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Trump is so 'unmoored from reality' he can't act as a defense witness: 'Art of the Deal' ghostwriter
April 01, 2023
Now that former President Donald Trump has been indicted for his alleged $130,000 hush payment scheme in 2016, he will need to mount an effective legal defense against Manhattan prosecutors.
Unfortunately, argued his "Art of the Deal" co-author Tony Schwartz on MSNBC's "The Beat" Friday, Trump is too delusional and detached from objective fact to do this effectively.
"I think what's happening right now is that he moves between rage and literally a blend of delusion and disassociation," said Schwartz. "I think his grip on reality is incredibly thin a lot of the time. When he is not out of touch with reality, he is just angry. What's he angry about? I've been caught. I could be caught. I could be end up in an 8-by-10 foot cell, I don't think he thought about that. I don't think he has the capacity to imagine himself inside a cell. We know from a lot of reporting that he is concerned he was concerned about getting indicted."
"You dealt with developing a narrative, as they call it, a story about himself, which he then super-sized, you talked about that," said anchor Ari Melber. "You have given money to charity and talked about that illusion of that. You didn't want him to become president. A story he would tell in this trial, would it be effective would it be different than the story his lawyers will try to tell?"
RELATED: Nobody really knows what would happen if a former U.S. President is incarcerated
"You know, I think he is so unmoored now, if you look at just, for example, his last speech, the one he did in, I think, Texas, last week — I mean, he is so unmoored from reality that I don't think he is a great witness," said Schwartz. "He would never be a great witness with a whole jury. Many of them would go, 'I don't believe you.'"
"In the past, I think he could have come off effectively with at least one or two," added Schwartz. "I'm not sure that — unless it's an absolute devotee, I'm not sure he can hold himself together enough to be in any way persuasive."
Watch the segment below or at this link.
Tony Schwartz says Trump is too "unhinged from reality" for a legal defense www.youtube.com
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Since former President Richard Nixon resigned in 1973 under the threat of impeachment, constitutional law experts have debated what would happen if an incarcerated person ran for president and won.
The question that has been largely theoretical for 50 years is becoming more relevant now that a former president and current Republican 2024 front-runner is in legal jeopardy.
A Manhattan grand jury on Thursday indicted Donald Trump in connection with alleged hush money payments for Stormy Daniels. The former president plans to fly to New York on Monday before appearing in court the next day to face unspecified charges.
Article II of the Constitution doesn’t offer much help. It only requires that a president be a natural-born citizen, at least 35 years of age and a U.S. resident for 14 years.
A 1973 Office of Legal Counsel memo and a separate 2000 Department of Justice memo were created to address the possibility that the Founding Fathers didn’t specifically address, Salon reports.
Running for president from behind bars isn’t without precedent.
In 1920 an incarcerated Eugene Debs ran for president as a Socialist Party of America candidate and collected nearly a million votes. Debs was convicted under the 1918 Sedition Act.
But what would happen if an incarcerated candidate won?
Salon’s Stefanie Lindquist writes that: “Because these core functions require meetings, communications or consultations with the military, foreign leaders and government officials in the U.S. and abroad in ways that cannot be performed while imprisoned, constitutional law scholar Alexander Bickel remarked in 1973 that ‘obviously the presidency cannot be conducted from jail.’"
Lindquist concludes, "If the people choose a president hobbled by criminal sanctions, that is a form of self-determination too. And one for which the Constitution has no ready solution.”
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Former President Donald Trump has responded to his indictment by a Manhattan grand jury by going after the prosecutor, who is Black, with a torrent of racist abuse.
This is to be expected, said Trump biographer David Cay Johnston to MSNBC's Joy Reid on Friday.
"You know ... he's called D.A. Bragg an 'animal,'" said Reid. "He's done the anti-Semitic trope of calling on the name of George Soros and pretending he's a puppet of the Jewish financier, much like the 1950s racists used to do with civil rights workers. He formally attacked a Mexican judge who presided over a case, Judge Curiel, called him a 'hater', saying he's not impartial because he's a Mexican. And this current judge, who's Latino, Juan Manuel Merchan, wrote a screed about him as well. None of this feels coincidental given who Donald Trump is. He's always played around with white supremacy as a game. What do you expect him to deteriorate into as this case goes forward?"
"Well, he's going to do everything he can to stir up people with his lies," said Johnston. "For example, this afternoon, George Soros said 'I've never met and I've never given a penny to Alvin Bragg.' And all of these things Donald Trump does are fundamentally built on lies."
In spite of that, Johnston warned, he is concerned that Trump is successfully managing to twist the terms of the debate over his alleged wrongdoing.
"We should also be very concerned that's the tenor of the discussion," said Johnston. "Even in a piece today by Peter Baker, the superb New York Times White House correspondent, says, 'Our democracy is threatened by prosecuting Trump,' without giving one word to the thought that, gee, maybe our democracy will be strengthened and revived because we follow the idea of, we are all equal under the law."
Watch the segment below or at this link.
David Cay Johnston on Trump's efforts to "stir up" people www.youtube.com
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