On Tuesday, Kamala Harris delivered a speech from the Ellipse in Washington, DC. This is the same location where Donald Trump incited his MAGA followers to launch an attack on the Capitol as part of his Jan 6. coup attempt. It is estimated that more than 70,000 people attended Harris’ speech. This was much more than the number of people who attended Trump’s insurrection speech.
Harris’ Ellipse speech was also a bold counterstrike against Trump’s hate festival at Madison Square Garden, which was attended by 20,0000 of his MAGA cultists and other admirers. Her speech on the Ellipse reflects a strategic shift in the last weeks before Election Day. Her campaign and its surrogates are warning in clearer and ever more direct terms that Trump is a fascist and an existential threat to the nation.
As further proof of how Trump’s connection to reality, his cognition and emotions more broadly appear to be severely damaged, if not pathological, on Tuesday the ex-president described his Madison Square Garden fascist hate rally as a “love fest.” In keeping with Trump’s apparent obsessions with violence, he has also described the lethal Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol by his MAGA mob as a “day of love.” None of this is normal behavior.
Dr. John Gartner is a psychologist and former professor at the Johns Hopkins University Medical School. Gartner was a contributor to the 2017 bestseller "The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President." Dr. Gartner is currently working with George Conway, President and Executive Director of the Anti-Psychopath PAC, to raise public awareness about Donald Trump’s extreme dangerousness to the public. Their Anti-Psychopath PAC describes its mission as, “dedicated to highlighting Donald Trump’s mental instability, bringing it to the forefront of national discussion. We’re doing everything we can — from television and digital ads, to billboards, to voter education programs — to prevent Donald Trump from returning to the White House.”
In this conversation, Dr. Gartner shares the details of the Anti-Psychopath Pac’s national ad campaign attempting to warn the American people about Trump’s apparent extreme mental and psychological unwellness. As part of this campaign, the Anti-Psychopath PAC recently published a full-page ad in the New York Times “featuring 225 mental health professionals and psychologists with the text of an open letter calling Trump unfit for office.”
Related
Dr. Gartner also explains the psychological processes that are driving so many Americans to be uninterested and disengaged in the 2024 election, even though it is one of the most important in the country’s history. Dr. Gartner reflects on the mainstream news media’s years of failing to properly warn the public about Donald Trump’s apparent and extreme mental unwellness, arguing that their negligence has put the country and its democracy in a position of extreme peril.
What do you know, if anything, about your campaign's effectiveness?
"The third part of our public awareness strategy involved micro-casting the ads about Trump's apparent pathologies to Mar-a-Lago directly over the course of the weekend."
George Conway and the Anti-Psychopath Pac took a three-pronged approach. First, we had to go over and around the gatekeepers in the news media by going to the American people directly with our ad about Trump's apparently extreme psychopathology. Conway has used his access to get booked on many cable news shows. When he gets on these news programs he does a masterful job of explaining, in a detailed way with the evidence, how dangerously pathological Trump appears to be. The third part of our public awareness strategy involved micro-casting the ads about Trump's apparent pathologies to Mar-a-Lago directly over the course of the weekend. Trump has no impulse control. He will reflexively respond to any perceived attack or challenge. Guess what? The first ad focused on Trump's apparent cognitive decline. Trump then lashed out, excoriating George Conway. Trump also attacked Fox News for airing these ads. Our ads are an attempt to really get at Trump's ego and to cause him narcissistic upset and injury. George Conway knows Trump very well. His wife was Trump's campaign manager. We know........