For years, Democrats have worked to marginalize Americans who voted for President Donald Trump—pressuring banks to debank them, encouraging families to turn against them, and branding them as enemies of progress. Now, their campaign has entered a new and disturbing phase: the weaponization of the mental health profession.
A new training course for therapists, titled “The Impact of Donald Trump on America – A Cultic Studies Perspective,” is being circulated among mental health professionals. Its premise? That supporters of Trump and the MAGA movement are members of a dangerous “cult on a national scale.”
This is not satire. Licensed professionals are being awarded continuing education credits—credits that count toward their official qualifications—for attending seminars where they are taught to view millions of Americans as cult followers.
The session, led earlier this month by clinical trauma specialist Jamie Marich, Ph.D., and cult expert Janja Lalich, among others, trained mental health providers to view MAGA voters as brainwashed and dangerous. According to Lalich, Trump supporters are motivated not by concern for the economy or the cost of living but by a desire to “get rid of the black and brown people in our country.” She went further, claiming the United States itself was “built on racism,” and urged therapists to “challenge ICE in every state” because immigration laws are “racist.”
The instructors also instructed therapists to “bring activism” into treatment plans. In plain English, that means injecting politics directly into therapy—convincing patients, and even their families, that support for Trump is a mental defect. One of the presenters even recommended MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow as an “unbiased” source of information.
This isn’t just unprofessional—it’s a violation of the National Board of Certified Counselors’ own code of ethics, which explicitly forbids teaching that people who hold certain political or religious views are “dysfunctional.” Yet here it is: an official training program awarding credits to providers who push this narrative.
The implications are chilling. Imagine seeking counseling for anxiety or depression, only to be told your real problem is that you voted for Donald Trump. Or picture a family member confiding in a therapist, only for that “trusted professional” to persuade them that you are part of a dangerous cult because of your political beliefs.
What Democrats have done here is not simply political mudslinging. It is the deliberate infiltration of the medical and mental health fields with propaganda designed to pathologize their opponents. If they can convince Americans that supporting Trump is evidence of mental illness, they can justify silencing or discrediting anyone who resists their agenda.
And that, not therapy, is the real goal.