![]() ![]() In an interview with the Observer that October, he warned that a Trump presidency would be “staggeringly dangerous”, with the potential for martial law, the end of press freedom and even nuclear war. He spoke out in the New Yorker magazine in July 2016 in an article that noted he had been dubbed “Dr Frankenstein” for unleashing a destructive creature on the world. Schwartz watched Trump’s political rise with horror. It means that he does feel untouchable and he does feel entitled to live by a different set of rules than everyone, including the people who support him.” “The idea that during the first two years as president, he would continue to do exactly the same quasi-legal or illegal things that he had done in the years before is kind of amazing. Schwartz admits: “The scale of his brazenness at least slightly took my breath away. The New York Times report also exposed Trump’s world-class ability to avoid paying federal income taxes: just $750 in 2016, $750 in 2017 and none at all in several previous years. The facade comes off because we’ve seen behind the screen with Trump and what we know is that it’s all bullshit.” Schwartz says: “It’s a kind of amped-up, over-the-top vision but it’s now like a balloon that’s been punctured. Some commentators have argued that Trump – married to a model, gorging on fast food in gaudy settings and plastering his name on big buildings – offers a poor person’s version of what it is to be rich. Tony Schwartz, left, and Donald Trump, right, attend the book party for The Art of the Deal at Trump Tower on 12 December 1987 in New York City. Trump’s failures radically outweigh his successes and that is not the definition of a successful, much less a superior businessman.” It’s been systematically dismantled, especially over the last four years by the evidence that everything he touches fails. “All of that, plus his own relentless self promotion over a 30- or 40-year period, rose up to a fantasy reality TV version of who he was that was never true. The Apprentice had a far bigger impact because it went on for years and it was seen by millions and millions of people, and millions of people don’t see a book. He admits with regret: “It did help to create the mythology of Donald Trump and, unfortunately, I do think it played a significant role. Schwartz now says The Art of the Deal would have been more appropriately entitled The Sociopath. “Months after that inaugural episode in January 2004, Mr Trump filed his individual tax return reporting $89.9 million in net losses from his core businesses for the prior year.” ![]() “It was all a hoax,” the New York Times reported on Monday. He told viewers that his company was bigger and stronger than ever before. Then he was cast in the reality TV show The Apprentice, sitting in judgment on would-be entrepreneurs from the boardroom at the flashy, marble-clad, gold-trimmed Trump Tower. Trump continued to burnish his image with a relentless self-publicity campaign in New York tabloid newspapers. Trump asked him to ghostwrite it and, with a growing family and high mortgage, Schwartz agreed. Schwartz said a book called The Art of the Deal would be a better idea. Enter Schwartz, a liberal journalist who, interviewing Trump for Playboy magazine, learned of his ambition to write an autobiography aged just 38. With the help of more than $400m from his father over decades, he was property developer, celebrity and symbol of 80s excess. Success in business is at the core of Trump’s identity. “Unfortunately, should he be re-elected, one of the ways he’ll respond to that is he’ll take it out on everyone who he thinks diminished or belittled him along the way.” ![]() There’s nothing Trump hates more than to feel weak and vulnerable and like a failure, so he won’t allow himself to acknowledge those feelings, but they’ll be there and they will affect him. “The fact the evidence is unequivocal that he was not the person he claimed to be means that he’s lost the central premise on which he’s based his own self-worth, because Trump confuses personal worth with net worth. “There’s nothing more important to Trump than being seen as very, very rich, which is why he’s expended so much effort in trying to claim a net worth far beyond what he actually was worth. “It’s the ultimate unmasking of the emperor with no clothes,” Schwartz said by phone from Riverdale in the Bronx, New York. So the New York Times report, detailing chronic financial losses and vast outstanding loans, confirmed his view that Trump was always better at cutting fantasy deals than making real ones. The 68-year-old writer has long disowned the president as a malignant narcissist and expressed regret for his part in constructing the mythology. ![]()
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