Two revealing articles have recently appeared, which one can only read for amusement if one assumes, as I still do, that my country will not elect this vermin (with apologies to vermin, who do something useful). Quoted in the NYT piece is lawyer Richard Seltzer, whom I worked for almost 30 years ago, on various real estate litigations, though none (at that time) against Trump. (Seltzer was the partner who thought I was "crazy" to leave law practice to go get a PhD in philosophy, as I discussed in my interview with Clifford Sosis.) The New Yorker piece, quoting at length from the Tony Schwartz, the ghost writer of Trump's fake book The Art of the Deal, is even more damning. An excerpt:
“I put lipstick on a pig,” he said. “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.” He went on, “I genuinely believe that if Trump wins and gets the nuclear codes there is an excellent possibility it will lead to the end of civilization.”
If he were writing “The Art of the Deal” today, Schwartz said, it would be a very different book with a very different title. Asked what he would call it, he answered, “The Sociopath.”
...
"[I]t’s impossible to keep him focussed on any topic, other than his own self-aggrandizement, for more than a few minutes, and even then . . . ” Schwartz trailed off, shaking his head in amazement. He regards Trump’s inability to concentrate as alarming in a Presidential candidate. “If he had to be briefed on a crisis in the Situation Room, it’s impossible to imagine him paying attention over a long period of time,” he said....
But Schwartz believes that Trump’s short attention span has left him with “a stunning level of superficial knowledge and plain ignorance.” He said, “That’s why he so prefers TV as his first news source—information comes in easily digestible sound bites.” He added, “I seriously doubt that Trump has ever read a book straight through in his adult life.” During the eighteen months that he observed Trump, Schwartz said, he never saw a book on Trump’s desk, or elsewhere in his office, or in his apartment....
This year, Schwartz has heard some argue that there must be a more thoughtful and nuanced version of Donald Trump that he is keeping in reserve for after the campaign. “There isn’t,” Schwartz insists. “There is no private Trump.” This is not a matter of hindsight. While working on “The Art of the Deal,” Schwartz kept a journal in which he expressed his amazement at Trump’s personality, writing that Trump seemed driven entirely by a need for public attention...
Schwartz says of Trump, “He lied strategically. He had a complete lack of conscience about it.” Since most people are “constrained by the truth,” Trump’s indifference to it “gave him a strange advantage.”
When challenged about the facts, Schwartz says, Trump would often double down, repeat himself, and grow belligerent....
In “The Art of the Deal,” Trump portrays himself as a warm family man with endless admirers. He praises Ivana’s taste and business skill—“I said you can’t bet against Ivana, and she proved me right.” But Schwartz noticed little warmth or communication between Trump and Ivana, and he later learned that while “The Art of the Deal” was being written Trump began an affair with Marla Maples, who became his second wife. (He divorced Ivana in 1992.) As far as Schwartz could tell, Trump spent very little time with his family and had no close friends. In “The Art of the Deal,” Trump describes Roy Cohn, his personal lawyer, in the warmest terms, calling him “the sort of guy who’d be there at your hospital bed . . . literally standing by you to the death.” Cohn, who in the fifties assisted Senator Joseph McCarthy in his vicious crusade against Communism, was closeted. He felt abandoned by Trump when he became fatally ill from AIDS, and said, “Donald pisses ice water.” Schwartz says of Trump, “He’d like people when they were helpful, and turn on them when they weren’t. It wasn’t personal. He’s a transactional man—it was all about what you could do for him.”
Everything Schwartz says is what everyone in the New York real estate world thought about Trump thirty years ago. Insulated by money and lawyers, this psychologically deformed human being couldn't do too much damage, except to individuals who dealt with him. But there is no precedent I can think of for the prospect of someone so psychologically unbalanced becoming President of the United States. The risk that he'd annihilate the world to appease his ego is real, not hyperbole.
Given how unstable he is, there is still much reason to hope he will self-destruct. He will surely make more outrageous statements, since he's stupid and has no self-control. I can see him dropping Pence as his running mate in a fit of pique and I can still see him withdrawing from the contest if and when it becomes clear he is heading for humiliating defeat. We should be so lucky.
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