It seemed improbable that Trump’s campaign would succeed, so Schwartz told himself that he needn’t worry much. 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.” 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. It had never been his ambition to be a ghostwriter, and he had been glad to move on. Until Schwartz posted the tweet, though, he had not spoken publicly about Trump for decades. During that period, Schwartz felt, he had got to know him better than almost anyone else outside the Trump family. 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. Edward Kosner, the former editor and publisher of New York, where Schwartz worked as a writer at the time, says, “Tony created Trump. The book expanded Trump’s renown far beyond New York City, making him an emblem of the successful tycoon. More than a million copies have been bought, generating several million dollars in royalties. The book was a phenomenal success, spending forty-eight weeks on the Times best-seller list, thirteen of them at No. 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.
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.’ ” 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. As Schwartz watched a video of the speech, he began to feel personally implicated. Trump had declared his candidacy for President. Last June, as dusk fell outside Tony Schwartz’s sprawling house, on a leafy back road in Riverdale, New York, he pulled out his laptop and caught up with the day’s big news: Donald J. It is one of the most enlightening articles you will read about Trump. Jane Mayer of The New Yorker magazine interviewed writer Tony Schwartz at his home about his experiences as Donald Trump’s ghostwriter for “The Art of the Deal.”
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