The Comedy Cellar: Live from the Table - Cults and the Lucas Bros

Episode Date: January 31, 2020

Cults and the Lucas Bros

You're listening to The Comedy Cellar, live from the table on the Riotcast Network, riotcast.com. Good evening, everybody. Welcome to the Comedy Cellar Show here on Sirius XM Channel 99. My name is Noam Dorman. I'm the owner of the Comedy Cellar. I'm sitting, as always, next to Mr. Dan Natterman. I'm slightly distracted because I lost my jacket, as I always do in here, because it's like the Bermuda Triangle of jackets in this joint. But I'll try to focus.

Perrie Lashenbrand, our producer. Hi. Slash something. Okay. And we have some guest comedians, Keith and Ken... The Lucas Brothers. The Lucas Brothers. Keith and Kenny's television appearances include... They're

identical twins. Keith and Kenny's television appearances include Comedy Central, CNN, The History of Comedy, HBO's Crashing, and multiple appearances on Fallon. Their first hour stand-up special, The Lucas Brothers on Drugs, premiered on Netflix. They may be seen regularly at the Comedy Cellar. Woo-hoo! And another... Who's who? Who's who?

Keith and Kenny. Close. Kenny and Keith. Which one is Kenny? I'm Kenny. Okay. You'll get it. All right.

Kenny's on the right. Okay. Right in front of you. Kenny. And what is the trick to telling you apart? I think... The flannel shirt?

The flannel shirt. Normally I wear a flannel shirt too, but I thought it was too... Well, Kenny said it was this pin that he was wearing and then he took his jacket off along with the pin. Yeah. So I usually wear the button. When did you get a tattoo or something? I have a tattoo. But I

wear it long sleeve. I had two friends, Amina and Jazz, you know, the... The singers. Yeah, the singers. And they were identical twins. But one would keep her hair blonde. One would have other hair. Is there a trick?

Is there a trick? Or did you just have to know you guys? If you really get to know us. Yeah, that's of course. I'm sure all your close friends can totally tell you about it. He has more hair in his beard. Yeah, yeah. I don't know if that helps.

That's a good one. That's a good one. Who has a bigger? I don't know. Yeah, like I'm the first person. Bigger brain? I would like to say I do. I don't know if that helps. That's a good one. That's a good word. Who has a bigger... Yeah, like I'm the first person to ask. I would like to say I do. I don't know about that. And our guest of honor, Stephen Hassan.

I think all our guests are guests of honor, Noam. I've made that point in the past, and I repeat it tonight. Is America's leading cult expert and mental health counselor. He directs the Freedom of Mind Resource Center and teaches at Harvard Medical School. Wow, fancy. His most recent book is called The Cult of Trump. He has been helping people exit destructive cults since 1976.

And you were a member of the Moonies? The Moonies, which is how I got interested in the whole subject, the brainwashing and mind control. Were you working at the Entenmann's Bakery? Were you working at the Washington Timesmann's Bakery? Or were you working at the Washington Times? I was recruited at Queens College. I want to say that I grew up 1.3 miles from Donald Trump in Flushing, Queens. Oh, wow.

Shout out, Queens. And got recruited at Queens College. I was a creative writing major. This was 1974 at age 19 and spent two and a half years in the cult had dropped out of college quit my job donated the bank account believed moon was the Messiah hmm believed democracy was satanic and we needed a theocracy to rule the world and I became a right-wing fascist Holocaust supporter. And that moon taught that the Jews needed to have the Holocaust because they killed Jesus.

And when I woke up after five days of deprogramming following a near-fatal van crash, which is how my family found me, having been exposed to brainwashing of Chinese communism, the eight criteria, I thought, what happened to me? I want to understand this. And so I did the deep study of social psychology and hypnosis and brainwashing and mind control and became a mental health professional a few years later.

And I've been helping people understand what it is ever since. And I've written three books before the cult of Trump. Fascinating. So how did you get recruited into the Moonies? In the airport? Women. It's always women. My girlfriend dumped me.

I was sitting in the cafeteria at Queens College. Three women flirted dumped me. I was sitting in the cafeteria at Queens College. Three women flirted with me. Yeah. And started asking me all kinds of questions. And I didn't know anything about cults. So when you say women, you mean to get laid? Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Of course. I was 19. Yeah. I should say on this note, and we're in a comedy cellar, that I was a very healthy young man who had a normal sex drive or higher than normal sex drive. And in two and a half years in the Moonies, no masturbation, not a single time. Oh, wow. And they have mass weddings that are arranged. I believe it, man. I was totally programmed

to believe evil spirits wanted to seduce me away from God and there's a lot of sublimation of sexual energy. So you're saying you did not get sex in the moonies? Zero. Zero sex in the moonies. Not even sex

with the one that I love, to quote Woody Allen. Okay. How can you not masturbate? It doesn't seem possible. I didn't masturbate. I was programmed to believe that Satan seduced Eve sexually, and then she seduced Adam in the garden. All those priests that molest kids are programmed the same way,

and they masturbate. I don't know if they're programmed. They wanted to get the job. It turned out Moon was having sex with a lot of his female disciples. He had a child out of wedlock. How many kids did he have? One of his leaders raised his own.

He had 13 by the latest wife. He's dead now. She's taken over the cult. So just to tell people because people, you know, we've gotten old. People stayed young. In like the 80s and 90s, maybe a little bit later than that, you would go to an airport and it was typical that somebody would approach you with a flower

to try to talk to you about the Reverend Moon. And in like that movie Airplane, this was one of the running gags. The people in the airport were trying to get to a cult. The Christians copied the Moonies and they started selling flowers. Fundraising was a big deal.

Trying to get cash off of people telling lies. I would imagine they target people that people are more likely to be indoctrinated are perhaps people that are lonely, perhaps people that are searching for answers. Were you particularly vulnerable? No. Except that my girlfriend dumped me.

Except for his horniness. So, you raise an important point that I want to make for your listeners, which is that the average person thinks about cult members and says they're weak, they're stupid, they're from a bad family, they haven't been educated, whatever. They blame the victim versus people who are deceived or situationally vulnerable, like death of a loved one, breakup of a relationship, graduating, moving to a new city, state, or country. Situational, life cycle vulnerabilities. But what is minimized is just how much human beings can be influenced by each other. So hold that thought, because I want to hear about how you got out and how this all ties into Trump. But on the subject of masturbation, what is it like with identical twins when the first one discovers masturbation? You tell each other?

We didn't talk about it. Early on in our lives, we didn't talk about masturbation. We just saw the clues left behind for us to figure out when, who's doing what. Because we shared a TV, so I would know when he's watching Cinemax. I don't know if he masturbated. That's pretty old already, no?

Didn't you start? I started, my first time masturbating was, I was like 13. Yeah. Oh, that's old. I know. I was a Christian. I was like very much indoctrinated to believe that masturbation was a sin. Yeah, it was definitely.

We thought it was evil. Yeah, we thought it was very evil. Yeah. So I didn't touch myself at all. And it was a big regret. And at 13, it's not that you learned differently. You just couldn't take it anymore very evil. So I didn't touch myself at all. And that was a big regret. And at 13, it's not that you learned differently, you just couldn't take it anymore. Yeah, I mean, hormones.

I was just like, I was sick. It's a fundamental problem when people are turned against their own humanity. And their own biological... I mean, our humanity is, in all fairness, disgusting. It is disgusting to be human. But it is our humanity.

Yeah. I mean, you know, masturbation is, you see yourself masturbating. It's like that scene in History of the World where the primitive men are masturbating and it says, our forefathers. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. That's exactly what it is. I don't know if you recall that scene. That's not bad.

The point being is, yeah, it's ridiculous, but that's who we are. Yeah. Okay, so you were in the Moonies for how long? Two and a half years. Two and a half years. And what year is this? 74 to 76. To 77.

How many members were a part of the Moonies? Oh, a few hundred thousand. In the United States, maybe three to five thousand. But the important thing that I want to bring it back to Trump and everything else is that... Wait, wait. First I want to hear how you got out. I fell asleep at the wheel of a Mooney fundraising van, drove into the back of a tractor trailer truck at 80 miles an hour, was pried out of the wreckage, spent two weeks in the hospital, and it was during that period where I had surgery on my leg that I reached out to my sister,

who had been under orders not to tell where I was. And she was like, Steve, I miss you. You have a nephew you haven't met yet. Come and visit. And she touched my heartstrings. And I said, I'll come if you promise not to tell my parents, our parents, because they had said we were a cult and we were brainwashed, so they were Satan. And fortunately, she broke her promise and told my parents, and they hired a bunch of ex-moonies, and they did a deprogramming that took five days.

But before the crash, were you having any doubts? No. No. And the only reason you crashed was because you hadn't slept in three days. Three days. I was normally sleeping three to four hours a night. Because you weren't allowed to sleep, right? My leader had said I was leading a

fundraising team at the time. My leader wanted everyone to make a minimum of $100 a day. Otherwise, they couldn't sleep. And I was trained as a leader if my members couldn't sleep, I shouldn't sleep. $100 a day in the 70s was a decent coin. There must have been something about you

which made you vulnerable to these kind of outlandish things What were you wearing? What was teaching you? Work boots, ponytail, the ponytail.

Some people are suggestible. So I've actually studied this now for 40 plus years. Have you ever seen these Darren Brown things? I like Darren Brown. I use him as an example. Not my jacket, everybody.

Not my jacket. So is that similar? Sleight of hand. Is that similar to cult vulnerability? He weeds out suggestible people for his things. So hypnosis turns out to be a major tactic of mind control because it bypasses people's conscious minds. And some people are more suggestible in terms of hypnotizability. Actually, in psychology, suggestibility is evaluated as something different of hypnotizability. Actually, in psychology, suggestibility is evaluated as something different than hypnotizability. But it turns out that I have a very high capacity to

visualize and concentrate, which turns out to be high hypnotizable, uh, quality. So, and that's something that I've studied since 1980 professionally. Uh, I don't hypnotize my clients, but I like to explain what hypnosis is. I like to, like, I have a video that just went online of me explaining how Scientology uses hypnotic techniques in their training routines of their communications course. So, and how do they deprogram you in five days? You know, we get to Trump. What do they do in five days? You say, oh, shit.

So what was done in 76 is like Neanderthal compared to what I do in the 21st century. It was pretty content-oriented, kind of like, wake up, Steve, think for yourself, and, kind of like, you know, wake up, Steve, you know, think for yourself, and that kind of thing. It was very ineffective in that way. The one person who was not an ex-cult member, his name is Gary, did the most good,

and I've used what he did with me for the rest of my career, which was he would go, hey, Steve, what do you think? You just heard what they were saying, like what made sense, what didn't make sense, in a respectful way. And then I'd be like, They're never going to get me on the Bible. I'm Jewish.

It doesn't matter what Jesus said in the New Testament to me. And I was like instructing them on how to get me out. But I was like instructing them on how to get me out. But I was totally unconscious. Yeah. And that's one of my theses is that brainwashing and mind control doesn't erase the person's core identity. It creates a pseudo self that suppresses your real self. But your real self is still in there.

It doesn't like being exploited and controlled and manipulated and guilt-tripped. And phobias put in your head. Apparently now you believe that the people who hate Trump are cult-like. The people that like Trump. Oh, it's the people who like Trump? I don't know. Maybe it's both. Maybe it's both.

Actually, I need to just tell you. What the fuck? What are you talking about? Are you nuts? So actually, I need to tell you that just before we started, there was a news clip that just launched. There was a Republican lawmaker introduced a resolution that CNN should be called fake news because of me and CNN's coverage with my Cult of Trump book, spreading fake news. Tell us how Trump represents the Sun, Young, Moon. So, first of all, I want to say that predators, cult leaders, have a stereotypical profile, which I refer to as narcissism, but in many cases, malignant narcissism.

You say predators or presidents? Predators. Interchangeable. In this case, yeah, I think he is a predator, sexual and otherwise. But grandiosity, need for attention, sense of entitlement, pathological lying, revenge, lack of empathy. You go down the whole list, and in my book in Chapter 3, in the book of Cult of Trump, I compare him with Jim Jones, Hubbard, who started Scientology, Mooney's,

Keith Ranieri, who is found guilty of the NXIVM cult, the second conspiracy to do science traffic. A lot of white dudes. A lot of strapping. A lot of white dudes. A lot of white dudes. No black cult leaders, man. So if you think of a pyramid-structured authoritarian group, the leader claims to know everything, claims to be all wise, wants complete loyalty and obedience and dependency, uses a lot

of deception and manipulation and I have a model that I call the BITE model of mind control and the B stands for behavior control techniques, I stands for information control, T stands for thought control and the E stands for emotional control and I have a laundry list under each one of those four overlapping criteria. But when you have a person claiming to be all-powerful and all-knowing and then you have deceptive recruitment and then you have these four overlapping components to make people dependent and obedient,

that's my formula for saying this is a destructive cult. They said something interesting. I forget if it was Ken or Keith. Why are there no black cult leaders? There are. There are? They're just not popular. They just can't get ahead.

No press, man. Why can't black cult leaders get ahead? What the fuck? Unfortunately, and there are religious cults, political cults, therapy cults, multi-level marketing cults. But what separates a cult from just like a, you know. Christianity. Yeah, like a Christianity or would you say that's a cult? So if you think about an influence continuum from ethical influence to unethical influence. Ethical influence, you have informed consent, you know what you're getting into, you know what the

beliefs are, and you know what's expected of you, and you're free to leave without punishment or threats or mind control. They respect your conscience, they encourage you to read whatever you want to read. Are you saying Islam is a cult? So there are Islamic destructive cults. And there are Christian

destructive cults. And there are Jewish destructive cults. There are atheist destructive cults. I don't want to get you in trouble here, but very straight up about this. I don't want to get your trouble here, but just being very straight up about this. I don't know of any religion in this day and age that is executing people for leaving the religion or for... No, destructive cults execute people.

But that would just be like a part of the religion. You know what I'm saying? And not all Islam is like that, but a whole country is based on Islam. You can be executed if you try to lead Islam. Agreed, but I also think China is a cult and North Korea is a cult. But that's not a religion. Are you distinguishing Islam as a cult religion as opposed to Judaism and Christianity? So when you're talking about a country, right, you're talking about politics.

And so some political governments have religious orientations in them. But, so for me, I'm a human rights guy. So I support the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. I recommend people read them.

For the record, I don't think Islam is a cult. I don't think of Islam as a cult either, but there are Islamic cults that do mind control and threaten to kill you if you do a bad thing. So I'm asking this. Like ISIS. Well, it goes well beyond ISIS.

It goes well beyond ISIS. I mean, Salman Rushdie spent his whole life trying to make sure he wasn't killed. Right. That's Iran. Well, it's not just Iran. But that's a political, religious, cult-y kind of place. Can you grow out of a cult?

Definitely. So, I mean, can you have an organization that's cult-y and then it somehow adopts what you said aren't cult-like abilities and then transition that? So, usually the leader dies to make that happen. But there are a lot of people who are born into authoritarian family systems, some of which are in authoritarian cults. And as soon as the kids can run away, they want out too. Especially if they're gay and it's a homophobia. There's got to be a way to distinguish between Islam or Hasidism and the Sun Yung Moon.

Is it there? What about like Chabad or Satmar? I write about Chabad in the cult of Trump. I would say that Satmar... Because Jared Kushner is in it and Putin's rabbi is a Chabad rabbi. I would say that I get in trouble for it. But you can leave Chabad. I brought up a lot of cult groups that are in the cult of...

I don't know about Chabad, but I think Satmar could fairly be called a cult. Yeah. And if you leave, oftentimes you will be completely, you can't see your children. That's right, that's right. I have many people who've left that particular movement, who've read Combating Cult Mind Control, which is my first book, and they go, yeah. Walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, has feathers like a duck. People hesitate, I think, to call it a cult because it's under the greater umbrella of Judaism, which has respectability. Well, that depends on you.

Well, I'm a Jew, and I belong to a temple, but I call them a cult. You do, but I don't think... Well, that depends on you. Well, I'm a Jew, and I belong to a temple, but I call them a cult. You do, but I don't think... Well, that's my expertise. I think a lot of people would hesitate to call them a cult. Of course, absolutely. But for me, the issue is less calling names and really trying to empower people to be educated about the mind and how social psychology works, what hypnosis is.

And I believe that faith means you should be able to question. And in terms of the Abrahamic religions, which is Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, they all share the Garden of Eden story, however you want to interpret it. And Almighty God didn't make them brainwashed slaves. He gave them a choice. What about gangs? Gangs have a lot of bite model, but

people more or less know what they're getting into. And some people are able to leave without fearing being stabbed or shot. And if they are, then it's more on the destructive end of the influence. A couple of points. First of all, I found my jacket.

I don't know if I mentioned it. Secondly, we've got a lot to get to, a lot of great stuff happening this week. So I just want to be mindful of it. But I do want to dive into Trump because I think that's the most interesting aspect of this discussion. Thank you. Because you call Trump followers cultish. I mean, you seem to imply that they're cult

members. My suspicion is that Noam would disagree with you and I probably would as well. Well, we'll talk to Noam in a minute. So, I don't think everyone who voted for Trump is necessarily in the cult of Trump. People who refuse to consider any questionable evidence against Trump or his policies or his behavior, like victimizing women, who refuse to entertain it are questionable.

Couldn't that just be fanaticism, though? It could be. But for me, in terms of Opus Dei, which William Barr is in, I help people get out of that cult. What's your evidence that he victimized women, by the way, just for the record? Just for the record. I think there are 14 lawsuits waiting for him to exit the White House. What's the worst of those accusations that you know of?

I think just before I came on, a woman was talking about how he grabbed her vagina. No, I haven't heard of that. He was also accused of raping his wife. Underage. No, she, I don't know. And then took it away. Oh, it's in a book. She rec recanted that as far as I know But I mean I think

Maybe he did rape his wife We did hear the access Hollywood tape So the things that come out in divorce Shit is the least reliable Of all but there were some weird things About Trump that Make me uncomfortable When I hear

People who Are so sure of themselves that make me uncomfortable when I hear people who are so sure of themselves about what they know. For instance, the Times, when he first was running, they did a whole investigation into all the women

who worked for him. There's a big front page article. There's a book coming out soon about 100 women. I don't know about books. If you want to base it on something that hasn't been out and up for the public, I don't think I can say about that. Maybe you're right.

But I'm saying... No, the thesis of my book really isn't about his sexual behavior, although cult leaders want power, sex, and money. Who doesn't? There was this one... And you can look this up. There was this one woman

who accused him of groping her on an airplane. And she interviewed on PBS. It's on YouTube. And the part they cut out of the interview, we talked about this years ago and have it, was the following. She said, you know, if he had just kept it above the waist, I might have been okay with it. Like, what? And of course they cut that out of the interview, but they had the whole footage. Meaning that what she seemed to be describing

was a flirtatious thing and he was vulgar and tried to grab her crotch or something and she's like no no what the fuck's the matter with you but I don't know that that's what we're thinking of if that's the kind of scenarios

we're thinking of when we hear this assaulter of women. And as opposed to like this whole controversy that's going around today now with with our Shafir and even admitted in his apology that she didn't realize it was consensual. If you can process that as something other than an attack, more power to you.

And what bothers me about the Trump thing versus that thing, versus the Kavanaugh thing, is that clearly the worst of the accusations is nobody even takes it seriously for a minute. This guy's a hero. Every article about Louis C.K.

starts with the disgraced comedian Louis C.K. for asking a woman if he can masturbate. There was no articles that said the disgraced basketball player Kobe Bryant. Or he just died. No, prior to that. I think it's a numbers thing. the disgraced basketball player, Colby Bryant. Or he just died. No, prior to that. Yeah. Prior to his death.

I think it's a numbers thing. What? I think it's a numbers thing, right? He died once, right? But what he's accused of doing is worth a hundred of what Louis C.K. was accused of. Or Kavanaugh. What was Kavanaugh accused of? Kavanaugh was accused of...

I don't know. Hold on, hold on. Kavanaugh was accused of groping a girl in high school on a bed, drunk, falling off the bed and running out. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is another universe to what... But Kobe thought it was consensual sex. Right, but let's come back to cults of Trump.

They thought it was sex. He thought it was sex, and she thought it was rape. My point is that when it's somebody we like, all of a sudden, rightfully, all of a sudden, rightfully, we're saying, wait, hold on a second, there's two sides to this story. There's always two sides to a story. Well, nobody... If you said during the Kavanaugh hearings, hold on a second, there's two sides to this story. People say, what's the matter with you?

We have to believe all women. But we're in a different time now, right? I think if the Kobe situation happened now as opposed to 2003, I think it would have been a totally different reaction. He would have gotten crucified. Yeah, but the Cosby stuff didn't happen now. How did he get crucified? There were Yeah, but the Cosby stuff happened. Didn't happen now. Cosby got crucified. The Weinstein hub. There were like 60 women for Cosby though.

And Weinstein. And Weinstein. So one accusation of rape is not to be taken seriously. I didn't say that. I'm looking for some universal standard here. Just so you know, I would embrace the fiction that you're innocent to proven guilty. I believe it. Period.

Absolutely. But that makes me some sort of fascist conservative because I was like with Kavanaugh, I was like, listen, we don't know what happened there. I don't think that's what makes you a fascist conservative. It's a different era. I keep hearing, but I don't actually know. I heard the pussy grab statement, but that wasn't confessing. I mean, everybody knows what he said. He says, when you're famous, they'll let you do whatever you want, even grab their pussy.

Yeah. Where's that coming from? Actually, I wrote about that as a hypnotic pattern. That was not a confession of sexual assault. No, but there is. But I mean, if you want to take one- And Dave Chappelle said the same thing, just for the record. But if you want to take one rape as your standard, there is actual written evidence of an incredibly violent rape against his ex-wife.

No, there's not evidence of that. There is. So can we come on back to the bigger issue? It's shocking to me. It's shocking to me that smart people don't see the inherent truth of the point I'm trying to make, which is that there is a wildly different standard that's applied to a Republican who was accused of something in high school than there is to a really cool dude we all love in 2003. I think the standard is different because Kobe's not running for office.

He's not trying to be a Supreme Court justice. Kavanaugh wasn't even allowed to go into restaurants. They attack him. This is a different time. But I think it's a different time. It is a different time. But I think it's a different time. It is a different time. There's always an answer. The answer is, of course, when we like somebody, obviously, we judge them differently.

I think it's... I think it's... I think Kobe was just... I think human nature is obviously simplistic. There are all kinds of Me Too things coming out now based on things that happened five, ten years ago. But people are still bringing up the Kobe thing. Hold on. Louie's thing happened probably around 03.

Mark Halpern's thing happened probably around 03. When Kobe was about to get an Oscar, there was blowback to that. Kobe's been getting blowback for his rape since the rape. He just died with his daughter, so people are being less, you know. I think if Louie died with his daughter in a plane, people would be a little bit more sympathetic to him.

Listen, I don't like that anybody's bringing this up now. I wouldn't bring it up now. I think it's very insensitive. Agreed. But I'm only commenting on it because it's been brought up. So, like, because it's been brought up, either let's not talk about it. Yeah. Or if we're going to talk about it, then let's not pretend like I would have never brought up Kobe Bryant on the week that he died in a plane crash.

Yeah. But if it's in the news, this issue, this debate for sure. A Washington Post reporter gets suspended for tweeting out the Daily Beast article. Yes. Yeah. Then if we're going to talk about it, let's be honest. She was right. By all the standards of left wing, progressive thoughts. Yeah, this was not very long ago. The woman went to the doctor. She had physical trauma. He basically admitted a thing. Then he settled out of court so she didn't testify.

I mean, this ticks off all the marks of a classic case. People are aware of Colby's rape. He just, that doesn't really factor into the fact that people are mourning the fact that he's dead. Right, so if Rush Limbaugh had died in a plane crash. Rush Limbaugh didn't drop 81 on Toronto.

If Rush Limbaugh died, or somebody detestable like Rush Limbaugh died in a plane crash, or Donald Trump, you don't think people would be tweeting out shit the other day about... And the people who are so outraged now, and you think they would be consistently just as outraged with the tweets about Rush Limbaugh than they are about Kobe Bryant. I write about in my book something called fourth generation warfare, which was a concept developed in the 1980s by an American military strategist.

And it's essentially a psychological warfare operation to delegitimize leaders, delegitimize institutions, create confusion, create learned helplessness in order to ready the authoritarianism to take place. It's something that is being operated on out by Russia, probably Iran, probably China, to stir up people using American people in legitimate groups. Some of these were fake accounts. But to literally stir up chaos and antagonism and to make people feel helpless and hopeless about our shared humanity and democracy. And so I think the bigger frame that we really need to think about

is how to get back to a sense of community, shared community, shared values. I don't think that's going to ever happen. I don't think it's possible. Well, I do. I hope so. I hope so, too. Russia does not want America to be strong. There are a lot of other very powerful entities that do not want us to have

a stable... But objectively, we are strong. We have a very, very powerful military. It's our internal divisions that sort of take away from... But that's warfare. That's psychological warfare. And I want Americans to understand the difference between evidence and facts

and disinformation and falsehoods. I don't buy that we're in a post-truth world. I think we're in an age of influence and people need to understand that people can be made to believe crazy stuff

and they need to have reality testing strategies. What about the people that the conspiracy theorists, those who believe the government was involved in 9-11, that global warming isn't real and that the earth is flat? Exactly. What provokes that kind of thinking? It doesn't seem to be a cult. So I write in the cult of Trump that Alex Jones did 1,000 stories from RT, which is complete propaganda from Putin, that then got reinvigorated by Breitbart, that then went to Fox to promulgate total conspiracy nonsense crap.

And I've been working very hard. As opposed to the Trump-Russia accusations? Russia is overwhelming evidence that Russia was involved with hacking accounts.

Everybody knows that. Elections. So when Rachel Maddow was on TV saying that the president is a foreign asset. Yeah. Was that a little cult-like on her part? I say yeah. I actually think he is an asset of Putin. Really?

Based on my research, yeah. So you know better than Mueller. I read Mueller's report. But he doesn't think so. That's not correct. That's not correct what he was looking for. And I read it. Did you read it?

Yes, I did read it. You read the whole thing? I read it and debated it. What would you say is the... And you saw that there were over 1,000 former DOJ prosecutors that said that he was guilty of obstruction criminally. Not 1,000, but over 1,000. It's like 700, but whatever. No, it was over 1,000. That's the look.

It was 1,027. I know about that letter. That's about obstruction of justice. That wasn't about connections with Russia. It was all related to the Russian stuff. No, obstruction of justice was related to things like he told McGahn to fire Mueller, and McGahn just didn't do it,

or that he, it was one of the, one of the things that he did. Right, but Mueller was investigating the Russian connection. Right, but he didn't actually fire Mueller as an appointment. There was no, there was no, well, what's your evidence? Dude, you're kind of upsetting me because, like, it seems like you really pick and choose. I encourage you to read my book.

No, but tell me here, like, what is the evidence that Trump is a Russian asset? So, we have him being in the Soviet Union. No, we don't. In the 80s. Oh, really? I've been in the Soviet Union. But Bernie was in the Soviet Union.

Bernie was in the Soviet Union and commending them and complimenting the bread lines and honeymooning. Trump went for a beauty contest, right? I'm busy. Well, that was later. That's not sufficient. That was later. Was Putin the president in those days?

So then how is he? No, the Russians have been cultivating different Americans for decades. So I'm asking you for the evidence that you believe that Trump is a Russian asset. I'm asking you for the evidence. And the first thing, which usually leads with the most significant point you can make, you don't have time for 20, is that he visited the Soviet Union in the 80s. And this is convincing to you. One of the most significant things was the Russian ambassador said,

you should run for president and we'll support you. And he tweeted back, double thumbs up. That was direct fact. Was that Kislyak? I have to look that up. Forgive me, I don't remember the name. But for sure. He tweeted double thumbs up or texted him?

At the firing of Comey, didn't the Russian ambassador come to the White House and the Russian journalists were there and Americans weren't allowed in the room? Wasn't that a little weird? He has a strange relationship with Russia, for sure. There was a meeting where, I believe you're right, that there was a meeting where he didn't want anybody to talk privately. Yeah.

I don't think that's unprecedented. And I hate to say this because I always sound like I'm supporting Trump, but I'm not. I'm just trying to be fair that given the fact that every single thing he utters in that White House leaks out, I could see why he wouldn't have a single conversation in front of anybody anymore, whether he's up to no good

or not. But it's interesting to me. I mean, here the Democrats are impeached him. They didn't even accuse him of being in cahoots with the Russians. They didn't do what Mueller recommended. But you know. Well, I also listened to ABC's The Asset, the whole podcast series, which is based on research.

Mueller implied that he is guilty of obstruction of justice. But Mueller said, we cannot find no evidence of Russian collusion. He didn't actually say that. First of all, he said that there was a lot of evidence. First of all, they wanted Trump to come in and answer questions. And he refused. I started by saying the anti-Trump movement was a little bit cult-like. And I'm actually saying because you could be right about what you're saying,

but to feel on these flimsy reads that you have proof that the guy should be executed. I didn't say he should be executed. No, but he would deserve that if what you're saying is true. It's treason. It's treason. Yes, treason. It's treason, yeah. Yes, I think it is treason. Right, so you think he's guilty of a capital crime. I think there is evidence.

He never said he supported capital punishment for treason. So, I'd like to talk about Opus Dei. I'd like to talk about the cult, the family. Who's Opus Dei? Opus Dei is a Catholic right-wing cult that William Barr is involved with. I thought there was a guy that sang Shout in Animal House. That was Otis Day in the night. The family that Mike Pence was recruited by Chuck Colson.

Oh, Pence is definitely cult-like. Well, if you look at the docu-series on Netflix called The Family, it's a short insight into the two books that Jeffrey Charlotte wrote about that cult. The organization or the movement that scares me the most is something called New Apostolic Reformation, which Paula White is involved with when he did the Evangelicals for Trump meeting in Florida. He's an apostle and he gets direct revelations from God and he has a covering over his followers to keep them from satanic invasion and casting out demons. And these folks are very high tech, but they're very bite model mind control cults.

And there are a minimum of 10 million Americans who really believe God is using Trump. And anyone who's a critic is satanic. And they're very cult-like. So coming back to the big picture, I do believe that if, now we're looking at the Senate that is refusing to look at evidence to allow Bolton to talk, to not allow Lev Parnas to talk,

and give evidence which is not congruent with what a trial is supposed to be in terms of everything I understand. One could say, well, maybe they're just trying to save their job. Maybe they are being threatened that if they come out of line, they never will be reelected. But if you're sworn to be an impartial juror and you're sworn to uphold the oath of the Constitution, from my model, they should be working ethically and say, we want to know what the facts are. You're

talking about cults, but you know, Jonathan Haidt wrote a book, and we had him on the podcast, about how people, they have an idea, and then they kind of ignore all evidence that opposes that. Okay, so I think that's really what we're talking about here, and I think

I see that on both sides of the political aisle. And I think I see that on both sides of the political aisle. Without a doubt. And I think that Noam's point about people that hate Trump, they can be cult-like. There are people that would absolutely and utterly refuse to acknowledge if Trump did anything good. I agree. You were presented with all... I mean, so many of these stories fell through.

The Sessions story fell through. The Rex Tillerson stories fell through the the uh session story fell through the uh rex tillerson story fell through i googled just now pretty extensively russian ambassador urges trump to run i can't find anything like that the uh um i i can any number you the books that are cited uh carter page turned out to be working with the cia and the fbi turned out like it is totally disgraced about it uh... of uh... flint was not accused of anything with uh... collusion with the russians are when

charge a line to the fbi yeah i'm not you got to be not choose of anything with with russia and he took money to speak in russia no that was part of page and i was here you're allowed to take the figure out for him Speak in Russia. No, that was Carter Page. No, that was Flynn was Page. Maybe, it doesn't matter. That's not, take, you know what, let's say Israel was the country we suspected him being. Hold on, let's say Israel was the country we suspected him of being an asset for. Don't you think I could list 50 similarly ridiculous proofs of it?

I could say, did you know that this guy spoke, took money to pose in Israel and he said this about Israel and the ambassador of Israel met with him. I mean, you could do it with any country with a wide reach. China, Israel, Russia, Germany. You can look backwards

like looking backwards from the last chapter of a mystery novel and then find all the dots that you want to make your case. But that doesn't make it true. That's how another cult still believes that Oswald was part of a conspiracy to kill Kennedy, because they look backwards and they find what are always, you can always find something. The Lincoln conspiracies, all these conspiracy theories are based on this backwards looking.

So the question is evidence, right? But I would ask you, when so many important people have said, you know, son of a bitch, we were wrong about this. And people who are all in, and the Democrats have totally backed off it. Do you wonder that you're... I don't know that the Democrats totally backed off it. Do you wonder that you're... I don't know that the Democrats have backed off it. Nancy Pelosi stood opposite Trump and said all roads run back to Putin. Not since Mueller she didn't. She did.

Very recently, in fact. She shouldn't have said that. Well, there's a lot of evidence that the Russians... Is there anything that Mueller could have found which would have like you're not even saying you know I was really sure you're not even saying I'm a little bit less sure than I was but I still think it is. No you still believe

it with a full, forgive me, cult like belief no don't tell me about all the things that fell through. I believe it and I know it's true. I find it's really interesting that people tell me that I'm in a cult. It's so funny. people tell me that i'm in a cult so fun i didn't say you're gonna call it i'm saying that like what you seem being called it seems to me yes that there's so much evidence of doubt here anything could be possible

well i would encourage you to listen to the asset it's an abc no i don't need to listen to that. I read the Mueller report. There's a lot of information that has come out. No, there's nothing. I'm not going to cherry pick what I go and listen to. This chapter was investigated probably more thoroughly than any other chapter in human history. And I don't mean that as an overstatement. I don't think anything has been investigated with more time and resources than Trump's connection to Russia.

And they walked away with basically nothing. They accused him of obstruction of justice in so many words, but they did not accuse him of being a Russian asset. And yet... They did not accuse him of being a Russian asset. You don't even break a step it doesn't even throw you off

the stride even a little bit like okay but I mean so what's I guess I've talked to too many experts in Russia

in intelligence since I've worked on my book okay who worked there you are right he was in Russia in the 80s

I don't know what to say and the 90s yeah but I I've been to Russia in Russia in the 80s. I don't know what to say. And the 90s. Yeah, but I've been to Russia seven times in the last ten years. And I was brought over there in the Soviet Union, felt explained cult mind control. And I spent a week explaining brainwashing and mind control there. Do you think that I know about brainwashing and mind control? Yes.

I do think. Are you questioning me? That doesn't mean you know about Trump-Russia. I disagree with your supposition that people that don't listen to evidence that goes against their thesis as cult-like. Because I think almost everyone does that.

Yeah. And we've had, almost everybody we've had on this podcast has a belief and they're sticking to it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Pretty much everybody we had. Irrespective of the evidence. We had Seth Simons on who just,

his, his thesis was the comedy seller is racist against or, or is prejudiced against female comics, black comics, and gay comics. That was his, that was his thesis. Do you know how,

listen, all respect to Seth Simons because I, I have a cordial relationship with him and I'm not, I don't want to, but do you know how many people heard that and and said he sounds like he's in a cult? Literally. Did you guys have that? People listening to that podcast and saying...

He might be in a cult. They're saying he sounds like he's in a cult because... His vocal quality... Don't tag him personally. It's not personal. It's just he had a vocal quality that was a little odd, I thought. That's not personal. Of course, people had a vocal quality that was a little odd, I thought. So I want to come back to your comment about unspurious. Of course, people say I talk funny, but not in that way.

But I'm trying to make a distinction between cult and just somebody that has a point of view and sticks to it. And that, to me, is damn near everyone. But I'm talking about an authoritarian pyramid structure group with someone who claims to know more than the generals, know more than the economists. I'll give you that. He does claim to know. He's a crazy person. I can shoot someone and everyone will blindly follow.

I think that was, he's making a point, but yeah. Yeah, and I think. I didn't take from that he was actually going to shoot somebody, did you? No. I took that he believed people would blindly follow him, no matter what he did, even if he broke the law. But what I wanted to say to you, coming back to my story, which is how we started this interview with the Moonies,

is I was part of a House subcommittee investigation into Korean CIA activities as soon as I left the group because I brought out all these private speeches. And after Jonestown happened, which was a few weeks after the final report, I read all 11 volumes. And what I wound up finding out is that the CIA set up the Korean CIA, and the founder of the Korean CIA said under oath that he organized and utilized the Unification Church for use as a political tool.

I believe that. And what was going on in the Cold War was North Korea was brainwashing folks, South Korea had two coup d'etats and was unstable, and they thought, we need to stabilize South Korea for security purposes, so let's create our own program to indoctrinate and re-educate dissidents, so they fall into line. And then, when America was withdrawing from the Vietnam War, they thought, we need to bring this group over to the U.S. to stop all the commies on campuses, which is how I got recruited. So what I'm trying to convey is I actually think there's factual evidence, it's not

a conspiracy theory, that the Moonies were basically utilized, I can't say they were started by the CIA and the Korean CIA, but when you think about the Washington Times as a newspaper in our nation's capital, that the Washington Post reported $2 billion was spent in the Washington Times without it making any money. Who's funding it? For what purpose? As long as it's not the Jews. And coming back to Netanyahu and Israel, because you brought it up, I write about the Jewish right in the cult of Trump also. No, that's transactional. That's not a cult. Trump has done everything they want. He's an asset.

The second Trump turns on them... So I actually wondered how the Israeli intelligence was not aware of what was going on with the election and with Russia and with a number of other things. What with the election? Did they hack the emails, you mean? Everybody knew they hacked the emails. Maybe they wanted him to win. What is it that they were not aware of? What is it that we know that they did those Facebook ads, whatever, and we know that they hacked the DNC emails? They scraped the Facebook with Cambridge Analytica.

Yeah, but that was the Russians. Yes, yes, absolutely. I mean, I hope it's not that easy to spend $100,000 to turn an election. I mean, it's kind of absurd that easy to spend $100,000 to turn an election. I mean, like, it's kind of absurd. It wasn't $100,000. It was $110,000 that they spent or something. So, just curiosity, so I'm looking at Rolling Stone magazine here. It says, quote, Mueller, the investigation did not establish that members of the Trump campaign

conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in a selection interference activity. So you disagree. You think it did establish it. But here's something very interesting. No, I didn't say that they were able to prove it. Well, if you say it's true, you must feel it's proved. I'm taking my stand based on what I've learned since the Mueller report.

In fact, I wrote the book before the Mueller report came out. I added a paragraph with my editor's permission. So you don't think that Mueller's evidence was sufficient? It wasn't sufficient. It was sufficient for obstruction of justice. But Mueller said there was a memo in the Justice Department saying we couldn't bring charges. There is a memo, yeah. A sitting president. Nobody said who wrote the memo. And why is there a memo? Hold on. What do you mean nobody said who wrote the memo? Everybody knows who wrote the memo.

Who did? I don't remember the name, but the memo predates Trump. It goes back to some previous administration. It's a constitutional interpretation that says, like Hamilton in Federal 65 says, we talked about last week, that don't forget that the president, after he's impeached, will still be liable for regular criminal prosecution,

meaning that he's not liable to be charged with a crime while he's in office. So this is very basic. But, you know, this all fits your conspiracy theory. But there's just one paragraph in Rolling Stone that just very coincidentally I noticed and it's liked. And he says, the special prosecutor literally became a religious figure during the last few years

with votive candles sold in his image and Saturday Night Live cast members singing All I Want for Christmas is You to him featuring the rhymey line Mueller, please come through because the only option is a coup. Times story today tried to preserve Santa Mueller's reputation, noting Trump's attorney.

So it is interesting that even Rolling Stone, there was this kind of religious, which is a close cousin of cult. Did you, by the way, I'm sorry. Go ahead. Speaking of SNL, did anybody catch the sketch, the opening sketch this week where Dershowitz goes to hell? Yes, I saw it. And you know,

him and the devil. The devil is a big fan of his. Jeffrey Epstein is there. But what did you think of that, Noam? The idea that Dershowitz... that the devil's a big fan of Dershowitz. I felt bad for him, but it was funny. But did you not feel it kind of... You know, they were basically saying you represented these bad people, therefore you're bad.

Yeah, it's such a childish view of the way the law works. But again, let somebody say that about Johnny Cochran. Yeah, yeah. They won't. I'm sure some people think that, though. Whatever. I'm going to say, like, it's just like, yeah, they'll go after Dershowitz. Cochran is the one who got him off.

Cochran is the one who made up this thing about the Colombian necktie. Cochran is the one who... Good lawyer. Yeah, good lawyer. That's right. I'm not bashing Johnny Cochran. I'm just saying, all of a sudden, Dershowitz represented someone accused of a crime. Now he belongs in hell.

Really? That's how the American legal system works? Most lawyers belong in hell. Yeah. Yeah, well, there you're right. There I agree with you. But no, I thought it was funny. It's fair game, you know.

But it's fair game, but I thought it was kind of, I didn't like that childlike view of the law that you alluded to. Yeah, I don't like it either. But it's such a stereotype now. I mean, like, it's so baked into the conscious. It's just what people think of lawyers. If you defend someone that they disagree with, you're automatically assumed to be a bad person. Every person is. Not so much.

If you defend someone who, like, was shot by a cop, you cop, maybe when he was, God forbid, he attacked the cop and got shot. Nobody, you don't really get grief. There's all kinds of crimes that you might have done it,

murders even, that a lawyer will not get grief if it lines up with some political movement or something like that. They all make it up as they go along. You guys went to law school.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I didn't know the Lucas brothers went to law school. We went to law school. Which one? He went to Duke. I went to NYU. Now, why would you go to different schools? I assume you roughly had the same LSAT scores.

No, no, no. My girlfriend was in New Jersey, so I wanted to be close to her. We were both set on going to Duke. Therefore, you were separated by a considerable distance. Oh, yeah. And how did that feel, to be separated? Oh, it was rough. Separation anxiety.

Oh, that's sweet. Yeah, it was sad. I started drinking more. It was crazy. Did you really? Yeah. I mean, you're drinking a lot. I mean, I was drinking a lot.

I can't relate to this because I don't have anybody in my life that close to me that I would, you know, care if I was separated from them for that length of time. Your friends get separation euphoria. But, of course, you hear that a lot about twins, how close their relationship is. Was that the first time you guys had been separated? First time. First time we were separated. Since the womb.

Never, the first time. You shared a room? First time. First time we were separated. Since the womb. Never, the first time. Yeah, I didn't know the womb. You shared a room growing up? We shared a room growing up. Oh, that's so sweet. So, different parts of the law? Well, I mean, you know, it was a standard. We had to study the same courses the first year.

But when we were working for a firm, we did different, we were working in different areas. Yeah. So, if I could come back. Well, I'm just glad I'm not an identical twin because I can't have closeness. Really? You don't want to get married or anything? Maybe if I had an identical twin, I would be, I would know that sort of relationship. You wouldn't get along.

Or would I be like, I've had enough of this guy. Yeah. You know, and be like I am with everybody else in the world. I don't think you would. I think you would love your identical twin. Or we'd be both very similar

in that we both had issues in that area and we were on the same page. Yeah, I mean, here's the thing, like when you're a human, if you're not an identical twin,

you create your own mental image, your own like charitable mental image of yourself, how you act, how cool you are, how you look, all of it, right?

Yeah. You're denied that because like you see exactly basically someone very, very similar between your mannerisms and the things you say, whatever it is. We have a joke. That's why you can't have twin cult leaders or twin dictators. It's because you always have that one person just like saying, you know, don't be crazy.

Don't be abnormal. You have someone you can draw from so you don't need other people. When you're a singleton, you're just in your own mind. In your own mind. So Dan would lose whatever vestiges of self-respect he's been able to maintain and self-esteem. Like if you had an identical twin you had to look at and listen to and deal with, you'd be like, oh, God. Well, I dare say that when I hear myself recorded, I say, well, yeah, this guy's all right. Stephen wants to talk about...

Well, I was just going to say in chapter two, I talk about Trump's childhood and about authoritarianism and lack of a secure attachment. So he never felt whole. So he had to seek outside to get adulation. It's a singleton problem. That is the stereotypical profile of cult leaders. How do you account for his close relationship with his children? One of the classic symptoms of narcissism is bad relationships with your children. The description from the people who were around him, including Omar rose uh... whoever uh... her book that there was a status

transactional and not closeness in the sense of empathy and love it's all about making him happy for a vodka and other people and not about really genuine affection and love and and you and you're ready to take that to the bank because Almarosa said it. No, not just her. Because when I see them on TV... Tony Schwartz is another source of information

who interviewed the family because he ghost wrote The Art of the Deal. And he also talked about that as well. And it is a stereotypical quality of narcissists that they have lack of empathy. But how do you square that with like... And if you don't have empathy, you can't have love. But they usually have bad relationships.

They usually have bad relationships. But when I hear... The root of love is you need to develop empathy. Well, but when I hear Don Jr. and Eric being interviewed, for whatever it is, whatever little sensitivity I have to hearing people, it really feels like they love their dad. And they're well-adjusted. They have kids themselves. and they're successful.

I mean, they don't seem like a dysfunctional family, in my opinion. In any case, what I would like to say, because I know we're probably running out of time, or can we go a little longer? You can go a little longer, I think. So the last thing that I want is to label and just leave it on a superficial level and I feel like I want to say that what I don't like is treating people who are involved with destructive cults of any kind in any type of demeaning disrespectful way I listen to Rick Wilson and I just am totally opposite his approach of just

belittling people, putting them down or whatever. I want respect, compassion, listening, sharing, swapping things. Help me understand you. Let me step into your shoes. Step into my shoes. Let's look at something together and let's analyze it together. With that approach. And the goal is to empower people to think for themselves and not just follow a doctrine or not just follow

a person or a movement blindly. If you feel, and Noam and I, and perhaps the Lucas Brothers and Periel aren't necessarily convinced that many Trump supporters are in a cult-like grip, how then would you propose to get through to them and for them to think more clearly in your estimation? Thank you for the question. So the stereotype, if somebody gets into Scientology, for example, is the family tries to warn

them, tries to argue with them, says you're in a cult, stop going there, it's bad. They try to force information on the person and it often drives the person deeper into the group. So I do not recommend... It's like when your daughter's dating somebody you don't like and you say,

don't date them. I'm making an analogy there there is a a control feature that a lot of people resist any direct type of control yeah and my approach is the other way around which is you're an intelligent person i respect you help me understand how you've come to adopt this belief system let's look at yeah what how you got to be where you are and i essentially teach people social psychology including confirmation bias cognitive dissonance theory ash conformity study milgram obedience studies zimbardo prison i thought milgram was discredited. No, not at all.

I read an article not long ago. You may have read something that was attempting to discredit Zimbardo's prison study, but it was not Milgram. No, it was Milgram. I rescinded the job. Milgram's very solid. It's considered to be unethical to tell people that they're giving shocks when in fact they're not. And they're hearing someone scream. It's actually a tape recording of an actor but that doesn't make it bad science but it so anyway so the the point is i teach i encourage people to study social psychology i actually use

darren brown uh some episodes of darren brown to explain how he gets people to turn over their wallet and their cell phone and their house keys in a minute. How can you distinguish between a person who's just like, who's for Trump politically and from a person who worships him like a cult leader? How do you differentiate the two? How can you tell the difference? Like if you go to a Trump rally, how can you tell someone's just there because they really believe in them i don't know i mean i can't judge from the outside my my life work and my work helping sex trafficking survivors with the program ending the game i work with uh former members of extremist terrorist groups and alt-right groups and such, is to share what I've learned and encourage family members and friends to actually get educated

because it's really those people who are going to have the most impact potentially on the person. I just feel like it's such a dangerous argument, though. It's like rather than listen to the substance of a person on the right, you're going to say that they're members of a cult. And then you're no longer listening to where they stand on the merit of their arguments. You're just basically saying that there's no substance to their argument.

It is the major criticism of my work in terms of this subject with the title and the red hat. Yeah, yeah, yeah. work in terms of this subject with the title and the red hat on the cover. And I knew consciously that it would probably turn off a lot of people who were believers. Yeah. But then I started thinking about myself. When I was in the Moonies, I didn't think I was in a cult.

No. And I was willing to prove to my father and my mother that I wasn't brainwashed. And therefore, I agreed to the deprogramming, not because I had doubts, but I wanted to prove to them I wasn't brainwashed. So out of my sense of conviction, I was willing to listen. And what helped me a lot was learning about Chinese communist brainwashing criteria. Robert J. Lifton wrote the seminal work on the subject called Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism. And as we went through all eight criteria, I was struck by, wait a minute, we are God, they are Satan, but we're doing the same things. And it started the wheels, the squeaky wheels in my brain. But do you think Trump will have the same influence and power once he's out of office?

No. I don't think so. Not with the vast number of people. I think a lot more will come out after he's out of office. A lot of lawsuits are waiting for him to be out of office. It's all going to fizz office. When Trump does something that clearly... I'm going on record. I think they're going to fizzle.

Let's stay in touch. Absolutely. I'd love to. I'm confident on that one. You know, he lost his non-profit because of misuse of funds. You know he had a multi-level marketing cosmetics firm as well as Trump University

that he paid $25 million to get out of that lawsuit. Yeah. That way he defrauded people. I know, but it's settled. But it was illegal what he was doing. I said they're going to fizzle. I didn't say they were. I'm not saying he was innocent.

So you think he'll buy his way out of every single lawsuit? Of course, they'll settle for whatever it is. Trump's not... I don't think anything's... There's a lot of talk. I'm struck by the number of things which have turned out to be baseless

or to go up in smoke, and still the confidence that people maintain in feeling that they know what the truth is like most recently like he bombed Iran right Trump it was in Iraq be bummed yeah he blew up Soleimani but that was in Iraq was in Iraq okay I was where he was okay bomb Sole He was in Iraq, yeah. That's why I was making a face, because I kept... I'm so stupid, I didn't realize where he was. Okay, he bombed Soleimani in Iraq. Clearly, Putin would not have been happy with that.

I mean, that's like clearly, this is one of Putin's most important allies. I think Netanyahu is very happy with that. Right, but Trump is not in that Netanyahu asset. Pompeo and Esper were the ones who talked him into it. Is that correct? Well, no. The Secretary of Defense and Pompeo? Apparently, Trump had been resistant to it for a while, and then finally he went ahead and did it.

But they came down and they told him to do it, and then they did it. Am I not remembering? I don't think anyone tells Trump what to do, to be honest. No, I don't think so. So then it's not about Trump at all. It's about Esper. Trump's not in charge. Actually, in Chapter 7, I talk about the forces that I believe are influencing Trump.

So, what? In Chapter 8, I talk about the followers. So, is Esper a Russian asset? Not to my knowledge. So, Trump is a shitty Russian asset who, as long as somebody tells him what to to do he'll do exactly the opposite of what his benefactors relax of lack of a better word would like him to see doesn't none of it none of it holds together like oh shit you got it like I so it's all clear to me you got a good point there it seemed like those holes up and down this theory which is not

saying most of the interview is about Russia instead of all the substance about the psychology of influence. I think we talked about both, but I'm digging in because... No, it sounds like you are focused on Russia. And Russia is not the main focus for me. It's people who are not looking at facts and thinking about it and checking in with their conscience. Right, so that's why I'm bringing up Russia. I find it ironic that exactly what you're describing, I think on...

Do you think Putin is a dictator? Hold on, yes, of course. You do. I think respectfully, I can say to you that I don't... Do you think he does mind control in his country? Absolutely. I'll take your word for that. Respectfully, I think that you're doing

exactly what you just described, that you're imper exactly what you just described, that you're impervious to contrary facts. I'm open to facts. Prove to me that Trump is not influenced by Putin. Well, I can't prove a negative. All I can say is that— Well, I've read his books. He is such a fraud, okay?

He is a fraud. I know him. Oh, you do? I don't know him. Oh, my God. So how come a fraud, okay? He is a fraud. I know him. Oh, you do? Yeah, he is a... I don't know him. Oh, my God. So how come he's a fraud? He's a nice enough guy. But...

How come you dismiss everything that he says? Listen, I'll tell you why. And his books... I don't want to go there. I'm sorry I call him a fraud, but he... Because I had dinner with him one time, and he told me two starkly opposite stories in the same dinner. And I wasn't the only one who heard it.

And I was like, I said, did he just say the opposite of what he just said? And it was like, yeah, he did. He did use my bite model in his book on ISIS, calling ISIS a cult. But let me tell you why. That's my connection with ****. That's the only thing. But my point is that I was ready to. But you don't think anything you

wrote in his book says any any valid validity i haven't read the book and i i'm sure there are things which are valid but obviously if muller if muller who investigated this not with authority but with the authority to go into people's records, go into their emails, drag them down to the FBI under the penalty of perjury, put people in jail for lying to the FBI. This is the kind of authority that shakes... Except Trump wasn't called on to testify. You think Trump would have admitted it?

This is the kind of authority... I think he would have lied. And I think he would have done what Clinton and was guilty of perjury and then he would be impeached. So we would have no new evidence. There's no evidence we were going to get from Trump. The point is that he had the authority. I think his children could have been. I think you know where I'm going.

For you to just say, oh shit, this Mueller thing that we waited for for two years didn't turn up anything. I'm undeterred. I still believe it because Malcolm X. This is exactly what you're describing of people who don't want to look at evidence. You don't think Mueller is evidence? When you read the executive summary of the Mueller report... I just read you the conclusion verbatim. I just read it out loud to you.

And that, I mean, what else is there than that? They found nothing. They can't prove a negative. You can't prove a negative. You can't, anything could be true. I'll copy and paste the executive summary to you of the actual Mueller report. I just had it open.

What do you, all right, whatever. We obviously read different executive summaries of the Mueller report. I'll put it another way. It seems to me that you're saying whether Mueller issued the report that he did, or if he'd issued a report saying that we cannot vindicate Trump of being a Russian asset, or if he'd issued a report, we have evidence that Trump is a Russian asset. He said that Pompeo mischaracterized what they found. You would say that all three reports are equally influential to you. The one that finds no evidence, the one that says they're not sure, the one that actually finds the evidence.

It doesn't matter to you, because you're going to believe it, no matter what they say. No, I think evidence matters. And I think time will tell. No, you see, when you say time will tell, that's what a cult guy would say. When I say to a religious Jew, this doesn't make any sense. Why would they do this? And why would people have cancer?

And why would the six million Jews? They say, have faith. Time will tell. You'll see. That would the six million do it? They say, have faith. Time will tell. You'll see. That's the classic answer. You can't look to the now for reasons. It will be revealed in the future. That's what you believe.

You believe it. You say nothing he writes is believable because I had a dinner and he said two contradictory things. I said the asset podcast by ABC is irrelevant. But I've spent hours listening to fact after fact after fact. Okay, I think you guys will have to agree to disagree. I don't know if you want to talk a bit about Ari Shaffir. What about Ari Shaffir? What do you guys think?

Well, can I just outline? I'm sure everybody knows what the story is. But just in case you don't, Ari Shaffir. Who is a comedian who works here, amongst other places, after the death of Kobe Bryant, went on Twitter and posted a video wherein he said, essentially, good. Kobe got what was coming to him. He is a rapist, and therefore this payback's a bitch, essentially, is what he said.

Then he got into a lot of trouble. There was a reaction, and he then went on Instagram and said, that's kind of my shtick when somebody dies. I say horrible things about them because it's kind of like a gag and my fans like that. So that's the executive summary, if you will. Yeah. He got dropped from his agency.

He got dropped from his agency. And I believe that a comedy club here in New York. In NYCC. Canceled his spot. Yeah. No, I think TMZ said they had somebody called in to threaten the comedy club

if he went on. Well... So what do you guys think? You say what? I think that, you know, that's his thing. That's his thing. I don't like the idea

of a comic being threatened into silence, but at the same time, it's like it's so soon after the guy, he hasn't even been buried yet, and he died with his kid. It's just weird. In his Instagram thing, I'm not going to interrupt you, he also said he didn't realize when he did it, he didn't yet know about the child.

I don't know if that matters, but just for the record, it should be said. Take swings, but expect certain consequences if people don't agree with that swing. My reaction is I agree. Obviously, I don't like comics being threatened with death for saying something. If that's his shtick, that's his shtick. But I'm shocked that he did not realize the blowback that he would get. You're a smart enough guy to understand. Gotta read the room. And he says, well, I'm talking to my fans, and my fans like that he would get. You're a smart enough guy to understand.

And he says, well, I'm talking to my fans and my fans like that kind of stuff. But he had to know, or one would think he had to know that it would get out into the wider world and that he would be taking a task for it, so I'm a little surprised. Not only that, but you put other comics at risk. If they're threatening to shoot up a comedy

club, you're not even thinking about the rest of the comics. You know what I mean? I don't think he saw that coming. Fair, fair. Yeah, but Kobe fans are... I didn't know that Kobe fans were so... Especially upon his death. They're crazy.

I don't want to say they're crazy. They're grieving. I mean, no, but even before Kobe's death, you get discussions. Yeah, but they weren't threatening to kill people. No, they weren't. They weren't. Yeah, so I don't like it either.

You don't like what he said or you don't like the threats? Or both. Well, neither. But I don't like that kind of harsh belittling of people after they die. You could reserve it for Saddam hussein or something like that but in general uh it's hurtful to people who care about them yes he was accused of of this thing and maybe you're right and maybe it is hypocritical but the people close to him are grieving and it's just you're stomping on all that yep having and i and i mean that from my heart. Having said all that, things have become so incredibly coarse in the way people do speak about other people online.

People who have done things they're accused of, or people who have been accused of doing things. People who have died. This is not the first case of some really nasty tweets going around about somebody who died. It's all become kind of normalized. And now all of a sudden, like I could see why he didn't realize, oh, this is the one that's going to blow up in my face when this has been going on. Like I said. I just think it's the nature of the tragedy, too. I mean.

Yeah. Yeah. But the fact that young people died. So many young people died. In the helicopter. He says he didn't know that at the time. It's hard for me to believe. I just know that if Trump died, people would be doing what Ari did and worse. If he died in the helicopter with young people?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You think people would? I don't know, man. I feel like, I mean, I think some people might take a stab at it, but I'm like, it's awful. They'd be cheering. And it is awful. And I just, you know they would and you know again I don't know

if there were young people that died with him how that would affect how that would affect well Ari said he didn't know that the young people died so apples to apples

like assuming what Ari he also said he got hacked too so I don't know I don't know about the hack thing I think he was joking but I don't know

I don't know maybe he was like Joy Reid said all those horrible things about gays and she claimed she got hacked. Yeah. So maybe that's what he was alluding to. Yeah. Oh, maybe. I don't know.

I have no idea. It's just we should all pull back from this kind of fucking nastiness. I agree. It's terrible. Steven, you say what? He was nodding affirmatively. I'm a person of compassion and grieving time is grieving time. Important, yeah.

And I also have worked with many victims of rape and assault and mind control cults, and I want to support them. Absolutely. A hundred percent. But there's a time and place and a way of doing it. And I actually listened to an interview that Kobe did with Jordan Harbinger. I was on his podcast. And I was so impressed with Kobe Bryant as a spiritual, intelligent, you know, just a brilliant person with compassion. That's why I thought about Kavanaugh.

Which isn't to say about people make bad errors in judgment earlier in their life that they live to regret their mistakes. But it felt like he was trying to, you know. He seemed contrite. For what? For the rape accusation? Can there be forgiveness for that kind of a crime, That's right. Yeah. For what? For the rape accusation? Yeah. Listen. Can there be forgiveness for that kind of a crime, assuming he did it?

As far as I know, there was no trial, and there was a settlement and a payoff. But I know of celebrities who pay off people that they never did. But he also wrote an apology where he acknowledged that she didn't think there was consent. That's a pretty telling detail. No, he said that he understands now that she, he realizes now that she didn't think there was consent, but that he did. He still believes that there was consent. He believed that there was consent, but he understands. It's a very nuanced response. It's not just him admitting that he raped him.

Counselors, you have to understand. He can't confess to a crime. Correct. Exactly. That's true. He has to say, I didn't. That's right. But to say, it's, I mean, none of this is proof.

I just don't know the details. I mean, he probably shouldn't have said anything, but I think that he was, I think he felt something. Do we know the details of what actually happened that we're saying? Well, we know that the young woman said, and it certainly, the accusation was clear that it was rape. But, you know, people go to jail and they serve their time and they come out and then you get to. And so if you settle a case, isn't that the same thing? No, it's not the same. No?

So when Trump settled for $25 million, you made it sound like it was... The black dudes have been falsely accused of rape plenty of times. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Hold on a second. Plenty of times. If you settle a financial... I don't know why you're bringing it back to Trump.

If you settle a financial claim, then the presumption is you're made whole, yes. You can't ever make somebody whole for being raped, in my opinion. No amount of money is going to... I would agree with you. If you steal $1,000 from me... And I don't think a payment is necessarily... And then you pay it back in a settlement.

And what about if you kill somebody and you go to jail and then you serve your time and you get out? I believe in forgiveness. It's a real question. I mean, I'm not taking a position one way or the other. What I'm really shocked at here amongst mostly liberal people is that we, like, did I just go to sleep for a thousand years?

Because when I put my head down on a pillow, I was living in a time that said, all victims must be believed. Like, Al Franken resigned from the Senate because somebody accused him

of patting a girl on the butt. And all of a sudden now we're like parsing his apology where he acknowledges that she, something pretty remarkable, which is I can see how she didn't think there was consent. Like, whoa, I can't really picture incidents in my life where I can imagine why. I knew she said yes, but I could see where she didn't realize. There's a long history of women, white women, accusing black men of committing

rapes. Was the victim white? Yes, he was white. And so there's some credibility issues. No, there's no credibility issue. That's a pretty radioactive thing to say. Considering the history of one guy. Are you saying then that if a black man is suspected, I can say there are credibility issues because you're black,

given all the black criminals? No, I say there's a degree of bias in the criminal justice system against African Americans. Answer my question. Are you saying, if I know there's a black crime, can I say you have a credibility issue because you're black? Wait, there's a black crime? I know the statistics of how overrepresented crime is in the African-American community. There's also a criminal justice system that targets African-Americans.

Yes, there's that too. That's huge. That's a huge factor. But I don't think anybody's denying that crime is higher in certain neighborhoods. Well, first and foremost, it depends on how you define a crime and which criminals are targeted. Let's remove it from that. Let's say for the which criminals are targeted. Let's remove it from that. Let's say for the sake of argument. You can't remove it from that.

No, no. Let's say for the sake of argument that Jews are more likely to commit white-collar crimes. Go ahead. Could totally be true. Are you saying then that if I'm accused of a white-collar crime and I happen to be Jewish, there's a credibility issue automatically because of my- There's a credibility issue with the justice system. Yeah. No, but you said credibility because she's white. I'm saying there's a credibility issue automatically because of my... There's a credibility issue with the justice system. No, but you said credibility because she's white.

I'm saying there's a history... This wasn't the justice system. She's settled. I'm saying there's a history of white women accusing African American men of committing rape and then those black men being lynched. I'm saying you have to take that into account. Take it into account why? What does that tell you about this incident? It says that perhaps she

might not be telling the truth. So perhaps she might not be telling the truth. So, therefore, I might not be telling the truth because I'm Jewish. And there's a history of Madoff and all these guys and Milliken and all these guys. I'm saying it's best we collect the evidence and then we draw a perfect conclusion. I think you're making a tremendously... You're talking to lawyers. No, you're making... First of all, you'd get laughed at in court for that argument.

I wouldn't make that argument in a courtroom. I'm saying from the person. What you're actually saying is. As a person in the public. You're actually saying that. I'm concerned that perhaps we might be jumping the gun when we accuse him of rape and we haven't gotten all the evidence. You're actually saying. That's fine.

This is not a courtroom argument. No, you're bringing somebody's race into it. You're actually saying that. You have to. It's a context. You're saying that people are born with a certain credibility based on their race. No, I'm not saying that. I'm saying historically speaking, there have been quite a few numbers of the Emmett Till case

where women have accused black men of committing rape. And I'm saying that when you're assessing whether or not Kobe did commit this rape, you take that into consideration as an African American. So if I accuse somebody of mugging me, we should take into consideration the color of the guy I'm accusing. If it happened in Harlem, then yeah, you take into consideration the color of their bike.

Whether he did it or not. That's what happened to Central Park joggers. There's no question. Those Central Park kids were more easily convicted based on exactly the logic that you're expressing. That's right. I'm saying it's what people do. Oh, I thought you were saying it was the right thing to do. I don't know what's right and what's wrong.

I'm just saying a lot of African Americans have doubts about the criminal justice system. As we should. We should have doubts about the criminal justice system. This is not the criminal justice system we're talking about. It's just that white women say niggas don't really believe that he did it, that he raped him. We don't. Well, you know what?

I'm not going to use the N-word, but they didn't believe that O.J. did it either. He didn't. He still don't. And you still don't. Okay, there you go. O.J. didn't do it. What can I say about that? In any case, I think that...

I have to take this position. I get that. Go back to the hood. I think that we should all embrace the fiction that unless somebody is proven guilty, that no matter what we think or whatever it is, based on little of what we know, that they have a right to be a free man in society, free man in society, go to restaurants, take whatever job they want, whatever it is. We have to have procedures because mob justice, which is what we're describing, you're talking about lynching,

is the worst thing of all. Without a doubt. And Kobe is beloved, but there should be no doubt that if Kobe was some right wing, if Kobe was Manafort, Paul Manafort, accused of exactly the same thing, I agree. You guys would not be parsing this apology to this degree. Manafort didn accused of exactly the same thing. I agree. You guys would not be parsing this apology to this degree. Manafort didn't drop 81 points on Toronto.

And as much as it doesn't seem like it when people might listen to this podcast, I believe I'm the last objective man on fucking planet Earth. Of course. I really do. Everyone else is in their cult but you. No, because I will actually... Hey, I got the comedians to laugh I'll tell you why

Because I don't obfuscate I don't change the subject I don't avoid any questions I try to verify my facts and I verify other people's facts Go ahead Lucas Brothers Awesome Where can we find you guys?

Just at the Lucas Brothers on Instagram And at Lucas Brothers on Twitter Okay find you guys just at the Lucas Bros on Instagram and at Lucas Bros on Twitter yep okay yeah thank you guys thank you guys so much

I want you guys to come on again because I want to find out more about what you think about genetics absolutely you see three identical strangers I did

I loved it it was a tragedy it was a tragedy but it was great yeah but it must have spoke to you I was crying in the airport we got to talk about it

you guys are amazing. Thank you. Sorry you didn't finish law school. You should have. Oh, I didn't know they didn't finish. They abandoned it the last minute. They decided they didn't want to do it. I finished.

Clearly. They made the right decision. Can I say something? Both me and Noam went to law school. Yes, you can say it. I want to say that I think that you know that I would never make an excuse for anybody raping anybody. And I certainly don't condone death threats against comedians. But I do.

I think that the whole story is really heartbreaking. And you have to let that it's just because. And I said this before, just because you can say something. Oh, no. We all agree. I should have said about the rape thing. We all agree that none of us would say that I'm not making any excuse

I don't even like talking about it I don't feel comfortable talking about that now because I'm thinking of his wife and his children and I just think it's just not the whole world is talking about it the whole world is doing a lot of things

I think there's a validity to hear a woman's voice, too, on this subject. I really do. Of course there is. We're retreading stuff we've talked about a million times. I really do. I mean, I really, I don't know what happened with that story and the settle and all that, but I really, you know, I'm thinking about his wife and his kids. Do you remember?

And I'm not even a Lakers fan. Oh, that should really matter. Do you remember when we were discussing the Kavanaugh thing? Yes. And the things were coming out about Dr. Ford's story. Yes. Some inconsistencies or her friend. How nervous we were to even utter it because we knew how people were going to attack us

for even having, daring to raise anything factual that was out there. No, but do you remember how we felt? Yeah, I can't stand him. He's disgusting. Now it's exactly the opposite. Read my blog. Now we're afraid to say the opposite. Okay, yes, because of the tragedy, but let's be honest, it's more than that.

It's because he's disfavored and Kobe is favored. Is that valid, though? No, regardless of whether we should or should not be. He was flawed. What? Kobe was flawed. Martin Luther King had affairs. What's wrong with that?

We don't talk about affairs every time we talk about Martin Luther King, but it's an acknowledged fact. What are you, a goody two-shoes? No, but who's perfect except for. What are you, a goody two-shoes? No, but, you know, who's perfect? Except for cult leaders who say they're perfect. Okay, but usually when somebody's accused of a heinous crime, you want to say more than, well, you know, nobody's perfect. But nobody brought that up for the past 15 years with Kobe.

It's like he, it was like that thing got crushed. Ari was bringing it up all the time, actually. It was? Yeah, Ari, I saw it on his, as I'm reading about it, he had tweeted it a few times. Those guys are amazing. No, look at them. Okay, but you can't do that. And then the Daily Beast, so there's a woman from the Washington Post. I know, I saw.

What's her name? Sandra, I can't remember her name. Sandra Dee. No, the woman from the Washington Post tweeted out, in a classier way, basically the same stuff that Ari had tweeted out. And they fired her from the Washington Post. She tweeted out that story from the Daily Beast. Now she was rehired.

Good. But she was making essentially the same point in a much more elegant way. But the point is that the world circled the ranks around discussing this in a way which they will not do for other people. It's unhealthy. And I think that we really need freedom of the press and independent investigative journalism. And I'm really worried about democracy

if we can't have people saying what they think. I agree. Isn't there a Jewish thing that you're not supposed to speak ill of the dead? Yes. Probably. Yeah. I'm blocking on the term.

Hara. Lashon Hara. Lashon Hara. Thank you. I think that's not just the dead. I think that's just in general No but you're not supposed to speak ill of the dead The person who says it is

is harmed the person that you said about is harmed and anyone who heard of is harmed My grandmother always taught me that only applied to Jewish people who died Like any good cult So I mean who taught me that only applied to Jewish people who died. Like any good cult.

So, I mean, I really think that freedom of mind is the basis of all freedom of religion, and that I really believe that real spiritual principles is about love and not about fear and guilt. Did you read Arthur Brooks' book, Love Your Enemy, I think it's called? I haven't read that. He writes a lot about that. But I belong to a temple where I have a woman rabbi, Claudia Kreiman, gay-friendly, social justice-oriented,

lots of people don't believe in God, and it's a very wonderful community. You believe in God? Huh? You believe in God? I do. You do. Yeah, I do.

I don't believe in a Zeus-like humanoid that's floating in the clouds. It's a much more nuanced... But the laws of... She. She, that we often will refer to. We look at Torah as a story and we look at rabbinic interpretations that even contradict each other as part of us trying to make sense of whatever. OK, by the way, Sanmez, somebody should Google Sanmez if you want to hear the story about the Washington Post reporter.

So what I'm saying is that you believe that there's an entity out there. No, I don't think there's an entity out there. Then what is God? So for me, it's more of a notion beyond time and space. So it's not like an object. It's more of a

process or an energy. Does it have intentions? It does. I don't know. I think we should have handed on your grandma, Joe. Is it concerned with morality? I think not human morality, but I do think

that ultimately that there's some kind of order to what is. and I do believe that earth is not the center of all of the universes the billions of universes that are out there and that much is a mystery and that our best position is of humility and to be as understanding of others as we can and less putting anyone else down to put ourselves up. So last question, really last question. Do you see any inherent contradiction

between encouraging people to base their feelings on facts, as you said before, and believing that there's some entity in the universe that, you know. I'm not sure that I got your question. Feelings rather than facts. No, you said that people need to be, people need to base their ideas on facts. You said something like that. Like, that's the problem with cults, that people suspend their...

On evidence? On evidence and facts. Right. And you don't see a, you do see a contradiction between that and just kind of a belief, which can't be based on facts or evidence, that there is a God in the universe who has some feeling about morality or order.

For me, life is the evidence. For me, there's a sacredness to breathing. For me, when I'm scuba diving, I feel closest to God. But those are not facts. Those are not facts. You believe in the Big Bang, but that's facts. I believe that our brain is very complex and that there's more that our brain filters out of reality than exists. For example, our eyes see a tiny little narrow band of what exists. And I think that I'd rather choose to believe that there's meaning and order, ultimately, than there's chaos and nothing matters and ultimately that life has no value. I think each human being is precious and special.

Except for Trump. And each person has a little spark of the divine in them. Okay, we got to go. I just have one question. Well, unfortunately, we're out of time. Go ahead, go ahead, Peril. Do people seek you out because their children have joined cult? Do people ever find you and find their own way out of cult?

Absolutely. I've written books. I've done videos. My Freedom of Mind website. But people will hire me to tell them how to help a loved one get out of a cult. Or people have gotten out of a cult and they've gone to a regular therapist and they're not getting better. And they want to get better. We want to thank Stephen Hassan.

Hassan. Stephen Hassan. Thank you for saying that. And he has a book called The Cult of Trump, which I assume is available wherever books are sold. Yes. Simon & Schuster. And, of course, you can email is available wherever books are sold. Yes. Simon & Schuster. And, of course, you can email us your questions. I'm going to read that book.

I would love for you to read the book. We look forward to hearing Noah's review of that book. It's a topic I'm quite interested in. I'd like to talk to you further. Let's hang out. I agree. If you ever come to Boston, come see us. Oh, you're in Boston?

Yeah. Okay, well, next time you're in New York. Steven, you are entitled to food and drink on the house. I thought you wanted to wrap it up, Dan. And you can email us at podcast at comedycelli.com with questions, comments, suggestions, compliments, insults, whatever. And follow us at at live from the table. Thank you. Bye-bye.

Bye.