'The nature of not having a conscience': Trump's ghostwriter slams president's 'perverse' ability to lie

Donald Trump’s ghostwriter Tony Schwartz described the president’s inability to distinguish between what’s true and what’s false as “the nature of not having a conscience,” in a segment featured Tuesday on CNN.

“Donald Trump and the truth, a relationship that's troubled,” CNN’s Gloria Borger reported in a special segment. “From phone calls that never happened, to the size of his victory, to the evidence-free claim of who exactly voted in 2016.”

“Trump’s unique take on accuracy goes back decades,” Borger added.

Schwartz, who helped write Trump’s “Art of the Deal,” has previously described Trump’s lies as “truthful hyperbole.”

“I called it an innocent form of exaggeration,” Schwartz said of the phrase. “The problem is that there is no such thing as truthful hyperbole. The truth is the truth. Hyperbole is a lie. They don't go together.”

Jack O’Donnell, a former Vice President of Trump Plaza in Atlantic City, described the president as “wrapped up in hyperbole.”

“It's almost constant lies,” O’Donnell said.

"There's no belief system,” Schwartz continued. “If it will work, I will say it. If it stops working, I'll say it's the opposite and I will not feel any compunction about saying it's opposite because I don't believe anything in the first place.”

“Seeing it from his perspective, he doesn't make a distinction between what's true and what's false. His only distinction is what will work and what will not work. And if it happens to be true, okay, he’ll live with that, that’s fine.”

“But there's no governor in his mind that says, ‘You know what? I’m really am pissed off about somebody saying something like that, but I’m not going to lie in response to it.’ That doesn't exist inside his brain. It's just not there.”

“That's the nature of not having a conscience,” Schwartz said.

“He has a genius, you know, perverse genius for turning any situation into something that is evidence of his brilliance,” Schwartz added. “Even if it's not true.”

Watch the video below, via CNN: