These stories remind us that there is hope that people can return to themselves. None of us is immune to mind control, misinformation, or undue influence. We all rely on the information we consume and the people we trust. Video credit: @nowthisimpact
"I did believe that the election was stolen until I actually switched off Fox News and started getting my news from other places, my information. That's when it finally hit. Yes, folks who are in the MAGA bubble are starting to wake up. Hi, I'm Dr. Steve Hassan, cult expert. And yes, I wrote the New York Times bestselling book, The Cult of Trump. And I want to thank these former believers for being willing to go public, be interviewed on camera and to talk about how they firmly believed with certainty what they were learning from Fox News and other questionable sources. So I want to say completely that we are human beings. We depend on information. We depend on the people we are interacting with online. We depend on where we're getting our news from. And in this day and age, in 2026, with so much known phony disinformation and misinformation and PSY ops happening, I want to encourage everyone to take the position that I know who I am. I know what my values are. And I want to reality test everything. And the more certain anyone is, the more I want to question it, because in the real world, we have to be ready to change our beliefs, like separate our egos from our beliefs and pursue what's factual to what's true. I also want to comment that there was a documentary done numerous years ago called The Brainwashing of My Dad by Jen Sinco. And I interviewed her when she put out a book based on the documentary. She talked about her father, how her father was radicalized listening to Rush Limbaugh, then Fox News, to become a very hate-filled antagonistic personality until the TV broke and he didn't watch his Fox News and he became normal again and he came out of the bubble. And what I liked about this documentary is she interviewed Republican strategists talking about how they deliberately wanted to manipulate people emotionally and psychologically to believe things. I also want to do a shout out to Brian Stelter, who used to do reliable sources on CNN, who wrote a whole book on Fox News as a corporate cult. Yes, an authoritarian mind control cult of Roger Ailes. Let's go together, reach out to people who are in the MAGA bubble sphere still, be warm, ask questions, invite them to reality test with us, be prepared for you to change your mind, and engage warmly so that people can exit in bigger and bigger numbers. What do you think? Put your comments below and thanks."
💬 Discussion
These stories remind us that there is hope that people can return to themselves. None of us is immune to mind control, misinformation, or undue influence. We all rely on the information we consume and the people we trust. Video credit: @nowthisimpact
