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Donald Trump has been busy working over (or rather, trying to work over) Tony Schwartz, his ghostwriter for The Art of the Deal (1987) who isn’t exactly a Trump supporter.

Schwartz has been very forthcoming with his feelings about Trump, saying that “Trump reveres Putin. He wants Putin’s power. He wants to be a dictator. Every American — every American — should be terrified about that,” and that “the breadth of Trump’s ignorance and malevolence was breathtaking,”

Trump was more than happy to demonstrate the truth of this assertion in typical Trump fashion, tweeting,



“Dummy writer @tonyschwartz, who wanted to do a second book with me for years (I said no), is now a hostile basket case who feels jilted!”

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and,

“I havn’t [sic] seen @tonyschwartz in many years, he hardly knows me. Never liked his style. Super lib, Crooked H supporter. Irrelevant dope!'”

Because he has something to say about Trump that doesn’t jibe with Trump’s self-narrative, Schwartz must be dismissed as a “basket case”; “crooked”; and a “dope.”

Schwartz nimbly put Trump in his place with a pair of tweets (here and here) of his own:

I'm the "irrelevant dope" and "basket case" who wrote Art of the Deal @realDonaldTrump. You called it second best book ever written. — Tony Schwartz (@tonyschwartz) September 10, 2016

(Trump’s first favorite book, he claims, is the Bible) and,

Will correct every lie you say @realDonaldTrump. I never approached you to do 2nd book. You came to me & I said no. You felt jilted, not me — Tony Schwartz (@tonyschwartz) September 10, 2016

If Chris Wallace isn’t prepared to fact check, Tony Schwartz is. And Trump didn’t come out the winner, with Schwartz delivering a scathing parting shot:

Check out @realDonaldTrump middle-of-night tweets about me. Most of what he says describes way he really feels about himself. #projection — Tony Schwartz (@tonyschwartz) September 10, 2016

Trump likes to bully; he likes to marginalize and delegitimize his opponents in the most brutal, dismissive fashion possible. He found out that not all his victims are ready to roll over, but will roll up their sleeves and give better than they got.