"The Art of the Deal" co-author says Donald Trump’s 1987 book should be recategorized as fiction

Tony Schwartz even went so far as to say that if he could rename the book, its new title would be “The Sociopath"

Published May 9, 2019 3:27PM (EDT)

President Donald Trump speaks at the National Rifle Association Institute for Legislative Action Leadership Forum in Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis, Friday, April 26, 2019. (AP/Michael Conroy)
President Donald Trump speaks at the National Rifle Association Institute for Legislative Action Leadership Forum in Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis, Friday, April 26, 2019. (AP/Michael Conroy)

This article originally appeared on AlterNet.
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Back in 1987, Tony Schwartz served as co-author for Donald Trump’s book, “The Art of the Deal.” And following this week’s New York Times report detailing the major financial losses Trump suffered between 1985 and 1994, Schwartz is wishing Trump’s memoir were no longer in circulation.

On May 8, Schwartz tweeted, “Given the Times report on Trump’s staggering losses, I’d be fine if Random House simply took the book out of print. Or recategorized it as fiction.”

That same day, Schwartz was interviewed by CNN’s Anderson Cooper and said of the president, “He has no guilt. All he wants to do is make the case that he would like to be true. While I do think he’s probably aware that more walls are closing around him than ever before, he does not experience the world in a way that an ordinary human being would.”

Schwartz even went so far as to say that if he could rename “The Art of the Deal,” its new title would be “The Sociopath.”

However, Schwartz was expressing regrets about co-writing “The Art of the Deal” long before the bombshell Susanne Craig/Russ Buettner report on Trump’s finances for theNew York Times. In 2016—the year Trump was elected president of the United States — Schwartz told the New Yorker’s Jane Mayer, “I put lipstick on a pig. 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.”


By Alex Henderson

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