This weekend saw Donald Trump launch what is being called his first official rally of his 2024 campaign. As you may have already heard, it was held in Waco, Texas, on the 30th anniversary of the infamous and dramatic ending to an FBI siege on the compound. There, three decades ago, a small, isolated, apocalyptic group led by self-styled guru David Koresh met a fiery end as agents moved in on their compound. Mt. Carmel, as it was known, went up in a blaze, and scores of people perished that day, including dozens of children (many of whom were Koresh’s own).
That’s where Trump decided to hold his rally.
Now, this is alarming on many levels, not least of which is the fact that David Koresh was a bona fide cult leader. He considered himself a prophet, the one who would fulfill the predictions described in the Book of Revelation (he obsessed over the concept of the seven seals); he regulated the lives of those who submitted to his teachings, down to deciding the sex lives of his adherents; and he infected his congregation with his own paranoia, instilling in them the urgency and desire to stockpile loads of weapons. (In fact, it was this last bit that attracted the attention of the federal government; and, arguably, if the group had left that part alone, they would have been left alone.)
So, on the surface, it seems as though Trump means to craft himself as a cult leader. This actually is not a new idea to hit the transom: lots of people have noted that Trump is a narcissist, like many cult leaders; deeply distrustful like them, keeping only close company in the tightest of inner circles; grandiose; callous; supremely selfish; acquisitive, wanting to gain the property that otherwise would belong to his followers. There’s a long list.
All things considered, Trump fits the profile. He could be compared not only to Koresh (more impulsive than Trump but sharing that inflated sense of self) but also to Jim Jones, who stirred up the disaffected in society and channeled his paranoia into them as well until they obeyed him out of abject fear—obeyed him to their deaths.
I actually have little doubt that Trump would rather have used Jonestown as his rally site were it not in a completely different country. Jones had far more of a psychological hold on his believers, in my estimation, and that is what Trump meant to signal to the world.
Yet—yet!—I believe that the use of Waco also meant to signify something else, another site that Trump would have gathered his faithful had they the means and wherewithal to hold such a rally: Ruby Ridge.
For those who lived through that time, the two FBI actions (raids, some might call them) blended together. Both involved critical federal errors that involved catastrophic loss of life. As a GenXer, I was a high schooler when both of these actions went down; but Waco lasted longer and had more of a surreal atmosphere, due to the cult nature of the entire situation. The battle lines seemed more clear-cut than at Ruby Ridge.
And while both actions were embarrassing for the federal government in terms of exposing at least somewhat a sense of incompetency, with Koresh and his Branch Davidians the story turned more toward the incomprehensibility of the followers’ decision on the whole to stay in the compound. That somewhat neutralized the harshness of the criticism coming toward the FBI for their actions, and soon enough the nation’s attention was focused elsewhere (the early-to-mid ‘90s had a lot going on).
But if you compare Waco and Ruby Ridge, you’ll see that the underlying story of the latter resonates more so with the themes of the Trump movement today than Koresh’s tight-knit circle. Randy Weaver, the central figure of the Ruby Ridge standoff, was from the heartland, an Iowa farmer who felt that economic forces were compelling him off his land. He and his wife became fundamentalists and also survivalists. They moved to emerald-green Idaho, to a remote cabin bereft of modern conveniences, and fell into white power groups.
Just watch the first ten minutes of the PBS American Experience documentary on the topic. You’ll see many similarities of the themes that echo right through our time in today’s culture:
[Weaver] was a Green Beret (former Army serviceman who may or may not have suffered PTSD from his time in the corps) who’d discussed with his wife “always wanting to move to the mountains,” according to Sara Weaver, his daughter who witnessed the violent confrontation first-hand.
“They learned how to raise kids without electricity and things like that.” Jess Walters, a writer, said, “The Weavers were starting to explore the idea of Bible prophecy. They began to see things that were occurring as being part of the End Times.” Vicki Weaver, according to Sara, considered television as “a graven image.”
“I don’t know that Randy Weaver knew at the time that they moved to Ruby Ridge that they would be so close to the Aryan Nations compound,” Stuart Wright, another author, relayed, explaining that the compound “was just sixty miles south. But they started showing up. At first, it was purely social.” Weaver became one of them in every respect, attending “family picnics…. As Randy began interacting more with them, he started to buy into the message.”
Especially notable is the Weavers’ involvement as Identity Christians, who believe a racialized biblical lineage of human history whereby White people are derived from God and Jewish people are literally descendents of Satan. For ICs, Blacks are subhuman, almost golem-like in their monolithic-ness and ability to be the muscle for Jewish folk. These are standard beliefs.
Weaver, too, attracted attention because he got his fool self involved with weapons: a federal agent, working undercover, offered to pay Weaver cash to saw off some shotguns, and Weaver agreed. That was his crime. It’s pretty straightforward. However, to this day, you will hear hew and cry from his defenders who believe that it was the government’s fault for setting up entrapment. Lots of mental gymnastics there.
Either way, Weaver understood that the government meant to prosecute him fully if he did not turn evidence against the white power types that he’d befriended. He put his cabin up as bond to secure his temporary release; and then he did not show up for his court date. He holed himself up with his family and a family friend, Kevin Harris, as the federal government closed in on his location. Before all was finished, Harris would be critically wounded, and Weaver would lose his wife and son to gunfire.
I cannot defend the manner in which the FBI communicated to the press, why they decided that bringing in another white-power-friendly former Green Beret would be a good idea, or how they determined the rules of engagement with the Weavers. I’m not here to be an apologist, if for no other reason than—again, possibly due to differences in media coverage—Waco stood out far more clearly than Ruby Ridge. Those details are more known. I do know that the PBS retrospective on the siege was incredibly sympathetic toward the Weavers, taking their viewpoint during much of the retelling. PBS should in my opinion be ashamed of how they portrayed the confrontation.
What I can say now, looking back, is that it’s undeniable that for those with sympathies running toward neo-Nazis, Identity Christianity, and other groups of that ilk; for apocalyptic, living-off-the-grid types, this was the story that would ring true if one were to evoke it as an example (in their eyes) of governmental overreach. (Indeed, Timothy McVeigh cited Ruby Ridge as one of the reasons he detonated the Alfred P. Murrah Building in Oklahoma City in 1995.)
These would be the folks Trump means still to recruit. He’s already snagged the QAnon types, the ones who would be most akin to the Branch Davidians in terms of their devotion to the figure of their cult leader. They already have the paranoid worldview built in. They already believe that their fate is etched in stone, fully inevitable; and that Providence is on their side. Trump does not need to court those folks anymore.
But he still has inroads to make in the white power groups. That’s where his heart is, after all. He gets his lineage true: just look at Frederick Christ Trump and his proximity to the KKK. Trump learned early on his dearest values, at his father’s knee. And he’s looking to expand his electoral footprint, even if that means activating people who had been ostracized from American society to bring more civility to our civilization. If it means raising up the brutes and the bashers, the street toughs who mirror the Brownshirts of the Nazi era, that’s what it appears Trump is set to do.
He wants the untouchability of a cult leader, yes, someone whose power derives from abject, automatic deference. He wants to be the top White supremacist and to have those who believe in a white utopia bend the knee and pledge allegiance to him. That, we see now, is his dream, and he’ll use the most sordid episodes in recent history to catapult him there.
Trump almost certainly would have held his rally on that desolate mountainside in the Idahoan wilderness if 10,000 people could have logistically made the pilgrimage. He went to Waco instead.