Tony Schwartz: The Truth About Trump | Oxford Union Q&A

Good evening everyone, it's wonderful to see such a big crowd first. I want to thank you all for inviting me to be part of this distinguished speaker series or for coming to hear this tonight. I am deeply honored to be able to be a part of this distinguished speaker series. included among the extraordinary people who have spoken before me at this historic place, but why am I here? I am someone who until several months ago had probably never heard of two strangely paradoxical explanations: the first is that I made a decision early in my adult life to write a book with a daring young real estate developer of moderate success who was virtually unknown outside the mainstream.

The United States, in fact, was virtually unknown even outside of New York City at the time. 30 years later, this man did something he would never have imagined possible. when I met him he decided to run for president of the United States and within ten days that man, God save us, he could become the leader of the free world. It's a scary thought and in fact, more specifically, I'm here tonight because shortly before Donald Trump. I won the Republican nomination for president in July. I made the decision to publicly renounce the book I had written and the man whose image and personality I had helped shape and define.

Tonight I want to talk to you about who Donald Trump is and why I think he poses such a dangerous threat to the future of our planet and I also want to talk to you about the journey that took me from serving as Trump's Boswell in my 30s to becoming of the 60s into one of its most visible and glamorous critics. I began my career as a journalist motivated by often contradictory ambitions; On the one hand, I was raised by two parents deeply committed to public service; my father was a scientist and educator; my mother was a social activist and a pioneering feminist;

I grew up believing deeply that I had a responsibility to serve others in my life and make a positive difference in the world. I also grew up with a burning ambition to stand out individually to be recognized as special by as many people as I could. As effective as my parents were in their work in the world, they were deeply flawed as caregivers. When I was a child, I never had the feeling of being deeply loved or lovable. I grew up burdened by a deep sense of inadequacy and a fierce hunger to prove my own worth to others. through visible external achievements.

I imagine that feeling is not foreign to some of you who are here tonight influenced by the contradictory messages I received from my parents. I came into adulthood with a deep conflict between serving others and serving myself between Doing what I perceived to be right and doing whatever it took to feel safer in the world and get attention. Journalism seemed like a good way to combine both to be noticed and appreciated publicly as a writer and to do good as a writer. HL Mencken once phrased it as afflicting the comfortable and comforting the afflicted. While working for New York magazine, I first encountered Donald Trump, back when Trump was a 38-year-old real estate developer who had made a name for himself in New York by building a highly successful hotel atop the Grand Central Station on 42nd Street and then a flashy condo in a prized Midtown location he modestly named Trump Tower in early 1985.

I learned that Trump had purchased an existing apartment building overlooking New York's Central Park South. another prized location, but in this case the building's tenants lived under the protection of rent control and stabilization and paid very low rent. Trump's plan was to get rid of them and convert the building into a luxury condo to help in that effort. hired a company that specialized in what was known as tenant relocation or relocation but what that really meant was intentionally breaking the elevators so that tenants would be forced to go up and down 15 flights of stairs without replacing the broken lights in the hallways or breaking the lights on purpose and generally refusing to make any kind of repairs, all of this was designed to make life miserable and unbearable enough for the tenants who felt they had no choice but to move out, that of course That was enough history, but the delicious addition was that Trump was failing miserably in his efforts to get rid of these tenants.

In the article I wrote, I described his efforts as a case study and how not to evacuate a building. The story of a gang that couldn't shoot properly. A leak of failure. A farce. of fumbling and clumsiness, the article's cover image featured an illustration of Trump looking like a thug, red-faced, sweating, and frowning. He loved it and he especially loved the cover photo, tough guy, and he called me to tell me that he wanted to be a tough guy. He immediately framed this cover and put it on the wall above his desk and I realized that Trump was unlike anyone I had ever met, he was a journalistic dream because everywhere he went he used to do something outrageous and that has never changed for several years. years.

Months later I interviewed him again for another story, a few minutes into our conversation he mentioned that he had just signed an agreement with the prestigious Random House publishing house to make a book about what it was about. I asked him if it was my autobiography and he said, just 38 I said you don't have that in order biography yes, yes, I know he said, but they pay me a lot of money to do it and I will do it if you are going to write a book. he said spontaneously you should call it the art of the deal people are much more interested in deals than in your autobiography the title had just popped into my head I like that Trump said you want to write it as much as he does me I'm embarrassed to tell you this today .

I expected him to say he already knew Trump was a bad actor. I just wrote this article that was a lot of evidence and writing a book with it would probably undermine my future credibility as a journalist. I would also subject myself to the legitimate accusation of having sold the term was invented for what I was about to do, on the other hand, my wife and I had two young children, we were both journalists and earned modest salaries and I was excessively worried about our financial situation when writing the Trump book I rationalized that I could create security for my family and free myself to do whatever I wanted next, what I really did was I told myself a story that the summit somehow made it okay to do this book.

I expressed my concerns about the type of man, he was in the background and I remember something that Jeb Magruder, one of Richard Nixon's advisors who got caught up in the Watergate scandal, said about himself, looking back a few years later, somewhere between my ambition and my ideals. I wrote I lost my moral compass I did the same thing and after doing that I focused on making the most of my opportunity most writers for hire receive a flat fee or a relatively modest percentage of any money the book makes Trump and I Heigl back and forth the art of the deal and finally agreed to give me 50% of the $500,000 advance.

My $250,000 chair in 1987 86 was five times what I had earned in any year as a journalist. He also agreed to share 50% of any money. future royalties the book brought her, my mother in particular was horrified, she disdained any focus on making money and by writing this book I was poking my finger in her eye and, although I didn't realize it at the time, it was my declaration of perversely independent of her once the contract was signed I met Trump on Saturday mornings in his penthouse in Trump Tower my plan was to interview him for two or three hours straight until I gathered enough material to write the book I imagined would take After After several dozen such meetings over the next six or eight months, it didn't take me long to realize that I was fooling myself in our first interview.

Trump became impatient after answering my questions, after a few minutes he was more than willing to give sound bites. practically any journalist who called him into his office at any time, but it was almost impossible to keep him focused on a single topic for more than five or ten minutes, he had a surprisingly short attention span, this is so boring, he said to me irritably a A few minutes into any interview we did, I don't want to talk about what's already happened, it's the past, it's over if I can get Trump to keep answering my questions for 20 minutes.

I considered it a great victory. He was like a kindergartner who couldn't. sitting still in a classroom, my strong guess is that Trump has never read a book in his adult life with the possible exception of those written for him and most likely not most of the ones I know because of the red marks he made that he read The manuscript. wrote at one point that Trump agreed to let me accompany him to Mara Lago, his home in Florida, for a weekend. My plan was to conduct a full series of interviews over 48 hours in order to make progress on this book I was struggling to get my hands on. made by his then wife Ivana, there were many who made it clear that he was not happy to have me there and that was understandable, he worked long hours during the week, he did not spend time with them and every time he passed by us with one . or another of his three small children who accompanied him, she looked at me intently and I felt ashamed.

He didn't seem to notice or care one bit. Trump was referring to Trump. He had almost no interest in his wife or his children when I didn't. What I don't know at the time is that he was actively carrying on an affair with Marla with maples than with women, the woman who would eventually and briefly become his second wife, most importantly for this story long before lunch, Trump stood up and He announced that he couldn't. He couldn't answer more of my questions if he didn't have enough clarity. I wasn't going to get a book of material by trying to interview Trump.

When we got back to New York, I just started showing up at his office most mornings. around 9:00 a.m. and invariably Trump was on the phone when I arrived with his permission, his delighted permission, if he could have had another ten thousand or ten million people listening that would have been good from his perspective, I would answer an extension eight feet away from him and I listened to their conversations for the next few hours and often all day for six months and then intermittently for the next year while writing the book as I look back, three qualities behind his inability to concentrate on the attack.

What I find alarming when I imagine him as president: the first is his complete disregard for the

truth

and his lack of awareness of that fact; the second is that he is guided entirely by what he perceives to be his immediate self-interest and the third is his inability to ever admit that he was wrong about anything, neither of those qualities seem very desirable in a president, apart from journalists, Trump mainly spoke during the day with lawyers, bankers and brokers about the deals I was making, these people became the main source of material for the book after each call or should I say after those calls I would go out and interview them to fill in the details that Trump was incapable of giving me himself, and it was in these conversations that I realized I couldn't accept anything Trump said to my face.

Assess these others' accounts often directly contradicted Trump's, and they can often casually share with me documents that backed up what they said. I was worried, but rationalized that I was writing a commissioned book, it wasn't meant to be my version. of events or even an objective account, this was his story and he stuck to it even in the face of the most undeniable evidence to the contrary, more than any human being I have ever met, Trump has the ability to convince himself that, whatever you say. at any given moment it is true or somewhat true or at least it should be to this day lying is second nature to him, just one more way to gain advantage if he is questioned about his facts, he doubled down and still does today.

Trump doesn't. He admits that he's wrong, just keep huffing and puffing until he knocks you down. Often the lies he told were about money, how much he had paid for something or how much a building he owned was worth or how much one of his casinos made. Even when we were on the brink of bankruptcy I struggled with how to tell stories that I knew included inaccuracies and eventually came to fruition. I came up with this sentence intended to cover all possible falsehoods. People want to believe that something is the biggest, greatest, and most spectacular thing it is.

It's called

truth

ful hyperbole It's an innocent form of exaggeration and a very effective form of promotional permission It's also crazy There is no such thing as truthful hyperbole The hyperbole is false but it was charming and in the end we got our way. I created a character and Trump is much more of a winner than he thought.which it really is. I never found him winning or especially intelligent or particularly interesting, but he was certainly an effective self-promoter and that book became a number one bestseller around the world, what I discovered in the course of Making That Book was how to transmute his voice in ways that would allow him to appear not as cynical and one-dimensional as he was, but rather to be a little boyish and naively even charming here for Idzik, for example, that's how I asked Trump to introduce himself to the art of the deal.

I do it for the money I have enough much more than I will ever need I do it to do it other people paint beautifully or write wonderful poetry I like to make deals, preferably big deals that's how I have fun, in fact Trump did it for the money, he never believed that he had enough, just as he could never get enough attention, he didn't do anything just to do it and he certainly didn't think of his agreements as poetry because the word poetry was not part of his limited vocabulary. Trump enjoyed making big deals, but the pleasure never lasted long and he was always hungry for the next one, over time I began to think of this man as a black.

In the hole there was nothing to sustain him inside, so he looked completely to the outside world. To feed himself, no amount of money, success, praise or attention was enough. I never saw any evidence that Trump had any deep convictions or core values ​​guiding him, which helps explain why he can change his position so easily and shamelessly from one day to the next. The wins seemed negotiable to me for the right price or the right advantage. His most abiding commitment, obsession, and passion was to prove to others that he was a winner, regardless of what that seemed to require in any given death, and then to spread the word about his success, whether it really was or not.

A success as far as possible while I was working on this book. Trump is likely to call me at any time of the day or night. My wife Deborah often answered the phone when he called. More than a year and a half, she reminded me. Recently, Trump never remembered her name or the names of my children or maybe even that I had children. She knew my name but not much else about me because she never asked me that she was there to do a job and the conversations with Trump are one of the ways I did that.

Don't take it personally, but this also helps explain why he had no friends to support him. Friendships for Trump were completely functional. He was friendly to the people who helped make his agreements come true and hostile to those who stood in his way. Friendships came and went just as he did. Like his wives and girlfriends, in fact, with the exception of anger, Trump did not traffic much in emotions of any kind. With the exception of anger, he could become briefly enraged if questioned about any of his pronouncements, especially his grid. value that he equated with his personal and therefore constantly inflated worth, but just as often Trump used his anger as a means to an end and acted when he thought it served him well and then abandoned as soon as he felt it served him well. that I needed. he wanted the same thing to happen with Trump's beliefs, psychology easily amounted to this, as long as I win and people notice.

I fully recognize that I have painted an extreme portrait of this man and that the vast majority of human beings, virtually all human beings, are more complex than the man I just described. I also think his extremity helps explain why he has been an object of fascination for so long. In my case, I think I was attracted to Trump in part because he represented what Jung would have called the man I just described. The Dark Side of Myself Trump grew up with a brutal father and mother with whom he appears to have had virtually no relationship.

It is too simplistic to say that who is a product of having lacked love and care as a child and spending my entire life searching for it in the external world, but it is also true that my own childhood was certainly less extreme than Trump's, but I recognized my experience in his. The hunger for unconditional love and acceptance exists in all of us and the absence of it is always a source of suffering. Trump wears his most primitive instincts, his greed and grandiosity, his lust and his envy, right there on his sleeve. Most of us do a better job than him at keeping these kinds of feelings under wraps.

It's much easier to see Trump as completely oblivious to what We all advocate what it is to recognize aspects of yourself in ourselves, but what commitments have you made in your own life? Where has he rationalized and explained decisions that were less than honorable, ethical, or kind? Where has he put his immediate personal interest in him? In front of others, what parts of yourself do you hide from others and maybe even from yourself? Writing a book with Donald Trump was a way I was able to live out these instincts in myself, my hungry desire for more money and fame indirectly and without taking direct responsibility for them.

I wasn't much older than most of you today when I wrote The Art of the Deal, at which point I told myself that doing so was no big deal and would have no lasting consequences. The truth is that that decision the book and my association with Trump has quietly haunted and haunted me for thirty years in many ways the rest of my life has been a reaction to having written The Art of the Deal The next book I wrote was titled What It really matters seeking wisdom In the United States my goal was to get as far as possible from the values ​​that Trump represented.

Instead, I wanted to hang out and write about people who had led more thoughtful and intentional lives and who had goals beyond their own immediate interest but, interestingly, in five years. From meeting and working with psychologists, philosophers, scientists and mystics who spent their lives seeking higher wisdom, what I found was complexity and contradiction. I met people who were often moving in their words and skillful in their practices, but these same people were also capable of returning buried or primitive behaviors and being blind to the contradiction between their walk and their talk. I now think of this as our shared infinite capacity for self-deception for most of the last two decades.

I have run a company called Energy Project. We've focused on helping people and businesses manage their work more skillfully, fuel their own energy more skillfully, and live happier, more productive lives as a result. I am proud of the work we have done, but I have also been Humbled by it in the years since the agreement, I deeply wanted to feel better about who I was and believe that it was possible to achieve some form of enlightenment to reach the promised land and truly move forward. altruism if Trump represented one extreme of human behavior I wanted the other extreme and I want to leave you at this moment with a more nuanced perspective that is a product of these 30 years of searching that have characterized my life most of you are just entering adulthood They have invested a lot to get to where you are today, to this very special place that many consider the ticket to a successful life and to some extent that is true, it is an extraordinary privilege to have an Oxford education and it is an advantage, but whatever What you can learn at Oxford is truly just the beginning of your education.

I myself have learned more in the last decade than in the previous five decades. Mainly what I have learned is what it means to be more fully human. Just for a moment. I would like you to think. From some adjectives that describe you at your best just let your mind filter to some adjectives that describe who you are at your best. I very much hope that each of you now have some, now take a few minutes to think of some. adjectives that describe you at your worst, who are you at your worst? So now the $64,000 question which of these elevators describes who you really are, isn't it obvious that you're both along with some grade agents in between, isn't that a more complete solution? way to describe yourself, isn't it true that you can be your worst self but that self is not all you are and that you can be your best but you are not always your best?

This is what I believe, true growth. and development, personal evolution is really about seeing more and excluding less. Today I am still that person who made that fateful decision at age 33, 33 years old, to write a book with a man named Donald Trump that will be part of my story for the In the end, the instincts that drove the decision have not gone away. , but now I am much more aware of them and proportionately more able to manage them and make conscious decisions about how I behave in the world. I have also grown immensely over time. In the last three decades my perspective is broader, deeper and longer.

I see my flaws more clearly and trust that my strengths are real and lasting. I don't spend as much energy as I used to and as Donald Trump still does trying to demonstrate or defend my own value the result is that I have much more energy available to create value in the world loving yourself is not an easy matter, the psychologist James Hillman because it means loving oneself, including the shadow in which one is inferior and so socially unacceptable. Therefore, the cure is a travesty that requires two incommensurable he tries hard and come on, they both judge harshly. and you join in gladly seeing more and excluding less accepting what Zorba the Greek sadly called the total catastrophe and embracing it this is called a whole life this is the life that Donald Trump has never lived and will never live but you could and I deeply hope that Do it because to whom much is given, much is expected.

Thank you Sonne, thank you very much for that truly revealing talk and I would like to start with a very difficult question: What are the five adjectives that describe the best of Donald Trump? That's a tough question, you know? I have been asked many times what his redeeming qualities are. You know everyone else's redeeming qualities and it was embarrassing for me not to have an answer. For some time now, he is perseverant, he is aggressive in the pursuit of his goals. I'm falling short. I mean, I think it's perseverance, perseverance, that's the thing, if you took Donald Trump's perseverance and aggressiveness and applied it to a virtuous goal, it would be very effective, there's a lot of energy, there's just the wrong quality of energy. interesting and when he announced his candidacy coming down the golden escalator holding your book, did you dismiss it like everyone else or could you see it coming?

I had a terrible feeling in the pit of my stomach when he came on stage and said America. needs the man who wrote the art of the deal to be president, first of all I didn't think he was qualified and second of all I didn't think he was qualified and third of all I thought about whether he would lie about it when not only was he so fake Payton Lee but so easy to disprove that he would lie about anything and yes, and his answer to your question I thought from the beginning, not the earliest, but from the beginning, that he could get the nomination and move on.

Beyond the nomination, what do you think are the chances that the polls are wrong and there are a lot of quiet Trump voters and that he can be in the White House in January? Well, I would say I wish WikiLeaks wasn't happening and you are very aware of the fact that there is a large room and there are about 400 people here and in a sense I presented myself as if this was the consensus and I recognize that there are people here who They probably have a very different feeling about Donald Trump than I do and the reason I've been speaking out is not to disagree with his political positions.

It turns out that I do not agree with them, but because I believe that his characterological deficiencies are so great that they prevent him from being president and that, whatever it may be. The smoke and mirrors created over the course of the campaign may lead people to believe that I lived with this man day and night for a year and a half and I have no doubt that my assessment of his character is accurate and sadly not there is. pretty much anyone else who has had such a close relationship with Donald Trump who hasn't signed a confidentiality agreement and therefore isn't talking about it and for those kinds of divided opinions, I want to read you a quote from Michael Moore, something which he said very recently.

You may have seen this on the news. He said that what Trump means or doesn't mean is irrelevant because he is saying those things to people who are suffering and that is why every forgotten, anonymous, beaten down worker who used to be part of what was called the middle class loves Trump. is the human Molotov cocktail they have been waiting for do you think this is an accurate preparation for hearing that we need as a society in the US and given the brexit here and the marine lepen in France andnationalist movements at all? All over the world, all over the Western world, we must recognize that Trump did not come out of nowhere.

Trump emerged from deep discontent and what that discontent was. I would say that the main reason for this discontent is the tremendous income inequality that has existed. emerged is the dark side of capitalism is a whole group of people like those Michael Moore described who grew up believing they had as much right to the American dream as anyone else and had been used to working shitty jobs but which paid them reasonably well and had some version of that American dream, a nice car, a house, some security and then suddenly the world is filled with a small number of people like Donald Trump, who control a large percentage of the wealth and have their backs turned. and the irony is that Trump should be their enemy, but the reality is that they have reason to be angry and I'm not surprised that the most marginalized people in our society, who are white because Trump has been so ugly and hates so many people. many minority groups, but for white people who are disenfranchised, I understand why they are for him and a big part of the reason I speak out is in the hope that I can temper that anger by recognizing that this man does not Why They don't care about them and why don't these disenfranchised white people feel represented by Democratic politics?

Why aren't they yet? Because Democrats and Republicans are largely equal opportunity violators when it comes to income disparity and over-acceptance of a free market, you know, unfortunately, you can, you know, you look at the election that the Clintons made after leaving office and it was to increase his advantage and that in itself is a source of enormous anger in people why aren't they angry at Trump for bringing in workers from abroad and you know that making your products in other countries is a mystery to me, it's not a complete mystery, the other factor that I would say that makes sense to me is that Trump is not a traditional politician, so they are telling themselves and maybe some people in this room are telling themselves he He could be a savior I'm desperate for a savior He could be a savior and I'm going to throw caution to the wind because by now almost everyone understands that this is a man with some pretty serious limitations, but it's a measure of anger that is surpassed by hope so let's talk about those limitations regarding the campaign and for many people the line between the campaign strategy and your bethune ereee is quite blurred and I wonder from your perspective how artificial the campaign is and other mistakes planned or enjoyed scandals or this is literally one mistake after another.

It's literally mistake after mistake, I mean there is no planning in the sense that Trump runs the shop, make no mistake, the reason you see tweets from him that are self-immolating and crazy is because no one controls him, he does what you want. to do and there is no age standing next to his bed at 4:00 a.m. m. when he feels the urge to tweet. The campaign is an almost perfect reflection of the great man. I'm one last question before posting. about the audiences and how you think he's going to deal with losing if he loses, you're making me anxious first of all, I'm very superstitious and I don't want to say he's going to lose even though I desperately hope so if he loses, it would be a real Black Swan event for him won, but it was a Black Swan event for him to win the nomination, so I'm not ruling it out, having said that I hope he loses and I don't expect him to. to ease into the night, he has continued to up the ante like a drug addict.

Does the drug addict want more mainstream, you know, stray dogs, more cocaine or a pure dose of heroin because they're always chasing hello Donald Trump when it comes to attention? always chasing the greeting, so when this election is over and he feels like he's listening, many more mentally healthy presidential candidates than him have gone through prolonged periods of depression after their losses, it's a huge loss and public humiliation, but Trump isn't is available for depression, just won. Don't go there, I don't think so, instead he will get angry and stoke that anger that is within his followers any way he can to provide evidence that he was wrong, the election was rigged and he didn't. did.

Really lose trust in me when I say this, when Trump loses the election, he will never acknowledge that he will not concede the election and he will never acknowledge that he lost the election because to do that is to feel destroyed and he's not going to go there, so it's going to be a dangerous time and tense in the United States in the weeks after the elections. Thank you. Very scary. If you have any questions, raise your hand and wait for the microphone to come to you and then ideally you could stand up. You get to the girl, yes, many would blame the current state of the American media and journalism for the rise of Donald Trump and if you agree with that opinion, I was wondering, first of all, what are your opinions on the American media in this presidency. election and if you agree with the critics, then what do you think needs to change to prevent this type of Donald Trump situation from happening again?

I actually don't think the media is a big factor in Donald Trump winning the Republican nomination and I'm saying the nomination because the media's perspectives have changed dramatically since the election and I actually think the media has done a very good job. by exposing Trump's shortcomings since the election since the nomination, the reason why I don't think they played that. A bigger role is because I think the force driving Trump was greater within the media and I also think the simple truth about journalism is that you go where the story is and, rightly or wrongly, it's very hard to resist Trump, that's the story, he's just very good, and here's one ability he has, he's an incredibly effective manipulator of the media to get attention, he's no longer an effective manipulator of the media to get attention positive, but is able to draw attention in terms of what I think will happen or should happen.

I think that introspection in the media has already begun. I have had many conversations with reporters traveling with the candidates in recent months because of the role I played and I think a tremendous bridge has been crossed and that A positive bridge, that bridge is the recognition that the objectivity of quotes actually It's not paying equal attention to both sides of an argument if one's argument completely and utterly lacks credibility, and so you'll start to see now that you've started to see things like Trump in the headlines. lied about Thank you very much, so my question is do you believe that Donald Trump leads his constituents or If Donald Trump's constituents lead him, do you believe that these policies originally came from him and he later recognized that they would work as well or if somehow discovered that this was really at the beating heart of America? and therefore adopted these policies and became their standard bearer, it's a complicated question because when he came down that escalator to announce his candidacy and said, "You know, the people who come from Mexico from Mexico are rapists," that was not spontaneous.

He had been planning that line for a long time and had discovered a few years earlier that he could stoke the fears and interest of a certain electorate by creating a polarized world and placing in this case the Mexicans, but then the Muslims, the blacks, the women and others. You know pretty much everyone except white men as enemies, so I think there was a lot of conscious thought about this, which is interesting to me over the last six weeks since Steve Bannon took over the campaign from him. . Steve has been and is a leader of what is now called the far right, but you know, in the old days it would have been called the Ku Klux Klan and I have observed very clearly the influence of Steve Bannon on Trump's statements and, in fact, I think the closer his loss gets to Losing, the angrier he gets and the more alt-right-like he gets, so it's like a powder keg.

People are already angry. Trump wasn't originally angry he just wanted attention. Now angry and boom, that's explosive. He is the woman at the white top who leads from there. Do you believe? your experience with Trump that he is a racist and a misogynist yes and yes, I mean I had to stop and think about it, there is no doubt that he is a misogynist, I mean, that speaks for itself, think about he had this analogy that You know, if I write, when I was a reporter I wrote an article in a newspaper, this is before the Internet and I received a dozen letters about it that were considered a lot, in fact, it was supposed to reflect the desire of a thousand people wrote, but the The only ones who took the initiative were those twelve.

In the case of those twelve women who came forward to accuse Donald Trump of sexual assault, they had to cross a huge barrier to do so. I mean, what possible benefit is there for a woman to subject herself to ridicule and humiliation by Donald Trump? A possible lawsuit. The ink voyeur asks many people about the details. So my assumption is that there are hundreds and hundreds of women out there who were sexually assaulted or, if not, sexually assaulted, sexually approached and unwilling by Donald Trump, ergo misogynist in terms of racist, my experience with him was that he had a peculiar kind of racism, just as you have a peculiar kind of anti-Semitism, so just add a Thirdly, racism, I actually had a great admiration for a small group of black men who were wrestlers, boxers and football players, If you were a boxer or a football player, Donald Trump admired you as a black man, if you were pretty much anyone else, you weren't. admired and then as for the Jews you know his attitude towards the Jews and of course his wife has converted and become a Jew but I honestly don't think that makes the slightest difference to him he is not friendlier with the Jews than it would have been.

I've been before that, accept it, maybe he sees Jews as really very effective people at managing her money, so he likes Jews who are accountants and lawyers, the rest of us not so much. Let's put the red top on the front bench. One thing this election has seen is that the traditional Conservative Party has had to completely change to adapt to its brand of conservatism. How much do you think Cipriano's appointment to the Supreme Court has affected? What if that change? The elections have affected current support among traditional Republican leaders. Wardrop for Trump despite the scandals, well listen, I mean, I'm a Democrat, you know, I have very progressive views and I've always voted, not always, but I've mostly voted Democrat and it would take a Really bad Democrat in this election to not vote for that person.

If Donald Trump were a Democrat he wouldn't be, but the reason would be the Supreme Court because we are in a historic moment with the Supreme Court where the future of that Court will be determined for 40 years probably by two or three or maybe even four appointments that are possible for the next four to eight years, so if I consider myself a conservative Republican I understand that there are many of them who hold their nose as tightly as they can and say: you know and and I know I'm upset with what he says, particularly the Evangelical Christians who are upset with what he says, but feel like I have to do it because the shape of the world that will emerge is so influenced by Supreme Court decisions.

Tony has better eyesight than me, so he's going to pick someone sitting in the back, yes, the gentleman with the beard holding his hand up, do you have a beard?, that's what you were trying to figure out, yes, he's here. Well, $70,000 a year meant that they. re educated who have a college education, I would say no, it is not seventy thousand dollars a year in the United States as an amount that you can earn in various ways, an uneducated uber driver could earn $70,000 and a factory worker in a good Union could easily be at $70,000, so I'm not sure that's convincing that they are educated people, that there are as many educated people that make up the forum as we think, but listen to your point: faith among all kinds of people At all levels of income at all levels of education in the once sacred institutions of society, law enforcement, clergy, politicians and government, virtually all of them have lost respect and esteem, and there are an enormous number of millions and millions of people who feel untethered, unprotected and insecure. and I think when you play with fear, fear hits a different part of the brain than rational appeals and Trump is really good because a lot of despotic and authoritarian leaders have stoked people's fears so if you can get one person feel scared enough, you might be. aPhD, but the level at which you're talking to the mat is the level of a six-year-old, which helps explain why smarter people who should know better don't necessarily behave better.

I'll come back at the end with what I know. I should go to a woman who told me I called a misogynist, so you worked with Trump over thirty years ago and now you see him on TV and running for president. There is something? Let me not call it a development, but a change in this character that can be seen because I mean, you've talked a lot about how you've changed over the years, so how has Trump changed? It is a fundamental principle of the work we do in the energy project, that you cannot change what you do not change.

He realizes it and Trump doesn't realize it. He was quoted the other day in Michael Dantonio, one of his biographers. One of his biographers published a whole series of tapes of interviews he did with men. He was quoted as saying: "I don't like it, no." I don't look, I'm not willing to see this as a non-accurate quote, but no, I'm not willing to look inside myself because I may not like what I see, so my experience with Trump is that he is very similar. person I was when I met him at 38 and then I was pretty much the same person at 38 that he was at 13.

I had a wonderful experience that speaks to this and maybe it's a good way to end. I have attended the debates and I have been lucky enough to sit very close, so when the debates I can go up on stage and experience what it is like to come and go at the end of the debates. third debate, the final debate in Las Vegas. I walked up to the front and there was kind of a cordoned off area where they were talking about what was going to happen there and they wanted to make sure they protected those two candidates, so I stood up. kind of like you would if you knew some celebrity was walking around like I was a fan and a lot of others were lined up there and Trump finally walked down the line and as he walked down the line he was like how are you and you bow.

I go out to shake the person's hand, so it's one, two, three, four and then he comes up to me and extends his hand and says, how are you? Oh God, it's you and he takes his hand away, so I don't think so. that has changed a lot. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for going short. Everyone join me in thanking him. Stay seated while we go.