__________________ "The great promise of the Internet was that more information would automatically yield better decisions. The great disappointment is that more information actually yields more possibilities to confirm what you already believed anyway." - Brian Eno
Trump, facing a crowd that had gathered in the lobby of Trump Tower, on Fifth Avenue, laid out his qualifications, saying, “We need a leader that wrote ‘The Art of the Deal.’ ” If that was so, Schwartz thought, then he, not Trump, should be running. Schwartz dashed off a tweet: “Many thanks Donald Trump for suggesting I run for President, based on the fact that I wrote ‘The Art of the Deal.’ ”
Schwartz had ghostwritten Trump’s 1987 breakthrough memoir, earning a joint byline on the cover, half of the book’s five-hundred-thousand-dollar advance, and half of the royalties. The book was a phenomenal success, spending forty-eight weeks on the Times best-seller list, thirteen of them at No. 1. More than a million copies have been bought, generating several million dollars in royalties. The book expanded Trump’s renown far beyond New York City, making him an emblem of the successful tycoon. Edward Kosner, the former editor and publisher of New York, where Schwartz worked as a writer at the time, says, “Tony created Trump. He’s Dr. Frankenstein.”
Starting in late 1985, Schwartz spent eighteen months with Trump—camping out in his office, joining him on his helicopter, tagging along at meetings, and spending weekends with him at his Manhattan apartment and his Florida estate. During that period, Schwartz felt, he had got to know him better than almost anyone else outside the Trump family. Until Schwartz posted the tweet, though, he had not spoken publicly about Trump for decades. It had never been his ambition to be a ghostwriter, and he had been glad to move on. But, as he watched a replay of the new candidate holding forth for forty-five minutes, he noticed something strange: over the decades, Trump appeared to have convinced himself that he had written the book. Schwartz recalls thinking, “If he could lie about that on Day One—when it was so easily refuted—he is likely to lie about anything.”
Quote:
Schwartz thought about publishing an article describing his reservations about Trump, but he hesitated, knowing that, since he’d cashed in on the flattering “Art of the Deal,” his credibility and his motives would be seen as suspect. Yet watching the campaign was excruciating. Schwartz decided that if he kept mum and Trump was elected he’d never forgive himself. In June, he agreed to break his silence and give his first candid interview about the Trump he got to know while acting as his Boswell.
“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.”
And to sum up Trump as a 5 year old
Quote:
Minutes after Trump got off the phone with me, Schwartz’s cell phone rang. “I hear you’re not voting for me,” Trump said. “I just talked to The New Yorker—which, by the way, is a failing magazine that no one reads—and I heard you were critical of me.”
“You’re running for President,” Schwartz said. “I disagree with a lot of what you’re saying.”
“That’s your right, but then you should have just remained silent. I just want to tell you that I think you’re very disloyal. Without me, you wouldn’t be where you are now. I had a lot of choice of who to have write the book, and I chose you, and I was very generous with you. I know that you gave a lot of speeches and lectures using ‘The Art of the Deal.’ I could have sued you, but I didn’t.”
“My business has nothing to do with ‘The Art of the Deal.’ ”
“That’s not what I’ve been told.”
“You’re running for President of the United States. The stakes here are high.”
“Yeah, they are,” he said. “Have a nice life.” Trump hung up.
It is GD scary that Hilary is everyone's best shot at this whole thing not going down in the anals of history (no, autocorrect, that was not a typo) as the beginning of the end.
I mean.. Thanks to movies and the Internet, I feel that there are fairly large (and often overlapping) groups of regular, hard working and educated people out there who either believe it's highly likely that the POTUS is simply a puppet figurehead; many have straight up accepted this as "fact" and openly discuss how their opinions don't hold water anymore as a result of this and that important decisions these days are made behind closed doors by people we've never heard of.
I'll admit, I've more than humoured the concept of this, but never in my life have I so desperately hoped that it's true.
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Long time listener, first time caller.
I saw it. Trump talked about how great he is, couldn't give any details about how he's going to accomplish all sorts of tremendous things, how many people love him, and generally did the old song and dance.
Pence is a guy that doesn't appear to know yet that he's sold his soul to the devil, but is smart enough to figure it out one day.
Trump once again floating his Alex Jones theories that "something's up with Obama's body language" when he talks about cop tragedies. Predictably the media once again did jack#### about going after him. They're so afraid of being cut out of future interviews (as evidence from his childishness shown in the New Yorker piece) they simply refuse to do their damn jobs. Beyond embarrassing at this point.
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"Think I'm gonna be the scapegoat for the whole damn machine? Sheeee......."
I saw it. Trump talked about how great he is, couldn't give any details about how he's going to accomplish all sorts of tremendous things, how many people love him, and generally did the old song and dance.
Pence is a guy that doesn't appear to know yet that he's sold his soul to the devil, but is smart enough to figure it out one day.
Pence's political career was at a dead end basically, he had nothing to lose. I'm sure he's well aware what he signed up for.
Trump once again floating his Alex Jones theories that "something's up with Obama's body language" when he talks about cop tragedies. Predictably the media once again did jack#### about going after him. They're so afraid of being cut out of future interviews (as evidence from his childishness shown in the New Yorker piece) they simply refuse to do their damn jobs. Beyond embarrassing at this point.
I don't have TV but I happened to be somewhere that had CNN on they seemed to be laying into him pretty hard about it, except for one guy.
__________________ Uncertainty is an uncomfortable position.
But certainty is an absurd one.
