WASHINGTON – President Trump's long-ago co-author on "The Art of the Deal" has been trashing him since the 2016 campaign, but his recent rhetoric is reaching overkill proportions – like his psycho-analytical claim on MSNBC that if Trump had dictatorial power like Kim Jong Un, he would be murdering as many as many people as the North Korean dictator.
"If Trump had the power that Kim Jong Un does ... and the lack of consequence if he, quote, 'breaks the law,' I believe that Trump would be murdering as many enemies as Kim Jong Un does," Tony Schwartz said Saturday.
The writer also suggested the president had the "inner sense of emptiness" and "sociopathy" to become a dictator.
But, since becoming an ardent critic of Trump, Schwartz’s predictions about what the president might do have less than a stellar track record of fulfillment.
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In August of last year he tweeted with this prediction: "The circle is closing at blinding speed. Trump is going to resign and declare victory before Mueller and congress leave him no choice."
"I put lipstick on a pig," he told the New Yorker in 2016, adding he feels "a deep sense of remorse" for "presenting Trump in a way that brought him wider attention and made him more appealing than he is."
Much of what Schwartz has said and written about the president in the last two years has been psycho-analytical. In a January 2016 think-piece publishing in the London Guardian, he called Trump “delusional,” and that he hears in him “the plaintive wail of a desperate child who believes he is alone in the world with no one to care for him.” He also labeled Trump as “angry,” “reactive,” “deceitful,” “distracted,” “vindictive” and “self-absorbed.”
He has said he lacks the fitness to be president.
But, ultimately, it appears it is Trump’s politics that have turned Schwartz into one of his most vehement critics.
“Trump has made fear the dominant emotion of our times,” Schwartz wrote in the Guardian piece. “This, I believe, is his primary impact on the body politic after a year in office. He began his campaign by describing immigrant Mexicans as rapists, Muslims as terrorists, and more recently all black and brown people, and entire countries, as inferior. Trump skilfully (sic) exploited the fears of supporters who felt powerless and disenfranchised by presenting himself as their angry champion, even though the policies he has since pursued are likely to make their lives worse. About the only thing Trump truly has in common with his base is that he feels every bit as aggrieved as they do, despite his endless privilege. No amount of money, fame or power has been enough to win him the respect he so insatiably craves. His anger over this perceived injustice is visceral and authentic. Trump’s unwinding of government programs such as Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act will fuel yet more fear among the millions of people will lose their health care in the year ahead. The tax plan Trump pushed through most benefits him, his family and his fellow billionaires and provides the least relief to those who need it most. In both cases, the victims of these policies will include millions of his supporters who may find someone else to blame, but whose suffering will inexorably increase.”
Schwartz also pledged in that vitriolic article: "My personal commitment is to pay much less attention to him."
Yet, Schwartz is seemingly everywhere these days condemning Trump – even little-watched MSNBC weekend morning shows.