Tony Schwartz was the ghostwriter on Donald Trump’s Art of the Deal. He was interviewed by MSNBC’s Joy Reid about what we are seeing with Donald Trump over the past few days. Schwartz subscribes to the relatively popular theory that Donald Trump is probably a bit pathological in his personality disorders. Here are some highlights.
When he said “what a nasty woman,” that just came out of him. He was surprised.
I can see that.
The connection between his self worth and his financial worth has been inextricable since he was 22 years old, since he got the money from his father and had money. So he has always been completely dependent on people believing he was unbelievably wealthy.
Uh huh.
The pathos is that he’s a little boy. He’s a little boy who is desperate for love, a particular kind of love. He never got it. He’s not getting it now, and he’s in a blend of rage and depression.
Joy Reid mentions how Trump comes across as if he is “discovering” the things he is talking about as he goes along during a speech—even commenting on what he is saying. Schwartz’s explanation really nails it for me.
No question. You can tell every time he reads a speech, it is so far from the way he speaks. He has the smallest vocabulary of any person whose run for any kind of office, much less President, how about country commissioner. It’s a 200 word vocabulary, so as soon as he gets through that you know that he is reading someone else’s words and he, as I’ve said many times, has an incredibly short attention span, and he never reads those speeches in advance, and as a result he is discovering them. “Oh my gosh,” and then he gets distracted from them because all of that sense of inadequacy is rising up as he’s reading and he has to move to that.
Schwartz goes on to say if Trump could be guaranteed a victory if he took far left positions, he would do it without a second thought. In the end Schwartz believes Trump’s interested in winning and has no deep ideological beliefs. The “alt right” bases its recruitment on one thing—paranoia. And Trump is living in that alt right world now. Reid finally asks Schwartz one last question: does Donald Trump care for his supporters?
He isn’t capable of caring for anyone. That’s the heart of the problem. He is so needy himself, that he needs to spend all of his energy on filling himself up and there is simply, Joy, there is simply isn’t any left to give to other people.
You can watch the interview, edited down.