Tony Schwartz on Donald Trump

I felt guilty about writing the art of the deal with Trump for 30 years and I thought that I could get away from it by simply never talking about it which I didn't and then he decided to run for president and I felt almost a calling or an obligation to say about him what I knew and he got elected anyway and I feel I think I feel very sad that I did that it's it's like who would have possibly guessed at the time that it would be such a consequential decision I thought I was 33 years old and it was a good job for a year and he was a you know mid-level New York state New York City real estate developer I just thought it wouldn't come to anything so it's it's it's very sobering I feel sobered and sad I created the Donald Trump he wished to be I wrote every word of that book with no no engagement with him while I was writing and he read it quickly and as far as I know once and that was the end of it for him to the image I created I think that was most appealing to people was not really that he was rich and glamorous and successful but that he was brash and honest and you know we would speak in an in a direct way and was kind of appealing you know as a kind of road character Donald Trump and he himself has said this is the same person today that he was at 7:00 and he has changed remarkably little he is a case almost you could say of Arrested Development he has the maturity of a very very young person and not only was he that same person of seven and when I met him in 1986 but he was still that same person when he launched his campaign and remarkably he seems to have been totally uninstall sitting in the Oval Office of the White House it's still Trump he's you know he takes around a aging rock star for four hours and you know makes fun of Hillary I mean it's it's it's mind-boggling well there is no center and that's actually the center of Donald Trump the fact that there is no inner life there's no moral compass there's no set of deeply held beliefs there's no real capacity for connection with others that's the essence of Donald Trump he's an empty vessel he's a black hole and he spent his whole life trying to fill that hole and the problem is there's a huge leak in the bottom of that tank and every time he pours in more money or more praise or more power it doesn't make him believe in himself any more than he did now it's funny to think of him sitting here with me listening to that because it would be so far from is self-description he thinks of himself as the ultimate example of a confident man but you know the people who tell you how great they are are very often the people who don't feel so great themselves he's dealing with a great contradiction all the time on the one hand at this moment in time he's sitting in the White House as the leader of the free world what could make you from outside feel more confident about yourself but on the other hand he as we know he looked he reads and listens to that doesn't read much but he listens to what people are saying and it clearly upsets him so you know he's got one part of the equation that's around people tearing him down and putting his flaws right in front of them and then he's got another part of him that's like yeah but I'm worth billions of dollars I'm the President of the United States like how come you guys don't get it he is spectacularly uninformed and ignorant and this I said during the campaign repeatedly I don't believe he has read a book in his adult life for the extraordinary thing to say about a President of the United States he is incapable of focusing his attention in an absorbed way on any subject for very long and therefore he hasn't been able to take in information much less reflect on it so yes he is without knowledge and the story he has told himself is I have such unbelievable instincts I'm so brilliant about intuiting the solution to problems that it doesn't matter what I read and by the way who has time for that I think of a famous screenwriter in the u.s. named William Goldman who said about Hollywood nobody knows anything and about Trump and what's going to happen nobody knows anything he is so unpredictable and so volatile and so emotionally driven in a very very you know complex dangerous time that I can't begin to assess whether or not he could be impeached or choose to resign I have to say this nothing would surprise me unfortunately that includes completing his first term and getting reelected none of it would surprise me but I also wouldn't be surprised if he got impeached for example if the Russia investigation shows collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia he'll have to be out I believe he'll have to be out and then I said yeah I believed a lot of things and maybe that's not true either you

Channel: HSGUniStGallen

Views: 131,030

Keywords: Donald Trump, Tony Schwartz, The Art of the Deal, Ghostwriter, USA, US President

Id: -2JmC_yDL2k

Length: 8min 0sec (480 seconds)

Published: Fri May 05 2017

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