Trump cult followers try to redefine the definition of "cult" and ignore the traditional definition and the one found in dictionaries. Of course, they will also depend and rely on the "...but what about..." deflection. Others in the past have had cult-like appearances, so it is OK for "our" leader to be cult-like.
Folks who belong to cults are delusional irrational thinkers who "believe" leader and his messages despite the unbelievable context of the message. They either disbelieve the leader is lying or they accept the lies of the leader under the premise that if the leader is lying the lie is for a worthy purpose the leader has judged is more important than truth. An "end justifies the means" concept.
Under the manipulation of a cult leader, a lifetime of moral values and traditional beliefs are able to be disregarded and ignored.
I get that there are supporters of Trump who act more like cultist worshippers than mere political supporters, but I don't see how that makes Trump a cult leader. Before you argue that it's not okay for "'our' leader to be cult-like", could you maybe clarify where he's acting more like a cult leader than like a typical politician?
His comments and views about elected officials (Congressmen and women) not standing, cheering and clapping for him during his S of U Address. Also, his belief that he can change traditions for his pleasure and purpose as if he and his thoughts are more important and viable than generations of those who came before him. Traditions adapted by all the Presidents before him are meaningless to Trump. In his mind, he is wiser and smarter and more powerful than all the Presidents that came before him.
You know who else thinks that their ideals are more important and viable than the traditions that they don't like, even when those traditions were held by multiple generations before them? Every single human being who has ever walked the face of this earth. Also, cult leaders. So yes, this does make Donald Trump similar to a cult leader. In the same way that preferring to eat beef over kale makes Roger Moore similar to a tyrannosaurus rex. I was hoping, though, that you'd have something a little more specific.
In terms of his comments about people not standing and clapping, he wasn't commenting about them not clapping for -him-, he was commenting about them not clapping for the things that he was championing, and the comments are purely a political wedge move. I'm not sure if you actually saw or heard much of the SOTU through your red haze of **** Trump!, but he went out of his way to spend a lot of time promoting things that virtually everybody, democrat and republican alike, supports. Rescue workers in Haiti, police and firefighters, a little boy going out of his way to honor the graves of dead veterans. He did this and gave a speech that was uncharacteristically agreeable and unifying at a SOTU at which the "buzz" was that the democrats would be making their #resistance quite evident. And they did, and what ended up happening was a group of democrats sitting stone-faced and looking disgruntled while everybody else is cheering for firemen.
Now he's further capitalizing by shooting out some tweets that emphasize the interpretation that their disdain for him was actually disdain for veterans, or at least that they're motivated more by hatred for Trump than by support for people generally regarded as our nation's heroes. This is political gamesmanship, and it is how politicians win and secure their elected positions in democratic nations. When, such as in an ultimately meaningless speech, a wedge issue can be pressed between the voters and the representatives of a political party without enacting any divisive policies or materially damaging anything, I see nothing wrong with this tactic. Also, this particular method of alienating opposing influences from people one is trying to persuade is far more common in politics than it is in cults. A cult leader tends to do this by first welcoming an initiate in and making them feel like they belong, then telling them directly that the opposing influence is evil and doesn't care about the initiate, simultaneously forbidding contact with that influence through threat of ostracism. What Trump did was essentially bait the opposing influence into giving off the appearance of having values far askew of those of the initiate, then directly confront that competitor in a public manner, allowing the initiate to witness the confrontation and, ideally, come away with the idea that Trump is the one that shares their values, while the democrats are just hateful vote panderers.
I'm sorry, but your cult leader comparison still ain't holding any water. If this is your only evidence, he's still lookin far more like an average politician who happens to be a human being than he is like a cult leader.
