'Stab of recognition': Cult escapees' daughter warns Trump's coming for American believers
Cyd Chartier felt a stab of pain when she watched then-presidential hopeful Donald Trump glide down his golden elevator in 2015. It was then she knew her family was about to be sucked into yet another cult.
Chartier in a Huffington Post essay published Friday drew a disturbing parallel between the Republican presidential nominee and Sam Fife, founder of The Move of God cult, who she said took her parents from her and their life savings from them.
"I knew something ominous had crept into our lives — and I had no idea how to make it stop," Chartier wrote of the first time she heard Fife's voice in 1974.
"Then, in 2015, as I watched Donald Trump float down the Trump Tower escalator to announce his candidacy for the U.S. presidency, I felt a stab of recognition. Under the guise of a politician with a fake tan and bad haircut was an angry man, an arrogant man, a dark and dangerous man — a man so like Sam Fife that I immediately knew I was facing the same threat I had faced as a young woman all those years ago."
Chartier detailed the slow pull her family felt toward the apocalyptic cult she argued shared qualities with Trump and the Christian Nationalists hoping to reinstate the former president in the White House in 2025.
Fife warned demons roamed the earth, and argued women were put on earth to provide men with babies, a clean home and a punching bag, according to Chartier.
Trump's followers warn of demonic plans and his running mate Sen. J.D. Vance commonly calls women without children sociopaths.
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Chartier watched in horror as her parents and siblings began to dress like Fife's followers, distanced themselves from their friends and family, then sold their home, gave away their belongings and moved to an End of Times Farm compound in Alaska, Chartier wrote.
Two years later Chartier's family reentered her life.
"The elders of the Alaska farm had used my parents for their money and for their labor," Chartier wrote. "Those in charge wielded their power like tyrants and behaved as if the rules they forced on others did not apply to them."
The broken family ties began to mend until about 2010, when her mother found herself drawn to far-right politics and ultimately to Trump.
"After he won the election, I saw more and more Fife whenever Trump opened his mouth." Chartier wrote. "The lying, misogyny, apocalyptic language, fear-mongering and the enthusiastic embrace of conspiracy theories all set off ancient alarms inside of me."
When it became clear Trump could reclaim the White House again in 2025, Chartier felt compelled to speak out.
"They share the same beliefs and envision the same dystopian future under an authoritarian theocratic government," she wrote. "I don’t want to see such a future for me, for my family, or for my country."