‘If Trump wins ... it’s possibly the end of civilisation’: ghost writer excoriates candidate
Tony Schwartz tells New Yorker he regrets painting Trump, the Republican pick for the White House, in a positive light in The Art of The Deal. Mogul fires back, accusing him of ‘great disloyalty’
The co-author of Donald Trump’s book The Art of the Deal, Tony Schwartz, has revealed he feels a “deep sense of remorse” for portraying the mogul in a positive light and says he believes a Trump presidency could “lead to the end of civilisation”.
The Art of the Deal was published in 1987. It spent 48 weeks on The New York Times’ bestseller list and has sold more than one million copies. Trump, the Republican party’s US presidential candidate, was paid a US$500,000 advance by publisher Random House. He split the sum with Schwartz and gave him half the royalties.
However, in an interview with the New Yorker, Schwartz talked extensively about the 18 months he spent working with Trump, and said he would have called the book The Sociopath.
“I put lipstick on a pig,” he says. “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 … I genuinely believe that if Trump wins and gets the nuclear codes there is an excellent possibility it will lead to the end of civilisation.”
It’s impossible to keep him focused on any topic, other than his own self-aggrandisement, for more than a few minutes
Schwartz initially met Trump while interviewing him as a journalist. Talking to him again for a piece in Playboy in 1985, Trump told him about his book deal and Schwartz suggested he focus on his leadership style. Trump liked the idea and offered Schwartz the job, which he took to solve money troubles. “It was a huge windfall,” he told the New Yorker. “But I knew I was selling out. Literally, the term was invented to describe what I did.”