WASHINGTON: Concerns about Donald Trump’s mental state is rising in America after the former President falsely accused his rival Kamala Harris of using artificial intelligence to generate fake photos of crowds at her rallies. There are also growing fears about the future of democracy in the US after Trump used his demonstrably false allegation to demand Harris be disqualified from running for the White House because using AI to fake photos constituted “election interference.”
Calls for examining Trump’s mental fitness erupted on Monday after he endorsed a conspiracy theory by a MAGA follower about “fake crowds” at Harris events, which even Republicans acknowledge have been generating surprising energy and enthusiasm, and which have reportedly rattled the former President.
“Has anyone noticed that Kamala CHEATED at the airport? There was nobody at the plane, and she ‘A.I.’d’ it, and showed a massive ‘crowd’ of so-called followers, BUT THEY DIDN’T EXIST!” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform, reposting a fan’s theory, alleging, “She’s a CHEATER. She had NOBODY waiting, and the ‘crowd’ looked like 10,000 people! Same thing is happening with her fake ‘crowds’ at her speeches.”
“This is the way the Democrats win Elections, by CHEATING – And they’re even worse at the Ballot Box. She should be disqualified because the creation of a fake image is ELECTION INTERFERENCE. Anyone who does that will cheat at ANYTHING!” he added.
Hundreds of Harris followers and independents who attended the airport reception and her rallies responded by posting videos and photos showing crowds at different angles to counter the charge even as political veterans, including Republican stalwarts, cringed at Trump’s meltdown. Many are expressing fears that he is already laying the groundwork to contest a prospective electoral defeat as he did in 2020, his latest salvo coming after he raised doubts about whether Harris’ ascent to the nomination replacing Biden is constitutional by likening it to a “coup.” Some of his MAGA followers have also questioned whether Harris is eligible to run for the White House — because she was born to foreign students when they were not US citizens and is therefore an “anchor baby.”
Even Republicans on the moderate spectrum are aghast at the direction Trump is taking, amid calls for him to be disciplined and on-message to take on an incumbent vice-president with the handicaps that comes with being in office. While many are urging him to re-calibrate, other never-Trumpers are saying his current state is reflective of a “mental decline” that comes from being a “malignant narcissist” and a “sociopath.”
“He’s a deeply unwell man…If he were a member of your family, you’d be staging an intervention, taking him to a psychiatric hospital,” never-Trumper George Conway, a Republican whose ex-wife KellyAnne Conway is a Trump advisor, said on Monday. Democrats are also calling on the media to hold him to the same level of scrutiny and skepticism as they held President Biden to.
The astonishing turnaround for the worse for Trump, described by a headline that said “frontrunner is now an also-ran,”is underscored by a Financial Times poll that says more Americans now trust Kamala Harris to handle the US economy than Trump. Republicans are asking how Trump could have blown the lead on the issue on which he was comfortably ahead, considering Harris is an incumbent amid raging inflation and price rise.
Amid panicked calls to recalibrate his campaign and draft new advisors and strategies, Trump will be sitting down for a “live conversation” on Monday night with Elon Musk on his platform X (formerly Twitter). Musk, now an openly pro-Trump partisan, said the event will be “Entertainment Guaranteed,” while the Trump team said it will be the “interview of the century.” The liberal constituency meanwhile is smacking its lips at the prospect of another Trump trainwreck, with every public event illustrating, in their view, the former President’s mental disintegration.
