Tony Schwartz, the co-author of The Art of the Deal, had some advice for President Trump‘s opponents after this big Russia-centric week.

Schwartz spoke this morning with MSNBC’s Joy Reid, who brought up how very similar Trump’s political rhetoric in the 80s compares to him today.

Schwartz said current Trump is “diminished” and “unraveling,” saying the kind of pressure on Trump between the “investigations closing in on him” and the general stresses of the presidency don’t add up to anything good.

“What happens to a person who’s psychologically unstable in that situation is that they begin to double down on all the things they’ve always done,” Schwartz said. “He’s living inside his reality.”

He told Reid Trump’s “paranoia” has only heightened, said “Putin owns Trump,” and advised the media to just accept that the President lies, tell the audience that, and move on as opposed to hand-wringing over whether he “misspoke.”

“He wants to obfuscate, he wants to confused, and he wants to create the impression that you can’t trust any truth. That plays right into his hands,” he said.

Reid asked if Trump will ever be “held to account for the things that he’s done.” Schwartz said this in response:

“I, for a long time, like many people, thought reason would pull over those people who are either on Trump’s side in a moderate way or possibly even those who were very much Republican but felt that they couldn’t tolerate his character defects. I no longer believe that. It’s quite obvious that there’s somewhere between 30 and 40 percent of the population who are going to support Trump… even if he stands next to the Russian president and takes his side. Our focus needs to be on the 60 percent of America that is outraged by what they’re seeing. All that needs to happen is for those people to come out and vote.”

He said there’s a possible wild card of Trump deciding to call off elections and “shut down the media,” concluding by recommending that Democrats take this message to people: “Do you want Putin to be president? Or do you want an American to be president?”

Watch above, via MSNBC.

[image via screengrab]

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Follow Josh Feldman on Twitter: @feldmaniac

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