New Day's Alisyn Camerota was talking about Michael Wolff's book, and how he claims "100% of the people" he spoke to believe that Trump is unfit for office.
"Joining me now, the ghost writer behind the Trump autobiography The Art Of The Deal. You spent a lot of time shadowing, hanging around with Donald Trump while you were ghost writing his book," Camerota said.
"That was in 1987, which i hate to say is a long time ago. When you read Michael Wolff's book, what's new to you? What surprised you?"
"Well, he has clearly deteriorated," Schwartz said.
"Most of the general things that Wolff observes are things that I observed and that I talked about when I spoke to the New Yorker in July of 2016, the utter inability to pay attention for any long period of time, the garbled syntax when he tries to speak, the utter and complete self absorption.
"All of these things have always been true of Trump. What's happened is that he's deteriorated. He doesn't think even as well as he once did. And I certainly share, Alisyn, the belief that Trump is the person Wolff describes him as being in that book -- and I don't know about 100%, unless he didn't talk to some of the people who are his -- I don't believe Sarah Huckabee thinks that he's what Wolff says he was.
"I believe that any reasonable person spending at least 15 minutes with Donald Trump knows that this is a deeply, deeply disturbed man."
"If I understand you correctly, some of the quirks, for lack of a better word, are becoming more pronounced since you spent time with him," Camerota said.
She asked if Trump watched a lot of television then.
"He was, Alisyn. He watched in the early morning and he watched from the time he went back to his apartment in the evening. But what he did during the day, I can say because I was there for it, for months and months at a time, he worked," Schwartz said.
"He doesn't appear to do so much of that anymore. and I don't know the reason. But it's clear that he's either lazy or incapable of working now, and that wasn't as true before."
She then asked him to comment on the Axios story that Trump is showing up late in the morning to the Oval Office, "sometimes as late as 11:00 a.m. That's news to you?"
"Absolutely news to me. And I suspect that the reason, as you suggest, is not that he's lazy, it's that he is so disturbed about what's going on and so obsessed with watching it on tv and so much more singularly self absorbed than he has ever been -- and that's saying a lot, to be more -- that he feels compelled to stay in front of that TV and he sure as heck doesn't have an interest in policy. So the things that would go on in the office, in the Oval Office are not things he wants to spend as much time doing," he responded.
"Michael Wolff has reported -- I wanted to get your thoughts on this -- the president seems to fixate on things. In fact, according to Michael Wolff, when he talked to people around him, the president tells the same stories over and over. and maybe he always did that. now there seems to be a condensed time. if he used to tell the same stories in half an hour, now Michael Wolff it's within ten minutes. Did you see that practice?" Camerota asked.
"Donald Trump has only told one story, to be fair, and that story has been the same throughout his life: I'm the greatest. I'm the best. Now it's advanced to 'I'm a genius, a stable genius. It's always been the same story," Schwartz said.
"I do believe he has become more repetitive. I went back and watched the interviews he did 20, 30 years ago and they're scarily different. He is more articulate. I wouldn't call him a literary figure, but they're vastly different."
Camerota asked if Schwartz has concerns about his mental stability back in 1987.
"You know, he was not under any kind of intense stress. And this whole phrase 'mental stability' is such a tough one. Did I think he was a deeply narcissistic guy? Yes. Most of the diagnosis you can do of Donald Trump, any layperson can do," he said.
"Do I think he was mentally unstable then? Yes, I do. In other words, had he been subjected to intense stress, do I think he would have behaved in ways that are scary? I do think that.
"At that time, it simply wasn't the case. Now that he's president and the pressure is ratcheting up, not only in terms of just being president but all the controversy and pressure around him, I think it does contribute to his instability. And that instability is significant. and frightening," Schwartz said.
