Congresswoman and Jonestown survivor Jackie Speier: ‘Trump is a political cult leader'

After the congresswoman survived an ambush by Jim Jones's cult members in 1978 she became determined to devote herself to public service and to strengthen safeguards against cults

On 6 January, Jackie Speier was one of scores of members of Congress threatened by the mob of violent Trump supporters and white supremacists who stormed the US Capitol in an attempt to overthrow the results of the presidential election.

Along with her peers, she was told to wear a gas mask and ordered to lie prostrate on the marble floor as the baying crowd pounded on the chamber door and the sound of gunfire rent the air. The terror of that day induced in her a flashback, to the events that brought her into politics in the first place when she lay bleeding from five gunshot wounds in the Guyana jungle, not knowing whether she would live or die.