and the cult of personality around him are part of a broader reactionary movement
Maddow believes there's "something going on aside from the politics of the deeply weird."
She pointed out Trump's obsession with Hannibal Lecter, and Trump seemed confused that the film character was a real person.
"When he talks about crime, he doesn't just talk about crime, he like, acts — he like, draws you through it," said Maddow. "And then they got stabbed, and then they turned the weapon, and then... When he was talking about the stupid thing about the sharks, he had to go into extra detail to talk about the woman getting her leg bit off."
Sunny Hostin recalled Stormy Daniels saying Trump is "afraid of sharks."
Maddow agreed it's clear he's afraid of sharks but pointed out she thinks, "He's trying to make us afraid of everything."
"There is something weird about talking about things in very bloody, violent terms all the time," said Maddow.
Whoopi Goldberg pointed out, "When you don't have anything to say, what do you do?"
The Jones observation from Behar isn't the first time Trump has talked about the devotion of his followers.
“In Las Vegas, Trump points to a follower in the audience that he calls ‘front row Joe’ and then tells the crowd ‘that it would be suicide before Biden’ got Joe's vote,” extremism researcher Noelle Cook Cook wrote on X. “He gets more dangerous by the day.”
See the full commentary in the video below or at the link here.