Former President Donald Trump is viscerally affected by his civil fraud trial in New York, where he has already been held liable for improperly inflating the value of the assets his company holds, argued "Art of the Deal" co-author Tony Schwartz on CNN Tuesday.
That's because the focus of the trial cuts directly at his self-worth, and the image he has spent his entire professional life building for the public.
"It's interesting," said anchor Poppy Harlow. "I was thinking about this yesterday as well. He doesn't have to be in the courtroom because it's a civil proceeding, not criminal. He has to be there for the criminal trial. He didn't go to the civil trial, the case that E. Jean Carroll brought. As someone who co-authored a book with him, what does that tell you about what is most important to him?"
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"Donald Trump's sense of value comes entirely from his net worth," said Schwartz. "So his survival, his emotional survival depends on looking outside himself to define his internal value, which he feels none of. He feels worthless. So when you take him, when you accuse him of having less money than he is falsely claimed he has, he feels deeply diminished. And it's one of the reasons why at that event yesterday you saw him looking so actively agitated. Most of the time when he is accused of stuff, he doesn't look that visibly agitated. He did yesterday. I know it's because he felt small."
"Does he really — I think that thing I have always tried to figure out, having read a lot of depositions, particularly in 2016 trying to figure out how his business world operated, he was always inflating and lying and talking about numbers that simply had no basis in reality. Why is he so offended about being called out in court?" asked anchor Phil Mattingly.
"He is in court," replied Schwartz. "He is on the verge of losing these — you know, he has an Edifice Complex, to be differentiated from an Oedipus Complex. He — again, the size of his buildings is connected to his sense of self-worth. So he's about to be stripped of all meaning, or all sense of worthiness. I think it's no surprise that, when that actually becomes the threat, that he becomes more engaged and more interested."
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