Donald Trump’s Ghostwriter: The President Is Moving To ‘A Darker Place’
Donald Trump’s ghostwriter Tony Schwartz, who penned Art of the Deal for the millionaire back in 1987, said the president is moving to a “darker place” during an interview with the Nation.
Schwartz said he spent hundreds of hours with Trump during the 18 months they lived together to write the book in the mid-1980s. Pointing out that he had seen Trump in all his shades back then because of his unfettered access to the businessman, Schwartz admitted that he has lately been surprised by how Trump has moved more and more politically to the right. According to him, Trump is not the same man that he knew then, at least where his politics are concerned. In the 1980s, Schwartz said, Trump donated to both sides and could basically be classified as a social liberal, but he had become much more rigid with his ideology now. That stemmed not from suddenly concurring with a set of political beliefs that could be deemed far-right, Schwartz contends, but because the president feels most pressingly the need to appease the core group of supporters who have propelled him to the White House.
“I think that now he has moved to a darker place. He was non-ideological when I knew him. He contributed to candidates from both parties; he was basically a social liberal, and otherwise had no politics. Today, I believe, he has adopted a pretty hard-right set of beliefs. I have reluctantly come to the conclusion that he believes what he says now, and that’s because his base, the people who still love and adore him, are on the far right—and that’s what compels him the most. I think he’s drifted into that more for emotional and psychological reasons than for political and ideological reasons.”
"Art of the Deal" ghostwriter: Trump is moving "to a darker place" https://t.co/Y6U3rc9x3C pic.twitter.com/SQV7ZfqbuA
— The Hill (@thehill) November 3, 2017
But apart from drifting to the far-right and therefore becoming more extreme in his political positions, Trump has remained the same person as far as his penchant for self-indulgence and self-glorification is concerned, Schwartz said. Owing Trump’s overwhelming need to validate himself through external stimuli to his brutal childhood, Schwartz said that Trump had not changed in how he saw the world and his own position within it.
“He was then and is now always 100 percent self-absorbed, incapable of interest in other human beings, and completely self-referential. He viewed every event through the lens of its impact on him. Even 30 years ago, he had an incredibly short attention span. Lying was almost second nature to him; he did it as easily as most of us drink a glass of water,” Schwartz said.
When the interviewer asked Art of the Deal ghostwriter whether he thought if the mounting pressure on Trump because of the Mueller investigations would make him more cautious about an impending impeachment at the hands of the Congress, Schwartz almost laughed off the suggestion, saying that there was no way that someone like Trump was ever going to back down and apologize. If anything, the mounting pressure will get to him dearly, at which point Trump will begin to inflict pain on others. Schwartz said that he worried if the overbearing pressure of occupying the presidential chair, coupled with the direction the Mueller investigations are seemingly taking, might finally make Donald Trump cross the line.
“He operates most of the time from a survival perspective—particularly when he’s feeling under threat. And he is certainly feeling under threat right now. This is going to get much, much worse for him. This is going to be a really awful time for Trump—and the really bad thing about that, is this: If it’s awful for Trump, he’s not going to keep it to himself. He’s going to inflict it on us. That is very, very worrisome,” Schwartz said.
[Featured Image by Drew Angerer/Getty Images]
