Written in 1987, at the inaugural peak of its popularity as a real estate tycoon, The Art of the Deal was initially thought of as an autobiography. But early on, ghostwriter Tony Schwartz realized that Trump’s mental way is not given to reflections on the past, tending only to the absolutization of the present. The book thus took on a mixed form, somewhere between the business manual, the first-person realist account of his routine, and the biography, resulting in an adapted genre and a work that Trump today calls, with characteristic exaggeration, his second favorite book, following the Bible [i] . Much of the narrative resembles a handbook of practical advice on how to do business, but Trump’s account of his rise is also meant to be a description of the little American dream, though the author was already born half-fortunate. In both records, the tone of the book is characterized by a sweetness that is even pleasant, countering a preconceived notion about the predatory business man. Thus, while on the one hand the work may be considered an exercise of pride, on the other it may be read as the praise of a passion. The two readings are not absolutely incompatible, and to understand Trump it is necessary to understand this. Another duality that is important to note is the distinction between fact and fiction, a distinction that assumes unexpected forms in both the book’s account and the author’s personal and public life. To understand Trump is thus necessary a pre-moral analysis of the mental terrain in which it moves.
I like thinking big. I always have. To me it’s very simple: if you’re going to be thinking anyway, you might as well think big. Most people think small, because most people are afraid of success, afraid of making decisions, afraid of winning. And that gives people like me a great advantage. [ii]
I play to people’s fantasies. People may not always think big themselves, but they can still get excited by those who do. That’s why a little hyperbole never hurts. People want to believe that something is the greatest and the most spectacular.
While on the one hand it seems easy to categorize many of its distortions or exaggerations of facts as lies, Trump describes them as truthful hyperboles . As a merchant, he presents his product only under certain angles, under a certain description, using the figurativeness of language and the faculty of imagination to model a real which is always subject to interpretation. If, for example, in Bob Dylan, and in the tradition of the autobiographical novel, this exercise is considered poetic freedom, in the present case of the merchant, a figure whose reputation even in the Bible is attested, is considered to be an achievement. Both the poet’s and the merchant’s cases are similar, since there is an extra-moral adventure in their use of language and imagination to shape the reality of consensus. To the artist, the amorality of the representation of truth is allowed, since the correspondence between the interior and exterior of the subject is softened, reaching the point where the interior, in the romantic tradition, is free to occupy and fill the exterior. This adventure is thus tolerated through the teleology of art through art. But in the merchant, the submission of the artifice to money deserves censure, and the implied indistinction between fact and value is made by the current intellectual critic as a sign of amorality. Despite this bias, Trump makes clear at various points in the play that it is more important to do than to have, more importantly the competition and the game than obtaining objective returns like money, satisfaction, quality.
I do not do it for the money. I’ve got enough, much more than I’ll ever need. I do it to do it. Deals are my art form. Other people paint beautifully on canvas or write wonderful poetry. I like making deals, preferably big deals. That’s how I get my kicks.
I do not say this trait leads to a happier life, or a better life, but it’s great when it comes to getting what you want. This is particularly true in New York real estate, where you are dealing with some of the sharpest, toughest, and most vicious people in the world. I happen to love to go up against these guys, and I love to beat them.
It may be thought, of course, that such statements are merely cosmetic and do not in the least portray the truth, since Trump will have as its ultimate end money for money, according to the usual portrait attributed to tycoons, if such use of the medium by the end is actually possible. The use of fiction, both in the case of the poet and also of the merchant, would merit the reproach of Plato, but not of Oscar Wilde. Contrary to the common lie, which purports to be true, Trump’s truthful hyperbole approaches more of a lie seeking circularity in itself, constituting what Wilde treated as the noble office of the true liar, distinct from semi- justifiable lie of the common politician.
I assure you that they [the politicians] do not. They never rise beyond the level of misrepresentation, and actually condescend to prove, to discuss, to argue. How different from the temper of the true liar, with his frank, fearless statements, his superb irresponsibility, his healthy, natural disdain of proof of any kind! [iii]
It is in the relationship with the press, which is, in contemporary times, the first fixer of the fact, that this posture of Trump poses more problems. As a narrator of the real, sort of distorted projection of common sense realism , the press requires passive subjects. But Trump does not easily fit into this role, assuming himself as co- author of the account, with no modesty in manipulating the fact in his favor. Reacting to the description with the counter-description, Trump puts himself, as a character of the news, in an unusual position of equality before the author, democratizing the relationship between the parties. This occurs not only between the producer, the subject, the press, and the part of the subject matter, Trump himself, but goes so far as to extend this freedom to the public, since the humorous comments he often makes about the press are accompanied by a few others about their own speech, as that encouraging the audience to build their own opinion. [iv] Neither gives us an empirically neutral account, and Trump knows this, but what he rejects at first glance is the descriptions of the press as a starting point for interpretation of the fact.
I should not write letters like this to critics. The way I see it, critics get to say what they want to about my work, so why should not I be able to say what I want to about theirs?
Before an allegedly powerful author, it is difficult to gauge a reality of consensus among the various parties. Nevertheless, neither Trump, nor the journalists, nor the public, deny at all that the facts exist, and everyone knows that a report of consensus can exist. But Trump’s position is purposely warlike, since behind the term fake news that he uses to designate any content that harms him, so false news indeed exists, since there is no neutral journalism. Trump puts himself in a position of equality before the interlocutor, going up or down the threshold of the use of imagination as the interlocutor before him, as if it were another part of an ongoing business.
The other thing I do when I talk to reporters is to be straight. I try not to deceive them or to be defensive, because those are precisely the ways most people get themselves into trouble with the press. Instead, when a reporter asks me a tough question, I try to frame a positive answer, even if that means shifting the ground.
At this point, I follow the thought of Professor Antonio M. Feijó, who said in a talk about fake news that Trump does not tell lies as truths, as a common liar. He tells lies as lies, assuming a meta-fictional role that starts from the point of view of a radical subjective idealism, the immaterialism of George Berkeley. Trump, like Berkeley, does not deny the existence of things, but reduces that existence to their perception of them. It is important to note how this is not the position of a materialist, as it is common to characterize the merchant moguls, since in Trump the subjective and abstract sensory impression is more fundamental, and not a material calculus.
I called my friend back and I said, “Listen, there’s something about that bothers me. Maybe it’s that oil is underground, and I can not see it, or maybe it’s that there’s nothing creative about it. In any case, I just do not want to go in.
Here, Trump is tantamount to knowing seeing, and negotiating to create. This position is the opposite of the figure of the investor who has a distant relationship with the abstraction of money, looking only for the quantitative return. In the present case, Trump’s sensitivity requires closeness and tactility, moving away from the programmatic abstraction of projects, calculations and opinion studies and preferring gut feeling , that is, a formal abstraction. This sensitivity is derived from the talent needed for his craft, since for Trump this involves selling dreams, ideas, ideals. Averse to risk, possessive, he is not a speculator without a net or a player who puts all the chips on the table, or at least that’s how he portrays himself. He seems more attracted to appear to be wealthy than to actually be wealthy, and seems to know that material is volatile, and that capital is always subject to fluctuations in value. Hence the role that the agent has in creating extra-material value is so important.
By contrast, we took our strengths and promoted them to the skies. From day one, we set out to sell Trump Tower not just a beautiful building in a great location but an event. We place ourselves on the right place for a certain kind of person to live-the hottest ticket in town. We were selling fantasy.
Going back to the initial topic of this essay, it is unclear whether Trump in The Art of the Deal is describing himself as he is or would like to be. But the two concepts do not necessarily contradict each other. Only a theory that absolutely dualises the thing-in-itself and the phenomenon can put them as antagonistic, and it is not clear that Trump moves on a terrain where this duality is so vivid. He sees himself at the same time as he is, there being no difference between a substantial interior and a superficial or accidental exterior. This is percipi . Trump sees itself as an idea, a brand, and its relation to product, material, is the same relation of fiction, or imagination, with thing. In this trumpian world, only if it is great looking great, and even if the relationship between substance and appearance is made up of an achievement, the appearance remains potentially more substantial. This is notorious in his repeated admiration for the art of opinion, from the facade of a building to the bullshit artists .
The first thing we did was to invest in beautiful white shutters for the windows. That might not sound like a big deal, but what the shutters did was give a bunch of cold red brick buildings a feeling of warmth and coziness, which was important.
I can always tell a loser when I see someone with a car that is filthy dirty. It’s so easy to make it look better.
At this point of conclusion, it will be remembered how, in May 1968, the children of the generation that returned from the war were satisfied with the pacified and functional system that resulted and invented a slogan among many good ideas and some nonsense. Imagination to power. The implicit detournement in this slogan is thus subject to a new detournement , having its authors possibly devalued what it means imagination and its limits, as so often happens in the workshops of politics. Forgetting that the frontiers of the imagination coincide with the frontiers of perception, the 1968 relativists have their answer here, which reminds us how to be careful about what we want. To conclude, we can introduce the co-author of the book, Tony Schwartz, as an example of this current intellectuality.
I do not think Donald Trump has an inner life. I do not think there’s something different going on inside him that you see going on outside him. It’s not just that he’s not introspective; there is nothing in introspect about. Again, for me to label him unreasonable, but he certainly strikes me with a lot of soul or conscience or emotional range that you would associate with most human beings. [v]
Also exercising an imaginative artifice, the intellectual intends to find in the other an inner life, a thinking subject, recognizable as his reflection, mirror of his intellectual activity. He despises the rustic, the armor, the merchant, and intends to find in the peasant a poet, in the metallurgist a social critic, and in every human being a philosopher. This intellectual is able to distinguish an inner, mental, perhaps moral dimension, and an external, phenomenal, superficial dimension. He can distinguish them and admit that in art the first does not necessarily govern the second, and in life there is no second without the first. But while it establishes these moral hierarchies, which imply a relativism according to the teleology of the art in question, at the same time it refuses to put itself into play in a relativism that does not serve the ends that it prefers. The critic thus attributes to the truth an absolute value and takes figurative exercises by poetic ingenuity, when the subject pleases him, or for a lie, when the subject displeases him. Schwartz’s accusation, that Trump has no inner content but only form, would be, when applied to an artist, a saying of great compliment. But applied to the “common man,” since Trump’s major defect for most of his critics is to be a trumpet and not a superior being, it is an insult, representing a freedom the intellectual does not authorize.
[i] http://www.msnbc.com/all-in/watch/donald- trumps-favorite-book-505029187689? v=raila& ;
[ii] Trump, Donald. The Art of the Deal . USA: Random House, 1987. Henceforth all unmarked citations will be of this reference.
[iii] Wilde, Oscar. The Decay of Lying . New York: Brentano, 1905 [1889].
[iv] https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump- kim-jong-un-summit-excuse-972426?amp=1
[v]
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/interview/ton schwartz/
