Trump has ‘lost a great deal mentally’ says Art of the Deal co-writer: ‘He literally cannot get his footing’

Author Tony Schwartz and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi seem to agree that the former president has ‘lost a step or two’

Donald Trump’s mental faculties are being questioned yet again, this time by his former nemesis Nancy Pelosi and the ghostwriter for his memoir and advice bookTrump: The Art of the Deal.

Speculation surrounding the Republican presidential candidate’s mental sharpness is not exactly new, but it has heightened since President Joe Biden pulled out of the 2024 race after struggling to give coherent answers during the June 27 debate, clearing the way for Vice President Kamala Harris to be nominated for the Democrat ticket.

Journalist and author Tony Schwartz told MSNBC’s Ari Melber, “This is a man who’s lost a great deal mentally,” on Thursday.

He also called the business mogul a “very different man” to the one he knew in the 1980s and “somewhat interacted with” in the 2016 and 2020 elections.

He continued, “This notion that he, that he is still, like, capable of exciting a crowd, I’m just not sure that I believe — beyond that 20 or 25 percent that are absolutely the core — is true anymore.”

Schwartz appeared on MSNBC to discuss what he suggested as Trump’s cognitive decline (MSNBC)

Schwartz highlighted Trump’s own poor performance during the September 10 debate, his first showdown with Harris, as evidence that he “sure seems to have lost a step or two.”

“Of all the people I’ve watched deal with him over the years, Kamala has put him on his back feet more so, starting in the debate, but continuously, he literally cannot get his footing.”

“And I don’t think he will,” Schwartz added.

Trump spent the debate peddling several false claims, most notably that Haitian immigrants are eating cats and dogs in Springfield, Ohio — a debunked rumor also promoted by his running mate, JD Vance — and that some Democrats support abortions in the ninth month of pregnancy and even “after birth.” Both claims were fact-checked by ABC News’s debate moderators David Muir and Linsey Davis.

There is a general consensus that Harris came out on top from the debate, highlighted in both polls and even from Trump’s own allies, despite his own assertions that he was the clear winner.

Nancy Pelosi speaks at The Atlantic Festival on September 19, where she called Donald Trump’s sanity into question (Getty Images for The Atlantic)

Schwartz’s warning echoes that of Pelosi, who said, “It takes vision, knowledge, judgment, strategic thinking, a heart full of love for the American people, and sanity to be president of the United States,” when speaking to The Atlantic Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey Goldberg in an interview on Thursday.

“To be sane is probably an important characteristic to have if you’re going to have control over our nuclear weapons. Don’t you think?” she asked at The Atlantic Festival.

“I don’t think he’s on the level,” she emphasised. “His thinking is not straight. Not on the level.”

The former House Speaker has been a vocal adversary to Trump, with a surfaced video of her referring to him as a “domestic enemy” the day after the January 6 attack on the Capitol making the rounds last month.

Pelosi rips up pages of the State of the Union speech after Trump finishes his address in the chamber of the US House of Representatives on February 04, 2020 (Getty Images)

She also famously tore up the then-president’s State of the Union address in 2020 immediately after he delivered the speech, while he was standing right in front of her.

In her new book, titled The Art of Power: My Story as America’s First Woman Speaker of the House, Pelosi even wrote that medical professionals expressed their concern to her regarding Trump’s cognitive capabilities during her time as speaker of the House.