Tony Schwartz, who co-wrote Donald Trump’s 1987 book The Art of the Deal, is now one of the president’s most vocal critics
By
Maria Pasquini
May 09, 2019 05:30 PM
Since it’s unlikely The Art of the Deal will go out of print anytime soon, the book’s co-author Tony Schwartz has a different proposal.
Shortly after The New York Times published a damning report detailing President Donald Trump‘s business and financial woes over the ‘80s and ‘90s, Schwartz — who has emerged as an extremely vocal critic of Trump — shared that he believed the 1987 memoir, which served as a testament to Trump’s business acumen, should be recategorized as a work of fiction.
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“Given the
During an interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper that aired the same day, Schwartz went on to share that given the choice to re-title the book today, he would dub it The Sociopath — a claim he previously made during a 2016 interview with
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“He has no conscience, he has no guilt. All he wants to do is make the case that he would like to be true,” Schwartz told Cooper. “He does not experience the world in a way that an ordinary human being would.”
Asked whether he honestly believed Trump to be a sociopath, Schwartz took a pause before replying, “without any question.”
“I encourage people who wonder [about] that to simply Google ‘sociopath’ and the first or second entry gives you 9 or 10 describe words,” he continued. “It always includes a kind of pathological narcissism, which is what many people describe him as being, but it adds the element of absence of conscience, which changes everything.”
Given the Times report on Trump's staggering losses, I'd be fine if Random House simply took the book out of print. Or recategorized it as fiction.
— Tony Schwartz (@tonyschwartz) May 8, 2019
"If I had to rename 'The Art or the Deal' I would call it 'The Sociopath.'"
"Art of the Deal" ghostwriter Tony Schwartz says Trump is "probably aware more walls are closing around him than ever before but he does not experienced the world in a way an ordinary human being would." pic.twitter.com/yqurwhNRV8
— Anderson Cooper 360° (@AC360) May 9, 2019
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According to the Times report, federal tax documents from 1985 to 1994 show that Trump only paid income taxes twice during those years, earning his exemption otherwise due to the massive amounts of money he was losing.
Trump totaled losses over $1 billion during that 10-year period — a reality at odds with how he has marketed himself as a deal-savvy businessman, including during the 2016 presidential election.
“In fact, year after year, Mr. Trump appears to have lost more money than nearly any other individual American taxpayer,” the Times reported.
Trump quickly slammed the Times investigation as a “hit job” but did not dispute the losses themselves. Instead, the president obliquely defended the large sums as “depreciations” and “massive write-offs.”
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This is far from the first time Schwartz has publicly slammed Trump.
“I do regret writing the book,” Schwartz told Good Morning America about
Echoing the comment to The New Yorker that year, Schwartz elaborated, “I feel a deep sense of remorse that I contributed to presenting Trump in a way that brought him wider attention and made him more appealing than he is.”
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As royalties for the book surged during the 2016 presidential race, Schwartz also announced he had donated the $55,000 he had recently made to help groups that he believed had been targeted by Trump, according to The Washington Post.
“It just feels wrong,” Schwartz said.
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