As the anniversary of Jonestown approaches, I can’t help but see ominous echoes of Jim Jones in Trump
Peoples Temple founder Jim Jones speaks at San Francisco’s Glide Church in 1975. On Nov. 18, 1978, Jones led more than 900 of his followers in a horrifying ritual of murder and suicide in Jonestown, Guyana.Janet Fries/Getty Images
By Don Lattin, Contributor Nov 15, 2025 (SFChronicle.com)
Donald Trump has long given me flashbacks.
When I was a young reporter in the 1970s and 1980s, I covered the “cult wars” of that era. I followed the controversies surrounding the South Korean evangelist Sun Myung Moon and the ill-fated saga of the Rev. Jim Jones.
The most notorious cult leader of the 1970s, Jones ran the San Francisco’s Peoples Temple, which fled the city to a remote South American jungle compound in Guyana named Jonestown. On Nov. 18, 1978, he led more than 900 followers in a horrifying ritual of murder and suicide.
As we approach the anniversary of that massacre, I can’t help but see ominous echoes of Jim Jones in Trump.
U.S. military personnel unload bodies of Jonestown massacre victims from a helicopter at the Georgetown, Guyana, airport on Nov. 23, 1978. Associated Press
Those echoes first surfaced in my mind when Trump became a serious presidential contender. They only got louder in his subsequent runs. That’s when Trump offered his “I was indicted for you” defense to his MAGA base. “In 2016, I declared: I am your voice. Today, I add: I am your warrior. I am your justice. And for those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution.”
Many people forget that for most of Jones’ life, he was not considered a “crazy cult leader.” An ordained minister in the Disciples of Christ church, he was seen as a respected — albeit feared — progressive political force in San Francisco.
Like Trump, the Peoples Temple leader had undeniable messianic tendencies. Jones compared himself to God or Jesus Christ. He preached a left-wing message of “apostolic socialism.” Only he could save his followers from the CIA and the cruelties of a corrupt capitalist regime.
To my ears, that paranoid, grandiose message sounds like the political flip side of Trump’s constant boasts that only he can save his aggrieved right-wing base from the oppressions of the “deep state” and its corrupt left-wing politicians.
Trump and some of his key supporters increasingly see the hand of God in the president’s authoritarian crusade for social salvation, often citing how he barely survived last year’s assassination attempt in Butler, Pa.
“Many people have told me that God spared my life for a reason,” the MAGA savior said. “And that reason was to save our country and to restore America to greatness.”
Trump strategist Steve Bannon recently predicted that — despite the constitutional ban against it — Trump will be chosen to serve a third term in 2028.
“He’s very imperfect,” Bannon told the Economist. “He’s not churchy. But he’s an instrument of divine will.”
Election Day 2028, as it happens, falls on the same month as the 50th anniversary of Jonestown.
* * *
I’m not the only one with knowledge of the cult wars who sees these parallels.
Jonestown Institute founder Fielding McGehee told me he got numerous calls and emails from former Peoples Temple members back in 2016 when Trump famously declared, “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters.”
“The message that they repeated over and over again was, ‘I just heard the voice of Jim Jones,’” McGehee said.
Former Peoples Temple member Jordan Vilchez is also among those who see frightening similarities between Jones and Trump.
She noted in a 2021 essay that temple members publicly espoused principles of freedom yet slavishly obeyed a leader who “spewed cynicism and disdain” toward anyone who opposed him. “We were browbeaten and filled with fear and despair rather than a vision of vibrant possibility and hope.”
Both Trump and Jones, Vilchez wrote, obsessed with power over others, sowed division and confusion, crushed dissenters, exploited the shadow side of followers, cultivated a persecution complex and shaped a cult-like following.
Anti-cult activist Steve Hassan, a former member of Moon’s Unification Church, also told me he has Trump-induced flashbacks from his time as a “Moonie.”
Hassan, founder of the Freedom of Mind Resource Center, recalled an infamous moment early in Trump’s first term, when television cameras recorded his cabinet members heaping slavish praise upon the great leader. “We thank you for the opportunity and the blessing to serve your agenda,” Chief of Staff Reince Priebus said.
The scene reminded Hassan of private meetings with Moon back in the 1970s.
“All of us in the room understood how blessed we were to be in Moon’s presence,” he wrote in his book “The Cult of Trump.” “We adored him as the greatest man who ever lived. If we had doubts or criticisms, we were taught to block, or ‘thought stop,’ them. If we dared disagree or point out inconsistencies, we would be kicked out.”
America had a four-year break from the messianic madness of Donald J. Trump, but his volatile mix of politics, prophecy and self-promotion has continued with the Second Coming of his Presidency.
It reached a fever pitch following the Sept. 10 assassination of Charlie Kirk, the influential Christian nationalist, Trump ally and instant martyr for the religious right.
Trump plays with fire as he seeks to inspire Christian nationalists and other like-minded sects who see an apocalyptic war between the forces of good and evil.
Rev. Moon died in 2012, long after declaring himself to be the new Christian messiah.
Today, his son, Hyung-Jin “Sean” Moon, runs a Unification Church splinter group called Rod of Iron Ministries. Headquartered in Newfoundland, Pa., he and his followers worship with AR-15 rifles and proudly wear crowns of golden bullets. They seek alliances with MAGA and other right-wing nationalist sects and hold militia-type trainings in the rolling hills of a state founded by Quakers preaching a message of brotherly love.
We’ve seen in recent years how outbursts of violence can come from the radical right, the far left or from people so deranged that it’s hard to place them on the political spectrum.
Trump immediately responded to Kirk’s murder by turning up the temperature and declaring war on “left-wing lunatics.”
Where we go from here is anyone’s guess. But, in my experience, when you throw apocalyptic prophecy and “spiritual warfare” into the political mix, don’t expect calm from troubled disciples.
Don Lattin wrote about the Peoples Temple for the San Francisco Examiner in 1978 and was the Chronicle’s religion writer from 1988 to 2006. This piece is drawn from his new Substack series, “Messiahs I Have Known.”
Nov 15, 2025
Don Lattin
