Tony Schwartz—writer of the book that took Donald Trump from a local NYC developer to a household name—got to know Trump fairly well throughout the writing process. He has repeatedly used that insight to predict Trump's actions throughout his presidency.
One of his more chillingly accurate predictions came during a Q&A session at Oxford University in 2016.
The Trump: The Art of the Deal ghostwriter said Trump would never be able to handle a loss at the polls. He would do everything in his power to ignore and undermine the results to make things go his way.
"Trust me when I say this, when Trump loses the election, he will never acknowledge, he will not concede the election and he will never acknowledge that he lost the election."
"Because to do that is to feel obliterated and he's not going there. So it's going to be a dangerous, tense time in America in the weeks after the election."
Schwartz also predicted Trump would use his followers' dissatisfaction with the world and encourage...
"...that anger that's sitting inside his supporters in any way he can to provide evidence that he was wronged, the election was rigged and he didn't really lose."
Though Shwatrz was speaking about the 2016 election at the time, Trump has completely lived up to his predictions in 2020—even going so far as to continue crying election fraud long after the courts have dismissed his campaign's lawsuits claiming such. Trump's own handpicked Attorney General and the Justice Department also verified there was no widespread voter fraud.
Schwartz's 2016 speech was brought back into public awareness by Twitter users who were shocked by how accurate his predictions turned out to be—though they took 4 years to come true.
Some pointed out Trump displayed similar behavior over Hillary Clinton's taking the popular vote in 2016.
Others had their own dire predictions.
You can view the entire video of Schwartz's Oxford Union Q&A session below:
Schwartz has been quite vocal about his distaste for Donald Trump, and his regret over writing The Art Of The Deal for him, for years.
Given how much time he spent with Trump throughout the writing process, it's little surprise he came to understand him well enough to predict his reaction to losing the popular vote by over 7 million votes and the electoral college vote by 74 votes to President-elect Joe Biden.
Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images
Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images
Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images