On Tuesday, Donald Trump biographer Tony Schwartz sat down with CNN's Anderson Cooper to discuss President Donald Trump's deal-making skills. Trump's ability to negotiate has been proven false as the month-long government shutdown continues.
Little progress has been made as Trump's tried to get Congress to approve billions in funding for a wall at the US-Mexico border. Even though Trump released the book "The Art of the Deal," Schwartz explained that the president has zero deal making talent.
"I understand you kind of created the narrative of him as a deal maker, is that right?" Cooper asked Schwartz.
He explained that he co-authored the book and centered it around deal-making because Trump's life didn't have much substance for an auto-biography which Trump wanted at the time.
"It was a way of framing a story about which there was very little to say absent the deals he'd been involved in," Schwartz said.
"As a negotiator, it seems like claiming victory is his main focus. I mean, some people make deals so that everyone feels they win. It just seems like he doesn't view it that way," Cooper said.
Schwartz explained that Trump views deal-making as smashing your hand with a hammer.
"Well, he views a deal as something he must win. His style of deal-making is to take a hammer and raise it over your head and smash it down and say 'would you like to make that deal?' And if you say no, smash it down again. But we're in a very different world now. In a world in which he doesn't hold all the cards," Schwartz said.
Watch below via CNN.
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