Books

One man was not surprised by revelations that Donald Trump does not deserve his reputation as a preternaturally successful businessman and deal maker. The man who helped create the illusion.Tony Schwartz spent hundreds of hours with Trump to ghostwrite his bestselling 1987 book The Art of the Deal, effectively creating the origin story of the brash property tycoon. It was Schwartz who coined the phrase “truthful hyperbole”, which neatly foreshadowed Trump and his supporters’ attempts to rationalize many of his false and misleading claims.The 68-year-old writer has long disowned the president as a malignant narcissist and expressed regret for his part in constructing the mythology. So the New York Times report, detailing chronic financial losses and vast outstanding loans, confirmed his view that Trump was always better at cutting fantasy deals than making real ones.“It’s the ultimate unmasking of the emperor with no clothes,” Schwartz said by phone from Riverdale in the Bronx, New York. “There’s nothing more important to Trump than being seen as very, very rich, which is why he’s expended so much effort in trying to claim a net worth far beyond what he actually was worth.“The fact the evidence is unequivocal that he was not the person he claimed to be means that he’s lost the central premise on which he’s based his own self-worth, because Trump confuses personal worth with net worth. There’s nothing Trump hates more than to feel weak and vulnerable and like a failure, so he won’t allow himself to acknowledge those feelings, but they’ll be there and they will affect him.“Unfortunately, should he be re-elected, one of the ways he’ll respond to that is he’ll take it out on everyone who he thinks diminished or belittled him along the way.”Success in business is at the core of Trump’s identity. With the help of more than $400m from his father over decades, he was property developer, celebrity and symbol of 80s excess. Enter Schwartz, a liberal journalist who, interviewing Trump for Playboy magazine, learned of his ambition to write an autobiography aged just 38. Schwartz said a book called The Art of the Deal would be a better idea. Trump asked him to ghostwrite it and, with a growing family and high mortgage, Schwartz agreed. It sold more than a million copies.Trump continued to burnish his image with a relentless self-publicity campaign in New York tabloid newspapers. Then he was cast in the reality TV show The Apprentice, sitting in judgment on would-be entrepreneurs from the boardroom at the flashy, marble-clad, gold-trimmed Trump Tower.He told viewers that his company was bigger and stronger than ever before. “It was all a hoax,” the New York Times reported on Monday. “Months after that inaugural episode in January 2004, Mr Trump filed his individual tax return reporting $89.9 million in net losses from his core businesses for the prior year.”Schwartz now says The Art of the Deal would have been more appropriately entitled The Sociopath.He admits with regret: “It did help to create the mythology of Donald Trump and, unfortunately, I do think it played a significant role. The Apprentice had a far bigger impact because it went on for years and it was seen by millions and millions of people, and millions of people don’t see a book. Or very rarely.“All of that, plus his own relentless self promotion over a 30- or 40-year period, rose up to a fantasy reality TV version of who he was that was never true. It’s been systematically dismantled, especially over the last four years by the evidence that everything he touches fails. Trump’s failures radically outweigh his successes and that is not the definition of a successful, much less a superior businessman.” More