A critic of President Donald Trump and his Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement attending his South Carolina midterm rally compared the event to the Jonestown massacre during a brief interview with Fox News. When a Fox News interviewer asked the man why he was there that morning, he responded: “Well, in the late 70s, I was a little too young to go to South America for the Jonestown Massacre. But this is as close as I'll ever get, so that's why I'm here.
There's nothing like seeing a cult right up front.” The attendee’s comparison invoked the 1978 Jonestown massacre, an extreme example of destructive loyalty to a charismatic leader. More than 900 members of Jim Jones’ Peoples Temple died in Guyana in a mass murder-suicide directed by Jones, including hundreds of children. Trump was in Rock Hill, South Carolina, on Thursday to rally support for Republican Senator Darline Graham and other GOP candidates ahead of the November 3 midterm elections, as Graham faces an unexpectedly competitive challenge from Democrat Annie Andrews.
On Wednesday, Fox News moved the race from Lean Republican to Toss-Up after new polling showed Graham, the sister of late Senator Lindsey Graham, and Andrews deadlocked at 48 percent, raising the stakes for Trump’s Thursday campaign appearance. Since his political rise in 2016, Trump has maintained an intensely loyal political following through his MAGA movement, with supporters regularly turning out for his campaign rallies and forming a core constituency of the Republican Party. His critics have at times characterized the movement and its devotion to Trump as cult-like, a characterization his supporters reject.
Even former Republican Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene has said the pro-Trump movement has become a "cult." Speaking at The Texas Tribune Festival in September, Greene, a Trump ally turned critic, said: "When you vote for someone, not only are you supporting them, but you're holding them accountable. "And if they can't be truthful and hold [Trump] accountable to his campaign promises that affect the entire country, then they're liars, and they're hypocrites and they're in a cult." Newsweek has reached out to the Republican National Committee and the White House via email on Thursday afternoon for comment. This is a breaking news article.
Contact Newsweek editors on this story: Jason Lemon and Paul Donnelley.
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