Title: Drinking the Kool-Aid: Trump echoes Jim Jones by declaring “Don’t Be Afraid of Covid” | The Milwaukee Independent
Headings: Drinking the Kool-Aid: Trump echoes Jim Jones by declaring “Don’t Be Afraid of Covid”
Drinking the Kool-Aid: Trump echoes Jim Jones by declaring “Don’t Be Afraid of Covid”
“Don’t Be Afraid of Covid. Don’t let it dominate our life.” – President Donald Trump
“Go home, my darlings! Sleep tight!” – Reverend Jim Jones
“The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA.” (February 24, 2020)
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Reggie Jackson

Content: If we didn’t drink it, we were forced to drink it. If we ran, thought we’d be shot.” U.S. Congressman Leo Ryan visited Jonestown in November to check on the welfare of his constituents. While at the airport, Ryan and four others were murdered under the orders of Jones. Several members of the temple had fled with Ryan as he was preparing to fly back to the United States. Just after that, Jones ordered his followers to drink the tainted Kool-Aid. The first to be forced to do so were the children. People who refused were shot to death and many fled into the jungle to escape the mass suicide. Survivor Laura Johnston Kohl remembered years later “We – all of us – were doing the right things but in the wrong place with the wrong leader.” The roots of the tragedy that would befall nine hundred Americans thousands of miles from home can be traced to the early years of Jones’s life.