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. The 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.”
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?
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 that this provocation strategy would throw Trump way off balance.
The election is a few days away. How are you feeling?
I'm with Robert Reich on this. He describes himself as being "nauseously optimistic" about the election and defeating Trump. One of the reasons I am optimistic is because of the gender gap in the polls: Women are fired up. Women are much more enthusiastic about voting — and voting for Kamala Harris than men are for Trump. I believe that we have been gaslit by polling firms. There is a huge wave of support out there for Kamala Harris. I say that not based on empty hope but on objective data and evidence.
From your clinical point of view, how are you making sense of the many tens of millions of Americans who are either indifferent, disinterested or don't care about what is an existential election, one that will literally impact their lives, safety, security and prosperity? What is going on with their collective minds?
Many Americans do not understand that we are on the verge of a type of apocalypse in this country if Trump and his MAGA Republicans and the larger fascist movement win this week's election. This lack of engagement may be from a lack of information or a failure of imagination. The future of the country is literally at stake. If we go over this cliff there's no way back. The people who don't understand the extreme dangers of Trump and MAGA are living in a fool’s paradise. The people who understand how dire this situation is are terrified right now. That is a rational response given the reality of the dangers.
You and a relatively small group of your fellow mental health professionals have been warning about Trump's apparent and now clear mental, emotional, cognitive and general dangerousness and unwellness for a long time. The news media will treat your warnings with the merit that they deserve and then just as quickly pivot away back to the horserace and the noise and distraction of the 24/7 news cycle. During these last few weeks of the 2024 election as Trump has become even more extreme and dangerous the mainstream news media, especially the elite agenda-setting media, will feature another story about Trump's mind and behavior and again it is quickly moved on from. They have been hiding behind the Goldwater Rule as an excuse to not discuss Trump's mind and behavior. Now, the clinician who is responsible for the Goldwater Rule has finally said it does not and should not apply to Trump. How are you feeling? Are you angry? Disappointed? Frustrated?
It's been incredibly frustrating to see and experience the resistance of the mainstream media to reality and how they have tried to deny the real experts a platform to weigh in on the obvious and apparent severe and dangerous psychopathology that we see with Trump. So, yes, it's been very frustrating. On the other hand, it is good that the Kamala Harris campaign has picked up on the message about Trump’s quite apparent problems with his mind and behavior. She has been correctly describing him as unstable, unhinged and confused. The Harris campaign has been putting out wonderful ads really emphasizing these questions about his fitness for office, his fascism, apparent cognitive decline and overall dangerousness to the American people and the world.
Alan Dyer is a colleague of mine. I interviewed him several years ago when I did an article for the British Journal of Psychiatry about the Goldwater rule. One of the things he points out is that the reason for the so-called Goldwater Rule was that the DSM had not yet been established. Now, these decades later, we have objective behavioral criteria for diagnosing mental health conditions. Dyer himself has directly told me that once the DSM was introduced there was no reason why psychiatrists and other qualified mental health professionals could not diagnose someone from a distance. Moreover, the Goldwater Rule was never meant to be a blanket gag order on the profession. Just like an orthopedist can see a football player break their leg during a game on TV, a psychiatrist or psychologist can look at a person's behavior and based on the evidence offer their professional opinions.
You and your colleagues' conclusion that something appears to be dangerously wrong with Trump's mind, personality, brain and behavior is not conjecture or partisan hyperbole. It is a conclusion based on a pattern of public evidence.
One of the things that we noticed is that Trump appears to have dementia. He needs further testing of course, but the public behavior is very concerning. Dementia is a progressive and deteriorating illness. Part of how a doctor makes the diagnosis is by showing the deterioration from Trump's higher level of functioning to his deterioration across other areas such as his ability to use language, speak and communicate. Trump is now using a very limited vocabulary, lots of what we call "filler words". He is also using superlatives much more than before. Basically, Trump's thinking has become so tangential that he's really not able to answer a question in a way that's responsive to the question being asked. The rate of Trump's apparent mental and cognitive deterioration is now so rapid that the differences are now week to week, whereas before, the changes were taking place over the decades. Trump also appears to be losing his ability to use language in a coherent way. This too is accelerating. He uses lots of phonemic paraphasia, where a person starts a word and then can't finish it so they say something that sounds similar such as "misses" instead of "missiles." Or a person with this affliction will just make words up to fill in the gaps.
What if Trump's behavior and questions of aging and his mind and cognition were covered by the news media in the same obsessive way they focused on President Biden? Where would we now be as a nation?
We'd be feeling much more at peace and not full of so much terror and anxiety about the election. The press has failed us. Look at the ownership of the corporate news media and what happened with the Washington Post and Los Angeles Times refusing to endorse a presidential candidate in what is the most important election in the country's history. It appears that the news media as a whole is trying to kowtow to Trump. Timothy Snyder calls this "anticipatory obedience." For example, I have had multiple interviews about Trump's dangerousness completed and done with one of the country's elite agenda-setting newspapers and the decision was made at the editorial level and above to not run them. Not just one of the interviews. All of them. That is a pattern. These media outlets are businesses and they don't want to run afoul of Trump. Trump is also a money-maker for them too. Their error is that they think that surrendering to Trump now will save them from him and his revenge and vindictiveness later. It won't.
There are some who have made the naive and self-assuring argument that if Trump's mind is indeed damaged and he is experiencing some type of emotional and cognitive challenges that this makes him less dangerous. Their logic is he will not be so diabolical and dangerous. Such a conclusion is incongruent with what history tells us about such dangerous leaders. Given what appears to be going on with Trump's mind and overall behavior I see a man and leader who will be much more dangerous in his final form as dictator.
You are absolutely correct. Trump's apparently pathological and weak mind will make him very vulnerable to being manipulated. Trump is surrounded by malign actors and other people who want to hurt the country for their own corrupt purposes. Moreover, Trump is already and has long been manipulated by malign forces and bad actors such as Putin and other enemies of America's national interests. What happens with dementia and many other personality disorders is that they negatively impact a person's judgment and impulse control. Trump had poor judgment and impulse control even before his mind appeared to be degrading and decompensating. Trump is only going to become more dangerous. Do not believe anyone who says that Trump's apparently worsening condition will somehow make him less dangerous as president or a leader. Such people should not be taken seriously.
Through your expert lens, how did you process Trump's Madison Square Garden Rally?
Trump idolizes Hitler. He wants to be a dictator. Trump's own closest advisors have been warning the public of this fact. Trump's Madison Square Garden rally was a reenactment of the infamous 1939 pro-Nazi rally. The cult dynamics, racism, antisemitism, violence and other collective sociopathic and pathological behavior are very similar if not almost identical between the two events. The biggest difference is the 85 years separating those two evil events at Madison Square Garden. A demagogue brings forth the darkest energies for his or her followers. MSG was a hate fest, plain and simple.
Kamala Harris' rallies are full of joy and positive energy and hope. By comparison, Trump's rallies are full of anger, rage and revenge. The contrast between the two candidates and the choice this election could not be any clearer. Ultimately, Trump is promising angry White Americans that he will give them all the power they want to hurt other people. That is what MAGA truly means. Trump is leading a type of white tribal identity politics movement. What Trump is summoning is very primal and extremely dangerous.
Trump and his agents are escalating their threats of massive violence and revenge against their and the MAGA movement's "enemies." These threats include prison and worse. What would you say to those people, who even at this late moment, continue to believe that Trump and his agents and followers are just "exaggerating” and this is all hyperbole and empty partisan blustering because in America such things could never happen because of "the institutions" and "law and order" and "the character of the American people" etc.?
The human mind is very adept at sustaining denial and ignoring unpleasant things. There is also the cognitive dynamic where once a person has committed to a point of view or a conclusion, they will keep adjusting their worldview to prevent cognitive dissonance or other forms of upset and disruption. Many Trump supporters ignore all of the horrible and evil things he has done and promises to do because they want to believe they are good people. On the other side, there are other people who refuse to believe that Trump is serious about his dictator threats and other evil because they are afraid and in denial and can't accept reality because it is too upsetting. The latter group is going to be in for a painful, literally, awakening when and if Trump and his regime take power. At a certain point, denial ceases to be an effective defense or survival mechanism in the real world.
What I would say to them is, "I hope you'll never have a chance to find out you were wrong."
As other mental health experts have noted, Trump appears to have a profound and pathological need for narcissistic fuel and attention. Is Trump now satisfied by finally headlining at Madison Square Garden? One of his dreams as a New Yorker was to fill that building up, with 20,000 (if not more) of his MAGA cultists and other worshippers praising him.
Trump will never be satisfied. He's a bottomless pit when it comes to his need for narcissistic energy and fuel. 20,000 cheering people would not satisfy Trump. It is never enough. Trump's grandiosity and need for adoration and attention is as great as his vulnerability which is why he hates and wants to destroy anyone who dares to disagree with him or otherwise opposes him.
As you look back on your various efforts to stop Trump and the MAGA movement and their danger to the country, how are you feeling? Are you at peace?
Echoing what George Conway said to me last week, I don't want to ever look back and think I didn't give it my all. I can honestly say I've left it all on the field in this battle to save our democracy from Trump and the other fascists. What we in the pro-democracy movement did during these years mattered. I truly do believe that. We are going to defeat Donald Trump. This has been a collective struggle to save American democracy and it involved lots of people. Some famous and with public platforms and other people who are your neighbors organized locally or behind the scenes. There are lots of brave and heroic people who have been working to save American democracy from Trump and MAGA and its allies. It has been nine long years of fighting back against Trumpism. That is lots of time out of our lives. I include you in that as well. All I care about is that the Democrats and the other pro-democracy Americans win and we get this ship to a safe harbor and relative safety. If that happens, I will not need to be remembered for anything. I will have the personal satisfaction of knowing that the disaster of a Trump MAGA dictatorship did not take place on my watch. We still have a long fight ahead regardless of what happens on Tuesday.
