Has Trump publicly admitted The Art of the Deal was “ghost-written”?
Executive summary
Donald Trump has not, in the available reporting cited here, publicly admitted that The Art of the Deal was “ghost-written”; contemporaneous and later reporting documents that journalist Tony Schwartz wrote the book and later called the assignment “ghost-writing” and his “greatest regret,” while the book has long been presented to the public as Trump’s [1] [2] [3].
1. The authorship the public was sold: a Trump-branded bestseller
From its publication onward The Art of the Deal was presented to readers as Donald J. Trump’s book and has been marketed and sold under his name, including in official Trump merchandise and product pages that describe it as “the first book written by…Donald J. Trump,” which reinforces the public authorship impression [3].
2. The ghostwriter’s account: Tony Schwartz’s longtime admissions and regrets
Tony Schwartz, a journalist who long ago acknowledged he wrote The Art of the Deal, has repeatedly described his role as ghostwriter, recounting in detail how he was paid an advance and split royalties with Trump and later expressed deep remorse for having helped craft the public persona that benefited Trump’s rise [1] [2] [4].
3. Documentary reporting: The New Yorker and others establish Schwartz’s role
A major New Yorker feature documented Schwartz’s work shadowing Trump for months, taking on the bulk of the writing, and receiving unusually generous ghostwriting terms — a joint byline on the cover, half of the $500,000 advance, and half of the royalties — and that reporting is the basis for later profiles and interviews in which Schwartz openly labels the book a ghostwriting assignment [1] [5].
4. Publisher and ghostwriter assertions versus Trump’s public posture
Schwartz and The Art of the Deal’s publisher, Howard Kaminsky, have both asserted that Trump played little to no role in writing the book; those assertions appear repeatedly across reporting and Schwartz’s own interviews [2] [1]. By contrast, public-facing materials and Trump’s own decades-long promotion of the book position it as his work, but the reporting supplied here does not include any explicit, on-record statement from Trump conceding that he did not write the book or that it was ghost-written [3] [2].
5. What “admitted” would look like — and what the record shows
An unambiguous public admission would be an on-the-record quote, a tweet, an interview segment, or a written statement from Trump acknowledging that he did not write the book and that another person produced its prose. The sources provided document Tony Schwartz’s admissions and the publisher’s claims but contain no citation of Trump making such an admission himself; therefore, within this reporting, no direct public admission by Trump exists [1] [2] [3].
6. Alternative readings and implicit agendas to consider
Supporters and some promotional materials emphasize The Art of the Deal as Trump’s authorship to burnish his dealmaking image, while Schwartz’s post-2016 activism and calls to remove or rename the book reflect his political and moral repudiation of what his words helped produce; reporting that focuses on Schwartz’s regret carries an implicit agenda to undercut Trump’s crafted persona, and promotional materials carry an opposite commercial and reputational aim [4] [3].
7. Limits of this dossier and what remains unconfirmed here
This analysis is restricted to the supplied reporting: it documents that Schwartz wrote the book and later publicly condemned his role, and it documents the publisher’s assertions; it does not include or cite any statement from Trump admitting the book was ghost-written. If a subsequent on-record admission by Trump exists outside these sources, it is not represented in this packet and therefore cannot be affirmed here [1] [2] [3].