The Megyn Kelly Show - Escaping Scientology, Tom Cruise's Impact, and a Prison of Belief, with Mike Rinder | EP. 400

Episode Date: September 28, 2022

Megyn Kelly is joined by Mike Rinder, former senior executive with Scientology and author of "A Billion Years," to discuss the ban on Scientologists reading negative press about Scientology, how Scientology pushes you to remove your emotions, how Scientologists remove toxic personalities in their life through "disconnection," growing up and his parents getting involved in Scientology, how Rinder "escaped" from Scientology, the stalking and spying that happened when he left, the way Scientology separates parents and kids, why celebrities are such a big part of Scientology, Tom Cruise's influence on Scientology, how Cruise's marriages were navigated, the infamous Cruise-Lauer moment, how the Sea Org was banning new children for a time, the "prison" of belief, and more.Follow The Megyn Kelly Show on all social platforms:YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/MegynKellyTwitter: http://Twitter.com/MegynKellyShowInstagram:http://Instagram.com/MegynKellyShowFacebook:http://Facebook.com/MegynKellyShow

Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations. Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show. Before we begin today's show, I want to start by sending our prayers to the people of Florida. As Hurricane Ian makes landfall today, this is a bad one. Right now the storm has maximum sustained winds near 155 miles per hour. If it hits 157, that means it's a cat five hurricane. Good gracious. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis telling Floridians just a short time ago to prepare for major impact and that if you have not left the so-called red zones, it's now too late. So we are thinking of our friends in Florida, especially one of our

staff members, John, who's in Florida with his wife and children. Be safe. We're going to have updates throughout the show. If major breaking news happens, everybody should say a little prayer because that's, I mean, that is just devastating. In the meantime, we have an exclusive interview for you today as we celebrate a big anniversary here at The Megyn Kelly Show. It was exactly two years ago today when we launched The Megyn Kelly Show podcast. One of our first guests was Ben Shapiro, and he will be with us tomorrow for the full show. Over the past two years, we've grown from three days a week, a three-day-a-week podcast, to a daily podcast, YouTube show, live radio program airing on SiriusXM Triumph channel as well. Just last week, we launched a daily podcast, YouTube show, live radio program airing on SiriusXM Triumph channel as well.

Just last week, we launched a weekly newsletter. I don't really like calling it that, I have to say, because it's just like every newsletter I get is a pain in the ass that I don't want. And this is like a fun little update on the news with links to cool segments that you may have missed that I think you're really going to enjoy. Well, I have a gal who's running this. Her name is Meg Storm, which is an amazing name. Meg,

Meg Storm. I wish it was my name. Anyway, Meg tells me that it's crazy number of like opens on the newsletter. Everybody who gets it is opening it. And that's great. That means they're enjoying it. And you can see they click around. And so I think you'll like it. You can find it at megankelly.com. Okay, you go there, you sign up, and I'm gonna send you an email on Fridays. I'm much more in store for you there as we continue to expand. All this is thanks to you, our listeners and viewers. We cannot thank you enough. And now we want to turn to our big interview. I've been waiting for this, and I've been really looking forward to it so very much. Scientology. It is the secretive religion of choice among several well-known celebrities, including Tom Cruise and John Travolta, among others. Now, a former high-ranking member of the church is shining a light on what it's like to grow up as a Scientologist and the dangers of leaving it behind. I've interviewed quite a few former Scientologists over the years, but none of them as high-ranking as Mike Rinder, and he was one of my favorite interviews ever when I hosted The Kelly File on Fox News. For decades, Mike was a member of the church's secretive C-Org,

which is comprised of the church's most dedicated members. If there's anyone the church does not want speaking, it's Mike. In his new book out today called A Billion Years, My Escape from a Life in the Highest Ranks of Scientology, he details it all, including incredible stories about Tom Cruise, Nicole Kidman, John Travolta, and what happened the one time he tried to lure Michael Jackson into the church. The book is already making a ton of headlines, and this is Mike's very first interview about it. Mike Rinder, thanks so much for being here today. What's lovely to be back with you, Megan. Really lovely. Oh, I can't believe we're, so we're together in the SiriusXM studios in New York,

and I guess this is a good thing for you on a couple of fronts because you got out of Florida. Yeah. Unfortunately I had to leave my family behind, so that's not such a good thing, but I'm pretty sure they'll be okay. The path of the hurricane moved south. So that was a relief to me because I'm stuck in New York and they're left home and I feel a little guilty about that, frankly. That's scary. When you live in Florida for a while, though, you know how to board up your home. You know how to read the signs. Like all Floridians, they're the experts when it comes to dealing with hurricanes. That's very true. That's very true. Of course, you got a lot of transplants down there right now from New York who are not experts.

Yeah. And they're not expert drivers either. It depends. If they're from New York who are not experts. Yeah. And they're not expert drivers either. It depends. If they're from New York City, they're fine. Yeah, that's exactly right. That's exactly right. So anyway, it's great to see you again. And I meant that sincerely. That time you came on Fox when Going Clear aired was one of my favorite exchanges because it was so eye-opening. Because unlike a lot of these people who come out and talk about organizations they've left you really were at the top top echelons of Scientology and it was extraordinary to hear you talk only we only had seven minutes and seven minutes last time now we've got extended time so I'm I'm really looking forward to our talk well I'm I hope you don't uh me. The odds are high. Okay, but

we've got coffee, we've got Abby, so we should be fine. So let's start with how you first got into it, because I didn't even realize you could kind of be born into it or be accepted into it when you're just in the single digits. Yeah. Well, my parents originally got involved in Scientology in Australia in the late 50s. You know, Hubbard had actually been to Australia and was doing lectures there. And it turned out our next door neighbor had gone to one of his lectures and then came home and told my parents about this wonderful new thing. And they started getting involved involved and so by the age of six I was beginning to be raised in what you would call a Scientology family in that the system or the belief system that the family was raised in was based on the works of L. Ron Hubbard. You, as a Scientologist, quickly learned

that L. Ron Hubbard is sort of the gospel. What L. Ron Hubbard says about things is how you are supposed to deal with them or address them. In fact, one of the phrases that gets used often in Scientology is, do what Ron says. And that was something I heard a lot when I was a kid. You know, what would Ron do? Do what Ron says. He wrote about and lectured about every topic that you could possibly imagine. And therefore, in the minds of Scientologists, he has the answers to everything that you could possibly imagine or any circumstance that might come up. Because the words of Hubbard are not to be questioned. They are not to be wondered about. They are just to be read, understood, and then do whatever it is that he says. And that was the life that I grew up in.

It's the life of any Scientology child who is raised by Scientology parents. And it's sort of the defining element of your life is to learn and understand and apply what L. Ron Hubbard says about how you're supposed to live. You can see that just even as an outsider when you see some of those leaked Scientology videos where there's the one famous one where Tom Cruise is up there on the front on the stage and it's to LRH. And it almost looks like a Hitler-esque, not to compare it to Hitler, but you know,

they sort of do the arm up to LRH. And my husband and I joke about this sometimes when we were at this one club where they really revere the guy who started it. And there's statues of him everywhere and there are pictures of him everywhere. And I'm like, this has got the LRH Scientology feel to it. But he was like a god and remains like a godlike figure within Scientology. Certainly. he went to great pains to say, oh, I'm just a man, and I'm not a god, and you shouldn't just accept everything that I say. But those are really the PR statements to make it sort of more palatable to the world that this isn't a guy who believes he's, you know, God.

But when you are a dedicated Scientologist, you get to see the sort of innermost thoughts and writings of Hubbard where he basically says, I am the only one. I am the only one who has solved the problems of mankind. And that's not a piece of hyperbole that is like him saying i have solved the problems of mankind and every person on this planet and every person in this universe i have discovered and I am the first person in all the eons of history to have discovered the answers to how to attain spiritual enlightenment and freedom and happiness and everything that you can possibly imagine. So while there are these sort of protestations that he's not a god he is yeah and not only that but you have a

whole family and friend and societal structure around you reinforcing that so of course you grow up believing it and revering him all right so that happens from an early age and the thing about scientology and i realized like your book and your experience with scientology does not reflect well in scientology. But the thing about Scientology that even as a critic of it, I've always appreciated is there's an element of it that's very self empowering. You know, there it's all about like you do it. You changed it. Even negative things that happen to you. They're basic messages.

You somehow brought it on yourself, which I know a lot of people would take issue with, but there's something empowering about that too. Like I can change all negative things that happen to me if I'm in control of them. Absolutely. Megan, if everything in Scientology was bad, nobody would be a part of it. If there wasn't something that was attractive about it and elements of it that are attractive or even usable or workable, then it wouldn't exist. And just as you say, part of what is so, so enticing about Scientology is it convinces you that you can change things both for yourself and in the world and for your friends and family and other people. And, you know, I often say, look, there's some really rotten, creepy people at the top of Scientology. But the run-of-the-mill Scientologists are generally very nice, very good people who are involved in Scientology because they believe it can help them. But even probably even more motivating to many of them is they think that they can help other people with with it. And that is something that is preached in Scientology, that you're able to help the world

and they believe that they are. Well, the other piece of it that I like, before we get to the pieces we don't, is when somebody's a negative force in your life, they're gone. It's hardcore and it's drastically hardcore, but there's something appealing about that. You know, in a day and age where we talk about toxic personalities and so on, where we can be a little too forgiving and it can take some of us a little too long to say, you know what, bye, you know, I'm over you. I'm cutting this person out because this person is not a force for good in my life. Scientologists do not suffer from that problem. No, no. And probably the worst thing about that is, you know, that practice is called disconnection in Scientology. And when you

have an individual that has a toxic personality in their life, there is absolutely nothing wrong with them distancing themselves from that toxic personality. That's a, you know, I promote this book that I read when I left by a professor at Harvard called Martha Stout called The Sociopath Next Door, a wonderful book, by the way. Sounds good. And she says, you know, if you are interacting with a sociopath, there's really nothing that you can do other than get away from them. The problem in Scientology is that that is used as a weapon. It is used as a tool. It is used as a way of keeping people from influencing someone in Scientology in any way that Scientology believes is negative.

So, for example, if I was – you had a Scientologist working in the office next door to you, and that Scientologist was, you know, a very, very devout Scientologist, and you went in and started saying, well, look, you should be doing that. Do you know this? Do you know that? The Scientology organization would then insist that that person cut all contact with you. They would force that disconnection to occur. They would insist that that person did and acted in a way as if you were somehow damaging

them strictly because you said, hey, you should probably look at this. Are you aware of what's going on here and in that way they try to keep the bad news about scientology away from their members that's why you're not allowed to surf the internet about scientology exactly yes scientologists surfing the internet is like people think oh well here how it works is that scientologists are not allowed to watch tv or they are not allowed to watch TV or they're not allowed to look at the Internet or whatever. Actually, it's not quite like that. That's true for Sea Organization members, the people in the inner sanctum. Generally, Scientologists out in the world are able to go on the Internet

or watch TV or whatever. But the minute they see the word Scientology or Xenu or some term that is a Scientologically related term, and they believe that what may be said may be negative, they will switch it off. They will turn away from it. They don't want to hear it. I mean, John Travolta has been quoted quite often when he has been asked about, well, what do you say about the negative media? Did you ever

watch? Why would I listen to someone who has negative things to say about something that has been positive in my life? I tune them out. And that is exactly what Scientologists do. If they see something that has my name on it, they know everything in it is a lie. But it's so crazy because in the John Travolta example, I get that. If you expand that to, let's say, a person, my husband's Doug Brunt, if somebody's like, why don't you read the negative articles about Doug Brunt, which thankfully there are none, I'd say, why would I want to see that? I know Doug Brunt. I don't need to read what's in. I certainly don't want to read anything negative

about him but it's different when you're john travolta and you're part of a so-called church that's actually alleged to be hurting people abusing people it's not the same it's not just like i don't take in negative you know press i don't take in things that upset me it's like no no no you're part of it you're one of the faces of it. Right. You're promoting to people to get into this and they're being abused when they get in there. So you have a responsibility to actually know what you're talking about and what's going on. But the reason why the excuse or that answer works is just exactly what you said, because people go, yeah, well, I can sort of see that. If someone wrote some negative article about my husband, I wouldn't read it. Why would I?

Well, my church, for that matter. It's not like I love to read negative things about, say, the Catholic Church when we went through the priest scandal and all that, but I did, because I felt an obligation to know what the Catholic Church was doing. It's not enough to say, like, well, it's very negative. It brought me down, so I avoided it. Yeah, well, you'd be a very bad Scientologist, Megan. I know this. Although, as I say, I can promote a couple of their values.

I see the lure. And your parents felt the lure because I read in your book, they were attracted by the promise of eradicating unwanted emotions and insecurities, having better relationships, raising successful children, and saving the world. Eradicating unwanted emotions and insecurities, having better relationships, raising successful children, and saving the world. Eradicating unwanted emotions and insecurities. I feel like this is a

piece of it where you learn to control your emotions. You're not just at this emotional blubbering blob. You're in control of yourself. Very much so. Very much so. To the point where I have come to realize, and it took me a long time to come to this conclusion, Megan. It wasn't something that I sort of instantly went, oh, yeah. The training and the drilling in Scientology that occurs, and there are these things called training routines. And, you know, Leah and I have talked about this both on the Aftermath and on our podcast. Leah Remini. anything and that you should not be effect of some outside influence that you must keep your emotions and reactions in check and it doesn't matter what anybody does or says to you and

they must not get a lot of Italians. Those are my people. Well, there are plenty of Italians, but it just takes longer to beat it out of them. She was brought into as a child, like both of you were brought in. But that then is a recipe for catastrophe, ultimately. Because, you know, I write about it in my book from my perspective about what happened with deaths that happened in my family. And how I was not supposed to react and did not react. And I look back on those things and I go, how is it possible to be so indoctrinated that you have an infant child that dies and you don't have any real reaction? Or your father dies in an automobile accident where your mother was driving and it's like oh i gotta get back to work yeah can i ask you that because you mentioned the death of your baby to sid's when she was in the nursery and we have to talk about what they do

with the children and the babies but um and they don't refer to it as dead dead or death they say she left her body dropped her body or. They say she left her body. Dropped her body or left her body, yeah. Okay, she dropped her body. So you were told your baby dropped her body, and the first thing that you wanted to do or that they wanted to do for you was get you into an auditing room or with an auditor,

which is, it's not a therapist. They hate therapy. They hate psychiatry, but it's kind of their version of this is where you're going to work it out, and then you'll move on. Yes, a therapist. They hate therapy. They hate psychiatry. But it's kind of their version of this is where you're going to work it out and then you'll move on. Yes, a counselor. Okay. The sort of non-nasty way of saying it would be a counselor.

How would it go, Mike? Walk me through something. Would it be sort of like a therapist? Yes. How do you feel? Yes, very much so. But with the addition of this thing in Scientology called the e-meter. And the e-meter is this device that is sort of akin to a lie detector. Scientology hates it when you say that, but actually Hubbard said it a couple of times that, you know, it's more sophisticated than a lie detector. The E-meter is supposed to measure your emotional reactions and responses to things and in theory measures those reactions and responses below your consciousness.

And so it is sort of an article of faith in Scientology that the e-meter is infallible. I was going to say it's very convenient that it's below your level of consciousness. Exactly. So I can tell you exactly what you're thinking, whether you believe it or not. Exactly. And that is one of the great tricks of Hubbard was to come up with this e-meter device that allows people to create memories and have them reinforced by someone saying, well, that read on the meter, so it must be true. What does it look like?

It's a sort of an oval-shaped thing with a dial on it and a needle on a dial and a couple of little switch needle on a dial and a couple of um couple of little switchy things that you adjust and you the auditor sits on one side and looks at it or the counselor and you sit on the other side unable to see what is on that meter and you hold two tin can electrodes that are connected to the meter that pass a tiny current through your body. And that is the theory that that current and the disturbing of that current that is passing through your body is what the e-meter measures. And that is what it measures. It measures the disturbance-meter measures. And that is what it measures. It measures the disturbance of that

current. The less provable part of it is that that disturbance is created by you, you the spirit. Because in Scientology, there are three parts of man. The spirit, which is called a thetan in Scientology, the mind, and the body. And the spirit is seen as senior to the mind and the body and controlling the mind and the body. And the spirit reacts and causes the body to have a physical reaction, which then the auditor reads on the e-meter. That's why they say he dropped his body. He is the spirit or she is the spirit, not the body. That's exactly right. And you are believed to have lived for many lifetimes before

and will go on to many lifetimes in the future. And that, this belief of past lives, came about and concurrent with the development of the e-meter. Because there is a concept that Hubbard had in his fundamental book, Dianetics, the Modern Science of Mental Health, that you have these incidents that occur that cause you to have negative emotions, reactions, pains, upsets, whatever. And that by addressing those incidents with a sort of a regression theory of going back to the beginning and the earliest time that you had such a feeling or an incident, that you will be able to relieve that. I've heard you and Leah talk about this. Like, okay, I guess I may have been a man at once.

I like you kind of start just fill in the blanks because they're waiting for you to say something. But Megan, on the other side of you saying that is the auditor saying, yes, that reads. Oh boy. So you get this. Well, I guess that must be true yeah and that is a very very powerful tool that is used to convince people that scientology really works could it could it work i mean you put it to the test losing a baby because I was thinking maybe there's a placebo effect you know even if it's not real if you think it's real it could be so did it help at all you know like did

it help in that case circumstance it it helped quote unquote in the fact that I was able to go back to work right away wow um I don't think that it really helped me i don't think that it made me a uh a more fulfilled person in some fashion you don't think it was really helping you process grief no no i don't i you, at the time I would have said yes. At the time I would have said, isn't it miraculous that a Scientologist can overcome something like that so quickly and not be grief stricken and incapacitated? But I'm not so sure that being grief stricken and incapacitated but i'm not so sure that being grief strip stricken and incapacitated isn't appropriate yeah you know what i mean it's like so i i i don't i'm not sure that i have a really really good answer to that yeah i you know that's a great question nobody's ever asked me that question before and i have to sit and think about it a bit and go, hmm, was there anything good about that?

All right, you've got two minutes to do that because I'm going to squeeze in a commercial break. And I do want to talk about, I did not know until your book about what happens when you have a baby and you're a Scientologist, what happens. And Mike lays that all bare and that's where I'm going to pick it up after this quick, quick break. But first, we're going to bring you a memorable moment from our first two years of The Megyn Kelly Show, as we have been doing all week. For this one, we're going way back into our archives and probably the first tense moment on the show. It's from episode little bitty episode nine, just nine. nine back in October 2020. We had just launched from my interview with Dallas Mavericks owner and Shark Tank co-host Mark Cuban about the NBA and China. Listen. Why would the NBA take $500 million plus from a country that is engaging in ethnic cleansing? Why would? So basically, you're saying

that nobody should do business with China ever. Why don't you just answer my question? No, Megan, I'm just trying to get to the root of it. So why would the NBA do that? You're the one who said. Because they are a customer. They are a customer of ours. And guess what, Megan? I'm okay with doing business with China. You know, I wish I could solve all the world's problems, Megan. I'm sure you do too. But we can't. And so we have to pick all battles. And while you'd like to get proclamations so you can create a clip that says,

look what I got Mark to say, you don't want to deal with the actual action item. You might think silence is violence, but action gets changed, right? And so when I start to talk about- I await your action. Good times. Just think about that for a second. It was an escape. It has to be an escape to get out of this alleged religion, which is one of the many things that makes it different from the normal religion. But many people say it's a cult and it's not a religion. Okay. So let's talk about the babies. So you had two babies. First of all, you got married to your first wife, Kathy. And what does this mean that you were told you were either going to get married or be assigned to something called the Rehabilitation Project Force? organization members and i haven't really defined what a c organization member is megan and i should probably do that uh for those who don't know and it it is why the title of the book is a billion

years because a c organization member signs a contract for a billion years committing oneself to a billion years of service to the scientology cause and the aims of Scientology. And Sea Organization members live communally and are like the inner circle of Scientology, 24-7, 365 days a year devoted to working for Scientology. And as a Sea Org member, you are expected to not engage in any promiscuous activity before marriage. And that basically means anything. As a Catholic Church member, too, frankly.

Yeah. So the punishment for violating those rules and regulations is to be sent to the Rehabilitation Project for us to be rehabilitated. And Kathy and I had engaged in promiscuous sexual relations prior to marriage and so therefore were threatened you have either to decide to get married or go to the RPF

what would that be like in prison for some months or what yeah basically the RPF is you are segregated from the rest of the people in Scientology and you are not allowed to talk to anybody else, only speak if addressed. For how long?

I mean, originally it was like about six months. Some people have been there for 10 years oh my god so you better really like the woman that you fool around with yeah exactly well you just you chose to get married yes you had two children taryn in 78 uh a daughter and benjamin in 83 a son and what did you guys was because kathy in Sea Org too, your first wife? Yes, yes, yes. You're both high up in Scientology. And what did you do with the babies? They got turned over to what was called the nursery. And the nursery was a few motel rooms

in the back of an old motel in Clearwater that had been converted into a sort of a daycare center, but a daycare center for infants, not for toddlers, for infants. And there were some women who were there who were Sea Org members who had absolutely no training whatsoever, and they were expected to look after those babies from when they were dropped off by their parents at you know 8 30 in the morning until they got picked up at 11 30 at night wow and they and that was you know just the way it was. Children were raised by the, they call them nannies, the nannies in the nursery. And then, you know, when they grew old enough,

they started being indoctrinated into Scientology and went to sort of makeshift school and kindergarten where they learned Scientology and they had very little interaction with their parents. Was that, I mean, I know in your book you write about how you were so determined, like when you sign up for Sea Org, it's very clear that's first. Scientology's first, family's a distant second. Was that true for Kathy too? Maybe I'm just being a sexist pig, but I'm like, what kind of a mother would be okay with? Every mother in the Sea Org was okay with that. Otherwise you were not in the Sea Org. Look, it your priorities are set and what is important to you.

And things that you take for granted, and I take for granted today as someone who's not in the Sea Org anymore, the moments that you spend with your children or your family or your friends, they take no part in the life of a Sea Org member. You're not going on vacation to Disney. That is a level of dedication and commitment to something that is beyond, you know, making any sense of. You just can't make sense out of someone who straps a bomb on themselves and goes and blows up a bus in Tel Aviv or flies a plane into the World Trade Center. And I am not saying that Scientologists have that sort of level of violence, not in any way, shape or form. That is not the Scientology view of things, but the mindset that you can convince someone that doing something that is self-destructive in many ways, believing that it is self-salvation is pretty amazing. You can get people to do a lot of crazy stuff if you can get them to believe

that the result of doing the crazy stuff is going to be something good. You came by your affinity, honestly, because your parents introduced you to it. But one thing we skipped over was you actually knew L. Ron Hubbard. Like you studied under him. You joined Sea Org under him, you signed the

billionaire contract when you were 17, which by the way would be making unenforceable as a matter of law, under L. Ron Hubbard. So when you think about your own experience in the church, like, do you have fond memories of him? I know we talked about his writings and all that, but do you think he was a genius? Do you think he mean how do you remember him I remember him um and and realized Megan that my answer today would be different than it was five years ago which was very different than it was 10 years ago or whatever I remember him as being someone who was a masterful storyteller. I mean, he was an incredibly engaging personality. He was not a...

He was a larger-than-life figure. He wasn't a field mouse or a quiet, like... He's not a Keith Ranieri type. He was... Weird. Yeah, weird yeah he was like big and bold and loud and had a story for everything i mean literally and and you know i came to realize that his storytelling which is what he did for his entire life before he started Dianetics and Scientology was really what he used to create Dianetics and Scientology and to popularize it and to to convince people to follow him because

his storytelling was really pretty cool. It must have been. And, and, you know, I sat with him like as he's ready to go to bed and he's telling stories about what, like the most outrageous things that seem so true and so believable. You know,

I was racing cars at 375 miles an hour on this planet blah blah blah and this is what happened and you know and so i developed this from that and you like and at the time i was mesmerized by those things i was a total believer and if Hubbard said that that's what happened, well, that's what happened. And he would then translate those bizarre things into, so that is why when you are driving in a car, you feel, sometimes you feel nauseous because it is these earlier things that happen to you that are now being restimulated by current events and they are causing a physical reaction for you. And you go, wow, someone is actually explaining to me why I get car sick. Well, and especially if you've been raised in the Church of Scientology, you're prone,

you're primed to believe everything he says. That's why I know you begin the book with a letter to your children saying, I'll just quote from me, you say, let me start with this. I'm truly sorry for placing you in a world where your future was preordained. It's difficult and painful to contemplate that I brought you into a life where from your earliest years you were denied any meaningful free will. If I had known then what I know now, I would never have let that happen. And so you're saying everything you're going to believe and everything you're going to do, from your marriage to your job to the way you think about the world, is preordained by this so-called church. Absolutely, 100%.

And particularly for children raised in Scientology, and then even more particularly for children raised in the Sea Organization. I mean, they were destined to be good Sea Organization members and good, dedicated Scientologists, And they remain that to this day. Why is the celebrity quotient so high? Like Leah, she was raised in Scientology. So was Lisa Marie Presley. I didn't realize, I knew she was part of the church. I didn't realize it's because Priscilla was a member of the church and raised Lisa Marie in the church. Why? What's the thing with celebrity?

Well, the thing with celebrity is that Hubbard early on realized that celebrities have enormous influence on how society views things. You know, celebrities go out and endorse something or say something's good. And there's a whole bunch of people that go oh well if it's good enough for tom cruise it's probably something i should check out you know i want to make a billion dollars too so let me add it hubbard then took that to sort of extreme levels of creating particular scientology organizations devoted to only servicing celebrities. They're called the celebrity centers. And the appeal-

Like you can't get in if you're not a celebrity? Like if you're just a, you're a member of Gen Pop, but you're still a Scientologist, would they turn you away? They would send you to another organization. Oh my God, wow. Yeah. Harsh.

Yeah, rough. It's really rough um but the appeal that scientology offers to celebrities and and let me just preface this megan by saying there hasn't been any new big celebrities who have joined scientology in the last 10 years. That's right. Just none. There has been one who has emerged, but she was raised a Scientologist too. Elizabeth Moss. Oh, yes, right. And she is born and raised Scientologist.

Other than that, there hasn't been anybody. But the appeal that Scientology pushes to celebrities is we can help you communicate well to other people. And we can help you control and express your emotions. And for artists, that's what their business is. That's what their livelihood is. Well, and it's truly, I mean, they have arguably, but not really that arguable, the biggest celebrity in the world to point to.

Yes. You know, you can't get bigger than Tom Cruise. No, you can't. And that is why, you know, and I cover it in the book, there is a lot of time and attention and money and effort put into keeping Tom Cruise happy. And, you know, David Miscavige believes that Tom Cruise is the greatest asset that Scientology has. He's right. And he treats him that way.

Yes, he's totally right. Of course he is. How did he get lured in, Tom Cruise? From his first wife mimi she was raised a scientologist mimi rogers mimi rogers oh she was raised my god it's so many of these people raised scientologists yep but he really went full i mean hook line and sinker i don't know if there's any of the greater devotee than tom cruise no there i i don't think that there ever has been. I don't think there ever will be. I don't think that he will ever be as vocally shilling for Scientology as he was, you know,

some years ago. You know, he seems to have restrained, I guess, the studios probably finally convinced him that it wasn't good for his box office to be pushing Scientology. You know, I talk in the book about there was an effort to get rid of Pat Kingsley, his publicist, because back in the day when I was still around, Pat Kingsley was telling Tom, Look, the studios aren't paying you to go out there and promote scientology on your press junkets they're paying you to go promote the book so stop the movie so stop it and that caused some friction and david miscavige was determined that pat kingsley needs to be disconnected from because just like the example i was giving you earlier she was a negative

influence on tom speaking out and and promoting scientology so he had a disconnect from so how do you so he just got in tom's ear and just said she's terrible she's terrible she's terrible and before you knew it tom fired her how do you how do you if you're david miscavige how do you make that happen probably i you know i wasn't there for those conversations, Megan, but I would assume that in the mindset that Tom had at that time, that he probably came to David Miscavige and said, Pat's telling me that I can't do this and Pat's telling me that I can't do that. What should I do? Next thing you know, Tom's auditor is reading an emotion that's right below the surface that says, you hate Pat, Pat's bad. And suddenly, no, Pat's gone. And tell us who she was replaced by.

Yeah, Tom's sister, Leanne. Who's also a devout Scientologist. Very much. And also not prepared for that job. Yeah, and that's by design too, right? Because it's really David Miscavige then who's calling the shots. Correct. And I know you also write Tom's sisters are way more afraid of Miscavige

than they are of Tom Cruise, and they will definitely do what Miscavige tells them before they will what Tom tells them. Well, anybody in Scientology is that way. Like, David Miscavige has the most important thing to any Scientologist. And so if Miscavige snaps his fingers and says, I want X, then the Scientologist will go, you get X. Even if you're Tom Cruise's sister, supposed to be advising him on what's best for him, that doesn't trump it. That doesn't trump your adherences to the church, your loyalty is. Megan, you said it earlier. It's always Scientology first and everything comes second,

whether that be family, whether that be your personal well-being, no matter what it is, it's always Scientology first. And, you know, there was a lot of doctrine in Scientology that like lays out how this logically works. And, you know, I think I explain it somewhere. There's this concept called the eight dynamics in Scientology, the urges towards survival. And those eight dynamics, you make decisions based on what is the greatest good for the greatest number of dynamics? But one of those dynamics is Scientology. Right. So these circumstances around these principles would actually play into Tom Cruise's divorce from Mimi Rogers, his divorce from Nicole Kidman,

and his divorce from Katie Holmes, writes Mike in the book. We'll get into all that a little bit later. But up next, we're going to talk about what happened to Mike. Why did he leave the church? And what was done to him once he did? This is the wackiest part of this whole story. And don't forget, folks, that Megyn Kelly show live on Sirius XM Triumph channel every day, weekday at noon east, channel 111. Full video show when you subscribe to our YouTube channel, youtube.com slash Megyn Kelly and the audio podcast, any place you can get your podcast for free scientology wrote you a little love letter

mike they wrote you a love letter i can't imagine what it says megan remember when you came in the kelly file and it was like we had like 14 calls and different statements from it was like for the love of god and finally i said do you guys want to come on? Just come on and say it. And no, we don't want to do that. So here's what they say. For the record, Mike Rinder is not just a liar, but an inveterate liar. An inveterate liar who seeks to profit from his dishonesty.

He's admitted under oath to lying and wrote of how he lies about lying. His self-aggrandizing memoir, in quotes, is little more than a compendium of discredited claims, gross exaggerations, and provable lies. There was no due diligence of the book, and it was not fact-checked by Simon & Schuster or anyone else. For 15 years, Rinder has distorted and manipulated his truth for anyone willing to pay him. His version of events has repeatedly been rejected by the courts, with one court recently finding Rinder's testimony, quote, is filled with unsupported assumptions, foundational deficiencies, irrelevant matters, improper opinions and arguments, end quote. And then finally, the book excludes Rinder's admitted gross malfeasance and dishonesty in the church that caused him to be stripped of authority and ultimately expelled.

He excludes his cold, callous treatment of his family, particularly his children, including discarding them with no notice after more than 30 years okay so that's what they think of you i don't think you're getting back together probably not no so it's over between you and them yeah that that wasn't much of a love letter no love i don't think they've even read the book i mean when they go to pains to say his cold callous treatment and you know he ignores his cold callous treatment of his family that's what the book is about well not only that you would according to your book you would love to be in touch with your family they disassociated from you when you left the church right yes do i have it correct like yes your ex-wife told you to fuck off right that's

exactly in those words she was your wife at the time right uh but i i go to some lengths to describe the the regret and the pain uh of how my children were raised and that I was not a good father. I'm not hiding that. I don't make myself look very good. It's not like I'm trying to make myself out as father of the year. I mean, I would like that for my son today to be considered father of the year. You have a 10-year-old now with your new wife. Right. But I would not in any way, shape, or form say that I was a good parent in the Sea Org. And I don't believe any Sea Org member

can possibly be a good parent. And in fact, Scientology no longer allows Sea Org members to have children. Well that's what I wanted to ask you about because this is something I hadn't heard of that for a time there you say they were forcing know the cost benefit analysis of children in the seog was not good why not just send them to the so-called nursery well because you have to pay for people to look after them in the nursery i mean it it and you know parents would get distracted because there would be a problem with their child and then it would take them off their job to go deal with their child. And that is not acceptable in the Sea Org were allowed to be born in the Sea Org. If a woman got pregnant, they were coerced into having an abortion, Sea Org members. And, you know, there were a very, very few that were able to withstand the peer pressure

and the stress that they were put under and left the Sea Org because they had their child instead. But the vast majority of women buckled under and agreed that it was the greatest good to abort their child. And there are many many uh personal accounts of this that you know some of which we had on the aftermath show others who have spoken out in the press in the tampa bay times they did a whole series about it with a a number of women and it was a practice that was considered to be uh acceptable in the seahawk and you know they even found a hubbard explanation that justified it uh where he says that the thetan the spirit adopts and assumes a position in the body and takes on the body just before birth. Oh, wow.

Sounds like he was a Democrat. Just saying. All right. So let's talk about what happened to you. This is my impression, but you tell me where I'm going wrong if I am. It seems like David Miscavige, who took over as leader after L. Ron Hubbard died, didn't like you. He had it in for you for some reason. He just kept targeting you.

And the punishments kept ratcheting up and the responsibilities placed on you were impossible to actually manage. It seemed like he set you up to fail and to go down. Yes. Well, that's true, Megan, but David Miscavige doesn't like anybody. I'm not unique in the mistreatment or abuse that he meted out to me. Where I am unique is that I had a different position than the vast majority of people who he saw as, and the worst abuses to the people he thought may be the threats to his power and his position. But I, because I was a spokesperson for Scientology, I had to kind of, you know, he didn't have anybody else to go to. He had done an interview with Ted Koppel on Nightline, the only interview that he ever did for TV. And he did not want to be doing media. so when the today show calls up and says we're doing a piece

on new religions and you know you were either going to be involved or we're going to get one of these Scientology haters on it's like okay get on a plane and go to New York and and be interviewed interviewed and he didn't have anybody else to do it so i was on this roller coaster constantly of i'm in the shits and i'm you know getting uh you know sleeping on the floor or in a tent somewhere and being fed pig slop and then called out and sent off to appear on national tv or go testify in a legal case or you know you would never it was of course understood you would never while on tv be like i've been placed in something called the hole they're not feeding me i'm i have there's no air conditioning there's 30 other guys like they of course you're not going to sell out the organization right and it all the way to the bitter end i didn't do that even though the bitter end was ultimately an interview or a door stopping really by john sweeney of the bbc in BBC in the Scientology organization in London.

And even then, even though I was sort of on the brink of escaping, I didn't say publicly what I felt internally. But what was the final straw? Just because we've talked about, I mean, in the past, we've talked about the hole, which is kind of like his jail, where you say that they would put you if you had some transgression, just you could make it up against Scientology, where you'd be in there with all these other people and not enough plumbing available and not not enough food, just rice and beans like this is crazy, right? Like this is crazy talk to those of us on the outside. It's like this is an actual prison. You could just walk out. You're still a private citizen prison and you don't need walls and barbed wire to keep people in a mind prison. Although there was some walls and not quite barbed wire, but security guards and and and sort of defenses against the momentary whim of someone trying to jump out a window and run away.

But by the way, they actually like nailed the window so that they wouldn't open more than two inches. Screwed them so that they were just two inches and the doors were barred. So there was no way out of that building. We're talking about the hole now, but the final straw was really when I had been in the hole, I'd been taken out of the hole and sent to London to deal with John Sweeney and his reporting for Panorama on the BBC. What was that?

What was the John Sweeney thing? Why was that important to you? Because John Sweeney was doing a whole hour, basically an hour long show on Panorama, which is, you know, the 60 minutes of the UK. And he had been around in the United States pursuing various parts of the story. He'd showed up trying to get an interview with Miscavige. He'd showed up at the Gold Base. He'd been here trying to get an interview with Miscavige. He'd showed up at the Gold Base. He'd been here, there, and everywhere. And long story short, John Travolta was holding a premiere of the Wild Hogs movie in Leicester Square. And Miscavige was afraid that John Sweeney was going to go and get an interview with john travolta unwittingly as a part of his press

junket for the movie okay and so i got stuck on a plane out of the hole to fly to london to go see john at the four seasons the the canary war four seasons where they were doing the press junket and sort of walked in and interrupted and went in and I said, John, there is this guy here, blah, blah, blah. And you don't want to talk to him and make sure that you don't get to. Okay. During the course of that, I was then in the Scientology organization in London and Sweeney showed up there and with a camera crew on the doorstep and was saying, how do you respond to the allegations that David Miscavige beats people? And I said, I deny that we deny they're denied their lies, their blah, blah, blah. Well, I have three people who said they personally witnessed you being physically assaulted by David Miscavige or

whatever the words were exactly and I said that's an absolute lie and we will sue you and he eventually sort of gave up and left and the show then aired fairly soon thereafter and I was still in London and Miscavige couldn't watch it because the BBC you can't watch in the US you know this was before anybody was sophisticated enough to have a VPN or whatever so I had to watch it and then be on the phone with Miscavige saying this is what and throughout the show though it was a devastating expose on Scientology he didn't mention that David Miscavige had physically assaulted anyone and I'm thinking wow that's a win for you pulled this off we get to the end of

I say well sir he didn't mention anything about that and the reaction was the show should never have aired if I'd been there handling it it never would have aired well of course he could have been there handling it nobody stopped him he would like avoided john sweeney like the plague but subsequently shortly thereafter muscav and and i was thinking when i'm giving this interview quote unquote interview to john sweeney what the hell am I doing? Like, I'm here now protecting this guy who's physically assaulting me, and this isn't really why I joined Scientology. So just, I mean, for the record, it was true that he had physically assaulted you. It was absolutely true, many, many, many times. And shortly thereafter, Miscavige sent a missive to one of the people in the united

kingdom and cc'd me on it and i actually quote it in the book and it says you know he's being sent to the furthermost reaches of western australia he's never coming back to the u.s i'll give him 10 quid or something and if he can't make it he can always sell his body on the street and I read that and I went okay the only reason I have stayed as long as I have stayed is because of my children and wife apparently that has been taken out of my hands. You knew leaving Scientology means leaving them. Like it's a, they will not have a further relationship with you. Correct. I hoped that once I was out, I may be able to get them to come and at least listen or hear me out. That was sort of a very slim hope,

but I did have that hope. But I realized, okay, this is the end. There is nothing worse than the life I am living, and I am no longer accomplishing what I thought I was joining the Sea Organization for. So I got to get out of here. When I read your goodbye note, I couldn't believe the notes in it, like the tone. You were definitely beating yourself up. You were putting it on yourself.

You sounded sad. You sounded hopeless. Here's part of it. This is June 9, 2007. You write, as I sat in my temporary office in the library in the ground floor of a home in St. Hill, I pulled out my laptop and typed a goodbye note. There is no future for me at this point. I am forever tainted by my past and it doesn't go away. I have thought very hard about this and have not slept for most of the night for the last two days. It's been going on for years and I see no end in sight. I thought that I had come out of it by getting somewhere with the BBC handling. And while it wasn't perfect, I did everything I knew

how to, to turn around the disaster. But then things became impossible again, and I don't know how to deal with it anymore. I have introverted and introspected on why I am like I am and what else I have done and my evil purposes until I cannot take it anymore. At this point, I do not think it is a resolvable situation. I've been on a roller coaster since 2003 that I cannot get off of, and I cannot go on playing this game anymore. I don't want to leave my family, but I think I'm hurting them more by being around. And it goes on from there. It's so sad to me, Mike, you were so low and you had put it all on yourself. And it kind of, it goes full circle back to how we started. There are downsides to the message that you control everything. You don't control the BBC.

David Miscavige could not have stopped that piece from airing, nor could you. And so it can really F you up, taken to its extreme, that kind of belief that's drilled into you, and I can hear it. This is a different sounding man than the one sitting across from me today.

Yes, and I'm sort of glad that you read that, Megan, though I feel emotional when you read it like it still it still has impact on me that somehow I failed to stick it out or failed to accomplish what I had set out to accomplish. And it is very, very true that one of the absolutely most corrosive concepts in Scientology is that you are responsible for your own condition, that no matter what happens to you, no matter how bad things are, that it is you that caused it to be that way. What would they say about a child who's the victim of a molester? They would say that that child had probably molested someone in a previous life. Oh, wow. It's that extreme. It is an unshakable, unchangeable law in Scientology that for something bad to happen to you, you must have done something similar that was bad to someone else in the past. And this is such a device, such a device to control people. If you just think about it, this works every direction except toward Scientology or David Miscavige. Right, good point.

Like, if they're getting bad press, they don't look and go, what did we do that caused this to happen? They go, oh, that fucker over there is lying about us. That's right, and then Mike failed to stop it. Right. Yeah. And so, but for the individual Scientologist, this is, you know, this is a motivating factor that drives everything that they do. to run for it one day, called an old friend who had also left and got some TLC. And before you know it, you're out. The wife tells you to F off. The children don't want anything to do with you.

And this is where things get crazy. But you are not the only one. There are many now ex-Scientologists who have very similar stories to this. You write in the book stalked you basically they they tailed you they had pis on you we have videotape that you took of pis that they hired stealing your garbage let's see that clip hold on a second it's uh you've got it's video uh video three we'll show it here you guys can check it out on youtube to the listening audience later. But here, well, you tell us what we're seeing here, Mike. There's a red car. Yeah, that car was meeting up with the garbage truck. The garbage truck had picked up my garbage and driven around the corner and street from another place where they had set up a P.I.

watching station to watch me at the work I was doing at the time. So Mr. Ponytail paid the man, the garbage worker who's leaning on the garbage truck, a certain amount of dollars for the garbage worker to take your garbage and give it to ponytail yeah yeah and and you know i i say to the guy hey who are you buying the garbage for who's that for huh who are you i said i watched you i videoed you and and unfortunately i did video the garbage truck picking it up but i lost that video it like didn't record or something, like one dummy thing. I think we can safely assume that it actually happened since they're obviously doing a deal over your garbage right now. I said to Mike before we came out on the set, I said, I'm prepared to make my own garbage really disgusting and dirty for the next few weeks after doing this interview. I'm going to make it absolutely.

I'm going to use all of Strudwick's poop bags. It'll be really, really special if anybody decides to dig through. All right. So that was one incident. And then there was another incident. This is a VO2 where Mike discovers the pretty little birdhouse right across the street is looking at him. It's watching him inside a birdhouse that went up is a camera. So this was your neighborhood.

And tell us what we're seeing here i see the pretty white birdhouse zooming into the little pretty white birdhouse so it was just down the street and you can see it's got two holes that it looks like the birds are going to go in and out of and then i go up with a ladder and i open the top of the birdhouse and i climb up on the ladder. This is really klutzy video. But the big reveal is not a bird. It's not a bird, but a camera. There it is, black and white right there. How did you know that that was not just a birdhouse? Because they dropped this note in the letterbox of our next door neighbor saying be careful who you're talking to and i had been

outside chatting with her in the driveway the day before and i went okay somehow they're watching me who sent you the note like a good it was an anonymous note that was no it was telling our neighbor careful don't talk to those people. They're bad people. And she brought the note to me and said, I think this is Scientology. And I said, no, it is Scientology. Absolutely. It was unsigned, you know, just the typed up.

Well, disparaging you to your neighbors was part of it, right? Absolutely. Tell us what they did. Well, at both houses that we lived in, they went around to the neighbors and they said, oh, we're conducting an investigation into this guy that moved into your neighborhood. And he is engaged in mortgage fraud. He's engaged in drug smuggling. He's engaged in or they don't exactly say it like that. They do it.

Do you have any reason to believe that he might be engaged in? It's so obvious. So that's terrible. Did you then go around to all your neighbors and say, I just want to tell you, I left the Church of Scientology, and it comes with some baggage? Yeah, I did. And in fact, it turns out that the next door neighbor in that house was someone who had escaped another cult. Oh, great. And they were like, oh, we totally get it.

Wait, it's even worse than this, because when I read about the woman down the street with the son, that's crazy. Tell us about her. Okay, that was a spy that was planted. They rented a house that was just like three houses away that had an eye line to the front of our house and they installed cameras under the eaves and put a woman in there who had a child that was the same age or similar age to the christy's son at the time shane your second wife's son from another marriage yes and we would go out

and walk the dog and with the with shane and and we would walk past the house and she started sort of appearing and oh hi and you know i've got a kid too and maybe our kids could play together. And, you know, it was sort of like not abnormal and had been very carefully set up that way. But what happened was we moved. And she had given us this whole sob story about how she'd had a car accident and, you know, her uncle was paying the rent for the house and it was a house that he owned and he lived in New York and she was blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, like this whole elaborate story. And then we moved right before Jack was born.

My now 10 year old son, we moved and suddenly she had to move into the same neighborhood that we were in. And Christy, my wife says, oh, I just realized she's a plant she's like a spy so christy sends her being very direct she sends her a text and says heather i know what you're up to and you shouldn't be working for those people or some you know words like that and she responds i have no idea what you're talking about you believe something blah blah blah blah blah anyway she just kept persisting and eventually she just went away okay megan you're not going to believe this this woman was actually the one of two women who were there. The other one we actually interviewed on the Aftermath show, the woman who had placed GPS tracking on our cars and et cetera, et cetera. But Heather, we saw her.

Christy and I went to a Jack Johnson concert in Tampa, and as we were walking out, she was one of the ushers. And I said, oh, my God, that's Heather that's heather and chris oh yeah it is so we walked back in and said hi heather how are you and she said i am so terribly sorry for what i did i had no idea i was convinced blah blah blah blah It was like the guy that had recruited her was the same guy that recruited the woman who was on the aftermath. And he had a relationship with her. He went around and found these women. He had like five women that he had children with who he had recruited.

Did she know she was working for Scientology? Was the guy definitely working for Scientology? He was definitely working for Scientology? Was the guy definitely working for Scientology? He was definitely working for Scientology. That guy was the guy who was arrested following Ron Miscavige Sr. when he wrote his book. Yes, David Miscavige, according to David Miscavige's

own dad, Ron, David has had the dad surveilled, followed. He did not escape any of this bizarre treatment just because he was the dad of the head of the church. Like I said, family is always second, Megan. Family is always second. It's so crazy.

I just want to remind the audience this is a tax-exempt organization. This organization is treated like a church, like a religion. They don't pay taxes. They've got over $3 billion. And this is how Mike alleges, and so many ex-Scientologists do as well, they use their money. Your money. That's your money. Yeah. Every American taxpayer is subsidizing Scientology to hire private investigators, buy thousands of URLs. Who is Mike Rindo? Who is Leah Remini, who is like every URL you can possibly buy,

produce videos, smear videos, and hire lawyers to send crap letters. This is why it's not okay for John Travolta to say, why would I read anything that isn't nice about something that makes me feel good? Because they're hurting a lot of people. A lot of ex-Scientologists have stories exactly like Mike's. Even if you discount Mike and think he lies about lying, right, as they said, he's not alone. So at some point you have to take this seriously and do your own deep dive. All right, listen, we're going to come back with more on John Travolta and Tom Cruise in particular.

But there's a bunch of celebrities that have been caught up in this I want to ask Mike about. And speaking of celebrities, as we celebrate our first two years of the show, here's Sharon Osbourne from my exclusive interview with her after she was pushed out of the talk from episode 179 in October of last year. Listen. You know, TV, you know how it works. You know, you have no friends. These people that run these networks, especially one that was failing, they are desperate to keep their jobs. They are desperate in these times we live in to be perceived as Mother Teresa and Jesus Christ. But they're all hypocrites. They're liars, and they're hypocrites, and they'll do whatever they have to do to keep their job. Well, that was another good one. I like these highlights. You've got to be liquid. You've got to take the shape of your container. And that's what Hollywood is. People don't realize that. Hollywood is people, for the most part, that don't have strong opinions.

They are really able to con. They're very malleable. And they're able to, whichever way the wind is blowing. Are we unwoke this year? Are we woke this year? Is this year the year of elevating Asian people? Is it the year of elevating Middle Eastern people? Is it the gay year?

Is it the trans year? They don't care. Their job is to buy a $10 million house in Beverly Hills and pay the mortgage. So whatever does that, but if you're a comedian, you're a digital creator, you're a podcaster, you're an independent person, you have a voice, a perspective, you're funny, You need to just build your own fan base outside of that system because that system's collapsing. Oh my gosh. That was a great episode. Number 60 with the brilliant comedian, Tim Dillon. That was last February, February of last year. Go back and listen to the whole thing. He will have you crying that you were laughing so hard. He had me crying talking about how he used to advise people on like the Iraq war. And he's like, what am I doing? What am I saying? I don't know anything. Now back to Mike Rinder, who is here. This is our last block. And there's so much to get through. All right. Tom Cruise, we mentioned him earlier. What was it like for you understanding he's kind of like the bff of david miscavige he's kind of like a

co-runner of of scientology seeing his huge box office success people revering him with the top gun movie this past year um not pleasant i i like i don't actually wish anybody, perhaps other than David Miscavige, ill will. You know, I sort of acknowledge his success, but I wish that he would be more honest. Do you think he knows all this stuff? Yes, I do. I think he knows a large part of way more than than the other celebrities. He is, like you said, you know, sort of BFF, and he is in some ways the second man of Scientology after David Miscavige. I think that he should be a little more responsible

for the fact that he, probably more than any other person in the history of Scientology has been responsible for bringing more people into Scientology than anybody and a lot of those people have had very unpleasant experiences and have been abused and have lost their money and have gone into debt or filed bankruptcy. And, you know, he carries on like, well, I don't have anything to care about. You know, I just made another few hundred million dollars on this movie. And so my life's fine. And I don't think that that is a responsible position for anybody to take. You mentioned that Mimi Rogers,

his first wife was born into Scientology. She got him into it. Then he met Nicole Kidman while he was filming Dead Calm, I think it was, that movie on the boat. No, that was her film. He was filming Days of Thunder with her. That was her first big film, Days of Thunder. Oh yes, you're right. He wasn't in Dead Calm. She was in Dead Calm. Yeah, that was her film. He was filming Days of Thunder with her. Oh, when he met her. That

was her first big film, Days of Thunder. Oh, yes, you're right. He wasn't in Dead Column. She was in Dead Column. Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, so he met Nicole Kidman and fell in love with her. Right. And how did the church resolve that, or how did they play a role? Well, he wanted to take up with Nicole, but he was still married to Mimi. so the divorce between mimi and tom was facilitated by david miscavige and his henchman at the time greg will here and uh he basically like i wasn't there for the conversations that happened. I just see the results. And I am pretty sure that Mimi was convinced that bringing Tom and Nicole and being able to bring Nicole into the Scientology fold as an up andcoming superstar was the greatest good, and that her marriage to Tom was less important than the achievement of the overall aims of Scientology.

That's crazy, but okay. What about, was Nicole Kidman actually a member of Scientology? Well, not at the time when she got in, but she very quickly was indoctrinated into Scientology and brought to the international headquarters in Riverside, where the hole was in California, and quickly progressed up the steps of the Scientology bridge. Those would be steps you'd have to pay for as a civilian, but Nicole, I'm sure, was fast-tracked. Very fast-tracked. He would not have married her if she were not willing to become a Scientologist.

Correct. Okay. Correct. And, you know, no good Scientologist would marry someone who was not a Scientologist, and that relationship would not last. So they adopted two children, Isabella and Connor. And I'll never forget their divorce because just before their divorce, it was in the papers that they had renewed their vows.

It was their 10-year wedding anniversary and they had done a vow renewal. And she had said something to him, you know, like, you're the most important person to me. And he said the same to her. And like a week later, he filed for divorce. And there was only one statement reportedly where he said something like, she knows why. I can't remember exactly how it went down. Did that have to do with Scientology? Honestly, I don't know, Megan. But what I do know is that there was always a fear that Nicole would be influenced by her dad.

And her dad is a psychiatrist. And to Scientologists, psychiatry is the devil. I mean, literally, the incarnate evil of planet Earth is psychiatry. And had she not been Nicole Kid kidman with a father who was a psychiatrist she would not have been allowed to be involved in scientology they would have told him you can't marry her like yes i mean if if a regular old run-of-the-mill guy walking down the street walks into a church of Scientology and says oh well I want to you know I want to pay you for some auditing and they fill out all the forms you have to fill out of all the information about your life and it turns out that your father is a psychiatrist

you will not be allowed wow and she was and you know i write in the book that nicole um who is very very you know i can say this but you know it's it's sort of uh probably inappropriate for other people to say she's very Australian. What does that mean? Australians are not particularly the over-the-top enthusiastic kind of person. Like shouting from the rooftops and, you know, being in any way self-important is a very, very big no-no in Australia and Nicole already has a somewhat uh reserved demeanor I don't you write in the book you use the word cold yeah or some people call it cold I I didn't I got along great you're an Aussie too exactly you're like she's totally normal to me that's exactly that's exactly right and and she was never much of a match when it came to the scientology stuff like tom is jumping on

oprah's couch and yelling at matt lauer and going bonio about scientology and nicole is like i'm kind of checking a box here so I can be married to Tom Cruise. Kind of. Wait, speaking of which, let's, because that, that crew, that clip of Tom Cruise with Matt Lauer talking about putting children on medicine, like Ritalin came up in the context of them discussing Brooke Shields and her postpartum depression. And she said openly that she had resorted to using some meds that very much helped her. And he was very critical of Brooke Shields doing that and of meds in general,

psychiatric medications. Here's the clip. It went around the world. Here we are today where I talk out against drugs and psychiatric abuses of electric shocking people, okay, against their will, of drugging children with them not knowing the effects of these drugs. Do you know what Adderall is? Do you know Ritalin? If antidepressants work for Brooke Shields, why isn't that okay? I disagree with it. And I think that there's a higher and better quality of life. Do you examine the possibility that these things do work for some people? That yes, there are abuses and yes Maybe they've gone too far in certain areas. Maybe there are too many kids on Ritalin

Maybe electric shock kids on Ritalin that I'm just saying but but aren't there examples where it works? You don't even you're glib. You don't even know what Ritalin is. You're here on the Today Show, right? And to talk about it in a way of saying well Isn't it okay and being reasonable about it when you don't know? And I do. I think that you should be a little bit more responsible in knowing what it is because you communicate to people. Having read your book, that is quintessential Scientology. Absolutely.

Right. That little bit tells you everything you need to know about the mindset of a Scientologist. I know better and you don't. That's exactly right. And it doesn't matter what evidence there is. It doesn't matter what anybody else has to say about their experience. Tom Cruise is saying, you know, I know you don't. Brooke doesn't know that she got that she was being helped by whatever it was that she was getting.

Right. She doesn't know. She doesn't know. And, you know, that is the definition of a cult member. Honestly, it is a brainwashing element. The defining thing is they are absolutely convinced that they're right and that anybody that says they're not is either uninformed, ignorant, stupid, has it in for them, glib, whatever the disparaging term is. I will say this. His instincts about Matt Luer were dead on well he lucked into that one okay now wait a minute let's talk about quickly but oh no i just got to tell you something because it's such a funny story you know that he tried to make up after that with

brooke and did didn't he take he invited her to his wedding to his wedding with her husband and the person who was the quote minister was norman starkey who had was you know uh sort of an infamous scientology seo member who had been in the hole. He was in the hole with us. He was taken out of the hole to fly to Italy to perform the wedding ceremony at Tom and Katie's wedding. Got so drunk, he started hitting on Brooke Shields to the point where Brooke's husband complained to David Miscavige. Norman Starkey was sent on a plane back to the hole. Back to the hole you go. And we were blamed for his, what he did.

You should have stopped him. You should have known from the hole. I can see it. I can see bad things with Brooke Shields. It's so nuts. All right, so Katie Holmes, this, who could forget Tom Cruise jumping on the Oprah couch.

This is when he was not being controlled. It stopped from expressing his joy of Scientology, etc. He's jumping on the Oprah couch about Katie. You say in the book there were auditions to become his next girlfriend. So that means she must have auditioned. Katie Holmes? I assume so. I assume so. Look, I was actually in the hole when this was going down. I was there for the start of the Tom Cruise interview for a girlfriend saga, which happened in Madrid, of all places. I was in Madrid for the opening of the new church there. And this new church had been built and you know new scientology building and blah blah blah and it had started when tom was going

out with penelope and you know and trying to get penelope's sister involved in scientology and her family and blah blah blah blah blah by the time the actual scientology building was ready to be opened and Tom Cruise flew there to speak at that he had broken up or Penelope had broken up with him out of it yeah however so I'm standing talking to Tom and you know whatever entourage and Miscavige hadn't showed up yet and Leanne was there and Leanne his sister and he turns to he says to me can you believe leanne can't find me a girlfriend and i'm like no i cannot believe that uh a i can't believe it b i can't believe you're asking me and c what am i supposed to do about it at that point david miscavige walked into the room and said, oh, what are you guys talking about?

And Tom repeats the same thing to him. Okay. Very shortly thereafter, I was in the hall. And I never really saw what happened subsequently. know uh that one of the people who was selected and again uh this comes from maureen off did an amazing story in vanity fair about the relationship of tom and katie and talked about how nazanin boniadi had been selected to be his girlfriend and the process that was gone through. My goodness. And Naz is a very good friend of mine.

And this story she can't talk about because she is bound by an NDA that she was forced to sign before starting a relationship with him. Note to self, if asked to audition for the role of girlfriend and to sign an NDA prior to meeting the would-be bachelor, run, run in the opposite direction. Now, I want to tell the audience two things. There's more on John Travolta, which is fascinating. And there's a great story about Michael Jackson being toured through the L. Ron Hubbard Life Exhibition with Lisa Marie. And to hear those stories, you've got to buy Mike's book. You've got it.

And those are worth it alone. But in the time we have left, you've got to give us the 30,000-foot picture because these are salacious stories and they're very interesting. And, of course, I should reiterate Scientology denies all of this. I'm sure Tom Cruise does too. Why should people be thinking? Like how should they be thinking about the Church of Scientology denies all of this. I'm sure Tom Cruise does too. Why should people be thinking, like how should they be thinking about the Church of Scientology? You know, you hear a lot of like, well, Catholics believe in crazy things too. So do Jews, so do Muslims, you know. What makes Scientology different? Well, let me first say, Megan, you can believe anything you

want. You can't do anything that you want. And when belief leads to action that is hurting people, then that's what I object to. And what makes Scientology different is, in some ways it's not really that different, but what makes it different is, as we talked about earlier, your tax dollars are being used to subsidize the activities of Scientology. And while you could say your tax dollars are being used to subsidize the activities of the Catholic Church or the Presbyterians or the Baptist or whoever, and everybody's got problems. Nobody has institutionalized abuse and formalized the policies of the organization to attack, destroy, and abuse people like Scientology. Especially those who leave the church.

You can leave the Catholic church or any of these other religions anytime you want. Yeah. I said one time, and a lot of people have quoted me since saying, the real way to tell the difference between a religion and a cult is what happens to you after you leave. Yeah. And that is a pretty good measure. Do you think they're done surveilling you? No. It's been, what, 13, 15 years or so?

I don't know. Yeah, 15 years now. So you still feel like they might be out there, or you know they're out there? Yeah, I think that they're probably out there. They're probably following me around today to see what media I'm going to do so that they can send nasty legal letters.

They won't be surprised at all to find you over here again. No, they will not, especially as you advertised it last week. Fine. We're not afraid of Scientology. I know you're not. That's why I love you so much, and I enjoy being interviewed by you because you absolutely are fearless. And there is not enough people in the media who are fearless about the paper tiger threats that come from Scientology.

Well, thank you, but that's a compliment you deserve. Not, not me, Mike Rinder. You've been fearless and I really appreciate you telling the story in the forums that you have, especially in this book,

you've got to buy it. It's called a billion years. My escape from a life in the highest ranks of Scientology. Thank you all so much for listening and don't forget to buy that book and to tune into the show tomorrow as well. Thank you. Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.