Tony Schwartz: The Truth About Trump | Oxford Union Q&A

good evening everybody so wonderful to see such a big crowd first I want to thank you all very much for either being part of inviting me to be part of this distinguished speaker series or for coming out to hear this tonight I'm deeply honored to be included among the extraordinary people who have spoken before me in this historic venue but why am I here I'm someone who until several months ago you most likely had never heard of two explanations oddly paradoxical the first one is that I made a decision early in my adult life to write a book with a brash young moderately successful real estate developer who was mostly unknown outside the United States actually it was mostly unknown even outside New York City at that time 30 years later this man did something I could never have imagined possible when I met him he decided to run for president of the United States and ten days from now that man god save us could become the leader of the free world it's a terrifying thought and indeed more specifically I'm here tonight because shortly before Donald Trump won the Republican nomination for president back in July I made a decision to publicly renounce the book I had written and the man whose image and persona I had helped to shape and define tonight I want to talk to you about who Donald Trump is and why I believe he represents such a dangerous threat to the future of our planet and I also want to talk to you about the journey that led me from serving as Trump's Boswell in my mid 30s to becoming in my mid sixties one of his most visible and glamorous critics I began my career as a journalist motivated by too often conflicting ambitions on the one hand I'd been raised by two parents who were deeply committed to public service my father was a scientist and an educator my mother was a social activist and a pioneering feminist I grew up believing deeply that I had a responsibility to be of service to others in my life and to make a positive difference in the world I also grew up with a burning ambition to stand out individually to be recognized as special by as many people as possible as effective as my parents were in their in their work in the world they were deeply flawed as caregivers as a child I never had the feeling of being deeply loved or lovable I grew up burdened by a deep sense of inadequacy and a fierce hunger to prove my own value by way of visible external accomplishments I imagine that feeling is not foreign to some of you who are here tonight influenced by the conflicting messages I got from my parent I arrived into adulthood with a deep conflict between serving others and serving myself between doing what I perceived was the right thing and doing whatever was necessary to feel more safe and secure in the world and to attract notice journalism seemed like a good way to combine the two to be publicly noticed and appreciated as a writer and to do good as HL Mencken once put it by afflicting the comfortable and comforting the afflicted it was while working for the magazine New York that I first encountered Donald Trump at the time Trump was a 38 year old real estate developer who had received some renown in New York by building a very successful hotel atop Grand Central Station on 42nd Street and then a flashy condominium in a prized Midtown location which he modestly named Trump Tower in early 1985 I got wind that Trump had purchased an existing apartment building overlook overlooking New York's Central Park South it was another prized location but in this case the tenants in the building were living under the protection of rent control and rent stabilization and paid very low rent Trump's plan was to get rid of them and turn the building into a luxury condominium to help in that effort he hired in a he hired a company that specialized in what was known as relocation or tenant relocation but what that really meant was purposely breaking the elevators so that tenants were forced to walk up and down 15 flights of stairs not replacing broken lights in the hallways or purposely breaking the lights and generally refusing to do any kind of repairs all this was designed to make life sufficiently miserable and unbearable for the tenants that they felt they had no choice but to move out that of course was story enough but the delicious addendum was that Trump was failing miserably in his efforts to get rid of these tenants in the article I wrote I described his efforts as a case study and how not to vacate a building the story of a gang that couldn't shoot straight a fugue of failure a farce of bumbling and fumbling the cover image for the article featured an illustration of Trump looking like a thug red-faced sweating scowling he loved it and he especially loved the cover photo tough guy and he called to tell me so he wanted to be a tough guy and he immediately had this cover framed and put it up on the wall over his desk and I realized that Trump was like no one I had ever met he was a journalist dream because wherever he went he tended to do something outrageous and that's never changed several months later I went back to interview him for another story in a few minutes into our conversation he mentioned that he just signed a deal with the publisher Random House prestigious publisher to do a book what's it about I asked it's my autobiography he replied you're only 38 I said you don't have that in order biography yeah yeah I know he said but I'm getting paid a lot of money to do it and I'm going to do it if you're going to write a book I said spontaneously you ought to call it the art of the deal people are a lot more interested in deals than they are in your autobiography the title had just popped into my head I like that Trump said you want to write it as much as it makes me cringe to say this to you today I was hoping he would say that I already knew the Trump was a bad actor I just done this piece which was plenty of evidence and that writing a book with him would very likely undermine my future credibility as a journalist it would also subject me to the legitimate charge of having sold out the term was invented for what I was about to do on the other hand my wife and I had two young children we were both journalists making modest salaries and I was unduly worried about our financial situation writing Trump's book I rationalized could create security for my family and free me to do whatever I wanted next what I really did was I told myself a story that summit somehow made it okay to do this book I pushed my concerns about the kind of man he was into the background and I'm reminded of something that Jeb Magruder who was one of the Richard Nixon aides who got caught up in the Watergate scandal said about himself looking back some number of years later somewhere between my ambition and my ideals he wrote I lost my moral compass I did the same and having done so I focused on making the most of my opportunity most writers for hire receive a flat fee or a relatively modest percentage of any money that the book earns Trump and I Heigl back and forth the art of the deal and ultimately he agreed to give me 50% of the $500,000 advance my $250,000 chair in 1987 86 was five times as I much as I had ever earned in any year as a journalist he also agreed to share 50% of any future royalties that the book earned my mother in particular was appalled she disdained any focus on making money and by writing this book I was putting my finger in her eye and although I didn't realize it at the time it was my declaration of independence from her perversely once the contract was signed I arranged to meet Trump on Saturday mornings at his penthouse apartment in Trump Tower my plan was to interview him for two or three hours at a time until I gathered enough material to write the book I imagined it would take several dozen such meetings over the subsequent six or eight months it didn't take me long to realize I was kidding myself in our very first interview Trump became impatient after answering my questions after just a few minutes he was more than willing to provide sound bites to virtually any reporter who called him at his office any time but it was nearly impossible to keep him focused on any single topic for more than five or ten minutes he had a stunningly short attention span this is so boring he would tell me with irritation a few minutes into any interview we did I don't want to talk about what already happened it's the past it's over if I manage to keep Trump answering my questions for 20 minutes I considered it a major victory he was like a kindergartener who couldn't sit still in a classroom my strong guess is that Trump has never read a book in his adult life with the possible exception of those written for him and very likely not most of those I know from the red marks he made that he read the manuscript I wrote at one point Trump agreed to let me accompany him to Mara Lago the home his home in Florida for a weekend my plan was to jam in a whole series of interviews over 48 hours so I could get progress on this book I was struggling to get done his then wife Ivana there have been a bunch made it clear that she wasn't happy to have me there and that was understandable he worked long hours during the week didn't spend time with them and each time she walked by us with one or another of his then three young kids in tow she glared eiseley at me and at him I felt abashed he didn't seem to notice or care a bit trump was about Trump he had almost no interest in his wife or his children when I didn't know at the time is that he was actively carrying on an affair with Marla whit maples than women the woman who would eventually and briefly become his second wife more important to this story long before lunch Trump stood up and announced that he couldn't stand to answer any more of my questions didn't I have enough plainly I wasn't going to get a books worth of material by trying to interview Trump instead when we returned to New York I simply began to show up at his office most mornings around 9:00 a.m. and invariably Trump was on the phone when I arrived with his permission his delighted permission were he to have been able to have another ten thousand or ten million people listening that would have been good from his perspective I would pick up an extension eight feet away from him and listen in on his conversations for the next several hours and often all day long over six months and then intermittently over the following year as I wrote the book as I look back three qualities behind beyond his inability to focus strike me as alarming when I imagined him as president the first is his utter disregard for the truth and his lack of conscience about that fact the second is that he is guided entirely by what he perceives as his immediate self-interest and the third is his inability to ever admit that he's wrong about anything none of those qualities seem highly desirable in a president beside reporters Trump spoke mostly during the day with lawyers and bankers and brokers on deals he was doing these people became a primary source of material for the book after each call or I should say after those calls I would go out and interview them to fill in the details that Trump was incapable of providing to me himself and it was in these conversations that I realized I couldn't take anything that Trump told me at face value the accounts of these others often directly contradicted Trump's and often they can often they casually shared documents with me that supported what they were saying I was concerned but I rationalized that I was writing a book for hire it wasn't meant to be my version of the events or even an objective account this was his story and he was stickin to it even in the face of the most undeniable evidence to the contrary more than any human being I have ever met Trump has the ability to convince himself that whatever he's saying at any given moment is true or sort of true or at least ought to be true to this day lying is second nature to him just one more way to gain advantage if he was challenged about his facts he doubled down still does it today Trump does not admit to being wrong he just keeps huffing and puffing til he blows you down often the lies he told were about money how much he had paid for something or what a building he owned was worth or how much one of his casinos was earning even when they were on the verge of bankruptcy I wrestled with how to tell stories that I knew included inaccuracies and eventually I came up with this sentence aimed at covering all potential untruths quote people want to believe that something is the biggest and the greatest and the most spectacular it's called truthful hyperbole it's an innocent form of exaggeration and a very effective form of permit of promotion it's also insane there is no such thing as truthful hyperbole hyperbole is untruthful but it was charming and we got away with it in the end I created a character and Trump far more winning than he actually is I never found him winning or especially intelligent or particularly interesting but he was undeniably an effective self promoter and that book went on to be a number one bestseller around the world what I did figure out in the course of doing that book was how to transmute his voice in ways that allowed him to come off not as cynical and one-dimensional which he was but rather to be kind of boyish boyish and ingenuously even charming here for Idzik for example is how I had Trump introduce himself in the art of the deal I don't do it for the money I've got enough much more than I'll ever need I do it to do it other people paint beautifully or write wonderful poetry I like making deals preferably big deals that's how I get my kicks in fact Trump did do it for the money he never believed he had enough just as he never could get enough attention he didn't do anything just to do it and he certainly didn't think of his deals as poetry because the word poetry was not part of his limited vocabulary Trump did get a kick out of making big deals but the kick never lasted for long and he was always ravenous for the next one over time I began to think of this man as a black hole there was nothing to sustain him inside so he looked entirely to the external world for nourishment no amount of money or success or praise or attention was ever enough I never saw any evidence that Trump had deep convictions or guiding core values which helps explain why he can shift positions so effortlessly and unashamedly from one day to the next every belief of trumps struck me as negotiable for the right price or the right advantage his most abiding commitment and obsession and passion was proving to others that he was a winner whatever that seemed to require on any given death and then broadcasting his success whether or not it was actually a success as far and as wide as possible as long as I was working on this book Trump was likely to call me at any time of day or night my wife Deborah often answered the phone when he called over a year and a half she reminded me recently Trump never once remembered her name nor the names of my children or perhaps even that I had children he knew my name but not much more about me because he never asked I was there to do a job and conversations with Trump are one way I didn't take it personally but this also helps to explain why he had no sustaining friends friendships for Trump were entirely functional he was friendly to people who helped make his deals happen and unfriendly to those who stood in his way friendships came and went just as he just as did his wives and his girlfriends indeed with the exception of anger Trump didn't traffic much in emotions of any sort with the exception of anger he could fly into a brief rage if he was challenged about any of his pronouncements most notably his net worth which he equated with his personal worth and therefore constantly inflated but just as often Trump used his anger as a means to an end and act he put on when he thought it served him well and then dropped as soon as he felt it got him what he wanted the same was true about Trump's beliefs easily ology amounted to this whatever so long as I win and people notice I fully recognize that I have painted an extreme portrait of this man and that the vast majority of human beings virtually all human beings are more complex than the man I've just described I also think that his extremity helps to explain why he's been an object of fascination for so long in my own case I believe I was drawn to Trump in part because he represented what Jung would have called the shadow side of myself Trump grew up with a brutal father and a mother with whom he seems to have had virtually no relationship it's oversimplifying to say that who he is as a product of having lacked love and care as a child and that he spent and his entire life looking for it in the external world but it's also true my own childhood was less extreme certainly than Trump's but I recognized my experience in his the hunger for unconditional love and acceptance exists in all of us and its absence is always a source of suffering Trump wears his most primitive instincts his greed and his grandiosity his lust and his envy right there on his sleeve most of us do a better job than he does at keeping these sorts of feelings under wraps it's much easier to see Trump as absolutely alien to what we all stand for than it is to recognize aspects of himself in ourselves but what compromises have you made in your own life where have you rationalize dand explained away decisions that were less than honorable or ethical or kind where have you put your immediate self-interest ahead of others which parts of yourself do you hide from others and perhaps even from yourself writing a book with Donald Trump was a way I could live out these instincts in myself my hungry desire for more money and fame vicariously and without taking direct responsibility for them I wasn't much older than most of you are today when I wrote the art of the deal at the time I told myself that doing it wasn't that big a deal and wouldn't have any enduring consequences ha the truth is that that decision the book and my association with Trump has quietly haunted and dogged me for thirty years in many ways the rest of my life has been a reaction to having written the art of the deal the next book I wrote was called what really matters searching for wisdom in America my aim was to get as far as possible from the values that Trump represented instead I wanted to hang out and write about people who had led more reflective and intentional lives who had goals beyond their own immediate self-interest but interestingly in five years of meeting and working with psychologists and philosophers scientists and mystics who'd spend their own lives searching for higher wisdom what I found was complexity and contradiction I met people who were often stirring in their words and skilled in their practices but these same people were also capable of devolve entombed or primitive behaviors and being blind to the contradiction between their walk and their talk I think of this now as our shared infinite capacity for self-deception over most of the past two decades I've run a company called the energy project we've focused on helping people and companies to manage their work more skillfully to fuel their own energy more skillfully and as a result to live happier and more productive lives I'm proud of the work we've done but I've also been humbled by it in the years following the the deal I wanted deeply to feel better about who I was and to believe that it was possible to reach some form of enlightenment to get to the promised land to truly move towards selflessness if Trump represented one extreme of human behavior I wanted the other extreme and I want to leave you at this moment with a more nuanced perspective that is the product of these 30 years of searching that have characterized my life most of you are just entering adulthood you've invested a great deal to get where you are today to this very special place that many regard as the ticket to a successful life and in some real measure that's true it's an extraordinary privilege to have an oxford education and it's an advantage but whatever you may learn at Oxford it's truly only the beginning of your education I myself have learned more in the past decade than I did in the five decades before it mostly what I've learned is what it means to be more wholly human just for a moment I'd like you to think of a few adjectives that describe you at your best just let your mind filter to a few adjectives that describe who you are at your best I'm so hopeful that each of you now have a few now take a few minutes to think about a few adjectives that describe you at your worst who are you at your worst so now the $64,000 question which of these lifts describes who you really are is it not obvious that you're both along with some grade agents in between isn't that a more complete way of describing yourself isn't it true that you can be the worst of yourself but that that self is not all of who you are and that you can be your best but you're not always your best this is what I believe true growth and development personal evolution are really all about seeing more and excluding less I am today still that person who made that fateful decision at 33 year old 33 years old to write a book with a man named Donald Trump that will be part of my story to the very end the instincts which prompted the decision haven't disappeared but I'm vastly more conscious of them now and I have commensurately more capacity to manage them to make conscious choices about how I behave in the world I've also grown immensely over the past three decades my perspective is wider and deeper and longer I see my shortcomings more clearly and I trust that my strengths are real and enduring I don't spend nearly as much energy as I once did and as Donald Trump still does trying to prove or defend my own value the result is that I have far more energy available to create value in the world loving oneself is no easy matter the psychologist James Hillman once wrote because it means loving all of oneself including the shadow where one is inferior and socially so unacceptable thus the cure is a parody requiring two incommensurable x' the moral recognition that these parts of me are burdensome and intolerable and must change and the loving laughing acceptance of them just as they are joyfully and forever one both tries hard and let's go both judges harshly and joins gladly seeing more and excluding less accepting what Zorba the Greek ruefully called the full catastrophe and embracing it this is called a whole life this is the life Donald Trump has never lived and never will but you could and I deeply hope you will because to whom much is given much is expected thank you Sonne thank you so much for that truly insightful talk and I'd like to start off with a very difficult question what are five adjectives that describe Donald Trump at his best that is a difficult question you know I've been asked many times what are his redeeming qualities you know everybody else redeeming qualities and it was embarrassing to me not to have an answer to that for some time he is persevering he is aggressive in pursuit of his goals I'm running short I mean that's one I think I think that's perseverance perseverance that's a here's the thing if you took Donald Trump's perseverance and aggressiveness and applied them to a virtuous goal he would be very effective there's that there's there's plenty of energy there's just the wrong quality of energy interesting and when he announced his candidacy coming down the Golden escalator holding your book did you write him off like everybody else or could you see this coming I felt a terrible feeling in the pit of my stomach when he got on that stage and he said America needs the man who wrote the art of the deal to be President first of all I didn't think I was qualified and second of all I didn't think he was qualified and third of all I thought if he would lie about that when it was so not only so Payton Lee untrue but so easy to disprove then he would lie about anything and yes and your answer to your question I thought from early on not the very earliest but early on that he could that he could get the nomination and going beyond the nomination how likely do you think it is that the polls are wrong and there were lots of quiet Trump voters and that he could actually be in the White House in January well I would say I wish that the WikiLeaks weren't happening and you know most mindful of the fact that there's a this is a large room and there's 400 or so people here and I in a sense presented as if this is the consensus and I recognize that there are people in here who probably have a very different feeling about Donald Trump than I do and the reason I've been speaking out it's not to take issue with his policy positions I happen not to agree with them but because I believe he's his characterological deficiencies are so great that they preclude his being president and that whatever the smoke and mirrors that are created in the course of the campaign may make people believe I lived with this man day and night for a year and a half and I have no doubt that my assessment of his character is accurate and there unfortunately isn't virtually anybody else who's had as close a relationship with Donald Trump who didn't sign a nondisclosure agreement and therefore isn't talking about it and to those sort of divided opinions I want to read you a quote that Michael Moore something he said very recently you might have seen this in the news he said where the Trump means it or not is kind of irrelevant because he's saying the things to people who are hurting and that's why every beaten-down nameless forgotten working stiff who used to be part of what was called middle-class loves Trump he is the human Molotov cocktail that they've been waiting for do you think this is an accurate prepared on listen we need as a society in the US and given brexit here and marine lepen in France and nationalist movements all over the world all over the Western world we need to recognize that Trump didn't come out of nowhere Trump came out of a deep discontent and what was that discontent I would argue that the primary reason for that discontent is the tremendous income inequality that has emerged it's the dark side of capitalism it's a whole group of people like the ones michael moore described who grew up believing that they were as entitled to the American Dream as anybody else and had been used to working crappy jobs but getting paid reasonably well having some version of that American Dream a nice car a house a certain amount of security and then all of a sudden the world gets filled with a small number of people like Donald Trump who control a vast percentage of the wealth and they're out on their backsides and the irony is the Trump ought to be their enemy but the reality is that they have reason to be angry and it's not a surprise to me that the most disenfranchised people in our society who are white because Trump has been so very ugly hating toward so many minority groups but for white people who are disenfranchised I get why they're for him and a lot of the reason I'm talking I'm speaking out is in the hope that I can temper that anger with the recognition that this man doesn't care about them and why don't these disenfranchised white people feel represented by the Democratic policy why aren't they yet because Democrats and Republicans are in large measure equal opportunity offenders when it comes to the income disparity and to the over embrace of a free market you know unfortunately you can you know you you look at the choice the clintons made after they came out of office and it was to run up their advantage and that itself is a source of enormous anger in people why they're not angry at Trump for bringing in workers from overseas and you know having his products made in other countries is a mystery to me it's not a complete mystery the one other factor I would say that makes sense to me is Trump is not a traditional politician so they are saying to themselves and maybe some people some folks in this room are saying to themselves he could be a savior I'm desperate for a savior he could be a savior and I'm gonna throw caution to the wind because at this point almost everyone understands that this is a man with some pretty serious limitations but it's a measure of the anger that it's overcome by the hope so let's talk about those limitations with regard to the campaign and for many people the line between the campaign's strategy and its bethune eree is quite blurred and I'm wondering from your perspective how contrived is the campaign and other blunders planned or the scandals relished or is this literally just screw up after screw up it is literally screw up after it screw up I mean there is no planning in the sense that Trump runs the store make no mistake the reason you see tweets from him that are self-immolating and crazy is because nobody controls him he does what he wants to do and there's not some age standing next to his bed at 4:00 a.m. when he gets the impulse to send out a tweet he the campaign is a is a almost perfect reflection of the man great I'm a last question before I post on the audiences and how do you think he is going to deal with losing if he loses you're making me anxious first of all I'm very superstitious and I don't want to say that he's going to lose even though I desperately hope he loses it would be a true Black Swan event for him to win but it was a Black Swan event for him to win the nomination so I don't rule it out having said that I do expect him to lose and I do not expect him to go quietly into the night he has kept upping the ante as a drug addict would the drug addict wants more current you know mutts more cocaine or a pure dose of heroin because they're forever chasing the hi Donald Trump when it comes to attention is forever chasing the hi and so when this election ends and he feels listen much more mentally healthy candidates for president than him have gone through extended periods of depression following their losses it's a huge public loss and humiliation but Trump is not available to depression he just won't go there I don't think so instead he'll go to anger and he will drum up that anger that's sitting inside his supporters in any way he can to provide evidence that he was wrong the election was rigged and he didn't really lose trust me when I say this when Trump loses the election he will never acknowledge he will not concede the election and he will never acknowledge that he lost the election because to do that is to feel obliterated and he's not going there so it's going to be a dangerous tense time in America in the in the weeks after the election thanks very frightening know if you do have a question put your hand high in the air and wait for the microphone to come to you and then if the ideally could stand up if you go to the girl yes many would blame the current state of the US media and journalism for the rise of Donald Trump and if you agree with that view I was wondering well first of all wondering what your opinions are about the US media in this presidential election and if you agree with the critics then what do you think needs to change to prevent this kind of Donald Trump situation from happening again so I I actually don't believe that the media is a huge factor in Donald Trump's winning the Republican nomination and I'm saying the nomination because the media's perspectives changed dramatically since the election and I actually think the media has done a very good job of bringing Trump's shortcomings to to light since the election since the nomination the reason I don't think that they played that bigger role is because I think the force that was driving Trump was bigger within the media and I also think the simple truth about journalism is you go where the story is and rightly or wrongly it's very hard to resist Trump that's the story he just is very good and here's a here's a capacity he has he's an unbelievably effective manipulator of the media to get attention he's no longer an effective media manipulator to get positive attention but he is he is capable of getting attention in terms of what I think will happen or should happen I think that introspection in the media has already begun I've had a lot of conversations with the reporters who were traveling with the candidates in the last several months because of the role I played and I think a tremendous bridge has been crossed and that positive bridge that bridge is the recognition that quote objectivity is not actually giving equal attention to two sides of an argument if one's argument is completely and utterly without credibility and so you'll start to see now you have started to see in headlines things like Trump lied about X that's typically something you see on an editorial page it's appropriate on a news page when it's factual Thanks could you go to general the front bench over there thank you very much so my question is whether you think that Donald Trump leads his constituents or whether Donald Trump's constituents lead him as in do you think that these policies were originally coming from him and he recognized later on that they would play so well or whether he by some method found out that this was really kind of at the beating heart of America and therefore took up these policies and became their standard-bearer it's a complicated question because when he came down from that escalator to announce his candidacy and he said you know the people streaming in from Mexican from Mexico are rapists that was not spontaneous he'd been planning that line for a long long time and he had figured out quite some years earlier that he could stoke the fears and interest of a certain constituency by creating a polarized world and setting up in this case Mexicans but subsequently Muslims and blacks and women and you know virtually everybody but white men as the enemy so I do think that there was a lot of conscious thinking about this what's interesting to me over the last six weeks since Steve Bannon has taken over his campaign Steve been and is a you know leader of the what's now called the alt-right but you know in the old days would have been called the Ku Klux Klan and I have watched very clearly the influence of Steve Bannon on Trump's declarations and I actually believe that the closer it comes to his loss to his losing the angrier and more like the alt-right he becomes so it's like a powder keg people already angry Trump not originally angry just wanting attention now angry and boom that's explosive is the woman to the white top leading on from that do you believe from your experience with Trump that he is a racist and that he is a misogynist yes and yes yeah I mean I had to stop and think about it there's no question he's a misogynist I mean that's just that speaks for itself think about I had this analogy that you know if I write if I when I was a reporter wrote an article in a newspaper this is pre-internet and I got you know a dozen letters about it that was considered a lot in fact the assumption was that it reflected the desire of a thousand people to have written but the only ones who took the initiative were those twelve in the case of those twelve women who've come forward to accuse Donald Trump of assault of sexual assault they had to cross one heck of a barrier to do that I mean what possible gain is there for a woman to subject herself to ridicule and humiliation by Donald Trump a potential lawsuit the ink peeping tom enquiries of many people about the details so my assumption is that there are hundreds and hundreds of women out there who were sexually assaulted or if not sexually assaulted sexually approached and weren't willing by Donald Trump ergo misogynist as for racist my experience with him was that he had a peculiar kind of racism just as he has a peculiar kind of anti-semitism so just throw in a third one the the racism he actually had huge admiration for a small group of black men they were fighters prizefighters and football players if you were a prizefighter or a football player Donald Trump admired you as a black man if you were virtually anybody else you were not admired and then as for Jews you know his attitude toward Jews and of course his wife has converted and become a Jew but quite honestly I don't think that makes a damn bit of difference to him he's no more friendly to Jews than he would have been before that accept her maybe he sees Jews as really really effective people to handle his money so he likes Jews who are accountants and lawyers the rest of us not so much let's go to putting the red top on the front bench there one thing that this election has seen is the traditional Conservative Party having to completely change to adapt to his form of conservatism how much do you think the Cyprian see in the Supreme Court has affected that and will that swing the election has affected what the current support among traditional Republican leaders Wardrop for Trump despite scandals well listen I mean I'm a you know I I have very progressive views and have always voted not always but mostly voted Democrat Democratic and it would take a really bad Democrat in this election for me not to vote for that person if Donald Trump were a Democrat I wouldn't but the reason would be the Supreme Court because we are at a historic moment with the Supreme Court where the future of that Court will be determined for 40 years probably by the two or three or maybe even four appointments that are possible during the next four to eight years so if I'm thinking of myself as a conservative Republican I get that there are a lot of them who are holding their noses as hard as they can and saying you know and and you know being upset with what he's saying particularly evangelical Christians being upset with what he's saying but feeling like I just got to do it because the the shape of the world that will emerge is so influenced by the choices of the Supreme Court Tony has better eyesight than me so he's going to pick someone who's sitting at the back yeah the gentleman with the beard holding the high hand do you have a beard that is the you were trying to figure do you yes it is here well did $70,000 a year mean that they're educated that they have a college education I would say no it doesn't seventy thousand dollars a year in the United States as an amount you can earn in a variety of ways an uber driver with no education could earn $70,000 and a factory worker in a good Union could easily are in $70,000 so I'm not sure that's convincing that it's educated people that it's as many educated people who are forum as we think but listen to your point the faith among all kinds of people at all income levels in all levels of education in the once sacred institutions of you know the society law enforcement the clergy politicians and the government virtually every one of those has lost respect and esteem and there are a tremendous number millions and millions of people who are feeling unmoored and unprotected and uncertain and i think when you play on fear fear taps into a different part of the brain than rational appeals and trump is really good as many despot and authoritarian leaders have been at stoking people's fears so if you get a person to feel fearful enough they might have a PhD but the level you're talking to the mat is the level of a six year old so that helps to explain why smarter people who should know better don't necessarily behave better I'll go back to the back with the I know I should go to a woman said I called misogynist here so you work with Trump over thirty years ago and now you see him on TV and running for president is there any let me not call it development but change in this character that you can see because I mean you've talked a lot about how you've changed over the years so what how has Trump changed if at all it's a fundamental principle of the work we do at the energy project that you can't change what you don't notice and Trump doesn't notice he was just quoted the other day in Michael Dantonio one of his biographer one of his biographers released a whole series of tapes of interviews he done with men he was quoted saying I don't like to I don't look at I'm not willing to look this as a not exact quote but I don't I'm not willing to look inside myself because I might not like what I see so my experience of Trump is that he's very much the same person he was when I met him at 38 and then he was the very much the same person at 38 that he was at 13 I had I had a I had a wonderful experience that speaks to this and maybe is a good way to end I've attended the debates and I've been fortunate enough to sit up very close so when the debates and I'm able to go right up to the stage and kind of experience what the back-and-forth is so at the end of the third debate the final debate in Las Vegas I walked up to the front and there was a sort of roped off area where they were were about what was going to happen there and they want to make sure they were protecting those two candidates so I was standing sort of as you might if you you know any celebrity were walking by like as if I was a fan and a lot of others were lined up there and Trump eventually walked the line and as he walked the line he would say how are you and lean out to shake the person's hand so it's one two three four and then he gets to me and he reaches out his hand and he says how are its you oh god it's you and he pulls back his hand so I don't think he's changed much ladies and gentlemen thank you turning shorts everybody join me in thanking him stay seated while we leave

Channel: OxfordUnion

Views: 4,121,521

Keywords: Oxford, Union, Oxford Union, Oxford Union Society, debate, debating, The Oxford Union, Oxford University, tony schwartz, donald trump

Id: qxF_CDDJ0YI

Length: 56min 29sec (3389 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 04 2016

Reddit Comments

[u/secretlyacutekitten]

If this surprises anyone, you really have not been paying attention. This guy was all over the media earlier this year, he did GMA, lots of articles and was part of the Never Trump movement. Trump even threatened to sue him (like Trump does to many critics)

Trump is a narcissist? A braggart and a bully? Wow you don't say.

This wasn't an election on whom you liked, it was an election on whom you disliked the least.

There were secret service members that came out against Clinton saying the same things about her, for me personally as someone that indirectly worked for Sec Clinton, there was no way I could vote for her.

As for Trump causing WW3, he might but Clinton would have most certainly. I worked as a foreign policy analyst for one of our security agencies, I know Clinton is reckless and ignores any negative consequences, her hubris causes disasters.

At least Kerry has the pragmatism to realize when he has been outplayed and to step back and take another tact, Clinton's answer is step up aggression, we also saw exactly this toward the end of her campaign.

I realize Reddit is not the place for this, sorry, most this site is emotionally driven and still stuck in identity politics. As bad as Trump's personal faults are (and they are bad), America dodged a bullet this election by electing him and that's a damning indictment of our electoral system more than anything.

[u/Mr_FrenchTickler]

Sounds like he'll fit right in as a politician.

[u/ThePrecariat]

notsuprized.gif

[u/deadken]

Seems like better suited for /r/politics

[u/[deleted]]

Really wish this had been floated around before the election. I heard this guy on Sirius XM talking on this same subject at least twice this year before November.

[u/St_OP_to_u_chin_me]

237 votes? In all the time I've been in this sub has there ever been that many up votes. Edit: except BERNIE.