The ghostwriter who penned Donald Trump’s signature business book ‘The Art of the Deal’ said Tuesday that the president has ‘clearly deteriorated’ mentally since the two worked together in 1987.
Tony Schwartz told CNN that ‘any reasonable person spending at least 15 minutes with Donald Trump knows that this is a deeply, deeply disturbed man.’
Schwartz cited Trump’s ‘utter inability to pay attention for any long period of time, the garbled syntax when he tries to speak, the utter and complete self-absorption,’ as recounted in Michael Wolff’s book ‘Fire and Fury.’
‘All of these things have always been true of Trump. What’s happened is that he’s deteriorated,’ he said.
‘Art of the Deal’ ghostwriter Tony Schwartz says Donald Trump has mentally deteriorated since the two worked together on the book in 1987
Schwartz is basing his conclusions on a new book that questions the president’s mental faculties in the world’s toughest job
The White House says Trump, shown Monday night at the NCAA football national championship game in Atlanta, has all his marbles despite a media frenzy to the contrary
Wolff’s book has sparked a national media frenzy over the president’s mental health, with anti-Trump partisans musing about using a constitutional maneuver to force him out of office and the White House calling such speculation outrageous.
The ‘Fire and Fury’ author claimed Monday on CNN that even the president’s family believes he behaves ‘like a child.’
Schwartz said Tuesday that reports that Trump spends many of his waking hours glued to TV news broadcasts are nothing new.
‘He watched in the early morning and he watched from the time he went back to his apartment in the evening,’ he recalled of his observations in 1987. ‘But what he did during the day – I can say because I was there for it, for months and months at a time – is he worked.’
Michael Wolff’s book ‘Fire and Fury’ argues that all of Trump’s senior aides are worried about his mental fitness to be president
The book quickly rocketed to the top of best-seller charts after its release on Friday
‘He doesn’t appear to do so much of that anymore. and I don’t know the reason. But it’s clear that he’s either lazy or incapable of working now. and that wasn’t as true before.’
Schwartz says that while he believed 30 years ago that Trump was ‘mentally unstable,’ the circumstances were different and less exacting.
“The Art of the Deal” co-author Tony Schwartz says that, based on “Fire and Fury,” Donald Trump “has clearly deteriorated” since they worked together in 1987 https://t.co/BhTR7LKrut
— CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) January 9, 2018
‘I went back and watched the interviews he did 20, 30 years ago and they’re dramatically different. They’re scarily different. He is more articulate.’
At the time, he recalled, Trump ‘was not under any kind of intense stress.’
‘Now that he’s president and the pressure is ratcheting up, not only in terms of just being president but all the controversy and pressure around him, I think it does contribute to his instability.’ he concluded.
And that instability is significant. And frightening.’