'Deceive, attack, manipulate': Art of the Deal co-author explains Trump's strategy to cling to power

Tony Schwartz, the co-author of President Donald Trump's book "The Art of the Deal," told CNN's John Berman on Monday that the president's phone call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger was the sort of thing he's seen Trump do countless times in the past.

When asked by Berman what he made of the call, in which the president demanded that Raffensperger "find" enough votes for him to win Georgia, Schwartz replied that "it tells you again about his sociopathy, about his absence of conscience, about his inability or lack of any desire to tell the truth."

Expanding further on this, Schwartz said that the phone call mirrored Trump's strategy of dealing with setbacks during his business career.

"Trump's always acted exactly the same in the face of a crisis: Deny, deceive, cajole, attack, manipulate, and then rinse and repeat," he said.

Schwartz then hammered Republican lawmakers who are still trying to help Trump overturn the results of the 2020 election.

"I think that it's terrifying for democracy," he said. "To have 12 senators and 100 congress people completely, 100 percent willing to thwart the will of the people is not just problematic in this moment, even though it will be defeated this time, it is unequivocally setting a precedent for the future, which puts democracy at serious, serious, risk."

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