Tony Schwartz, the ghostwriter of President Donald Trump's book The Art of the Deal, warned on Thursday night that the looming specter of death and political decline is making the president increasingly “desperate” — and said he fears Trump's growing tendency to lash out could lead him to use nuclear weapons. Schwartz co-wrote the 1987 bestseller with Trump and has publicly said he regrets the project, making him one of the most prominent former associates to break with the president since doing so in 2016.

“Trump is in a remarkably self-destructive phase of his life,” Schwartz said during an appearance on MS NOW, the network formerly known as MSNBC. “He is far and away his own worst enemy. Can you imagine if a year ago or a year and a half ago, when his term was starting, he hadn't created the tariffs, if he hadn't started the Iran war? Why does this happen? We know that this is a severely narcissistic guy, that he is always trying to fill what I call that black hole inside him. But here's a couple of things that have changed.”

The first change, according to Schwartz, is the president's age. Trump recently turned 80. “That's a meaningful moment in his life,” Schwartz said, “and a look at his own eventual demise, at his death, which is frightening to him.”

The second is the president's declining power, which Schwartz said is producing what he called a “narcissistic collapse.” “He has counted on all of these external things to prove to himself that he matters, and now he is desperately seeking ways – in fact, most of his energy goes into finding ways – to prove that he still matters.”

In Schwartz's assessment, those efforts are backfiring and have pushed Trump's standing to disapproval levels comparable to those seen around January 6. While the president has long been skilled at redirecting the narrative, his attempts to deflect from his historic unpopularity have failed, Schwartz said.

“How does he explain 29 percent, 30 percent poll?” Schwartz asked. “How does he explain every poll suggesting that there is going to be a blue victory if not a tsunami? He can't, and so he runs off to red districts. He builds ballrooms. He puts his name on endless numbers of things, none of which move the ball forward for the country, and none of which help him or Republicans politically. It's the power of insecurity taken to a whole new level.”

That degree of insecurity, Schwartz warned, could drive Trump to lash out in the most destructive way possible. The warning touches on a distinctive feature of American government: under longstanding U.S. command-and-control procedures, the authority to order the use of nuclear weapons rests with the president alone.

“What frightens me the most right now – I said this in 2016, that I was worried that if he had his hand on the nuclear button, there was going to come a time when he might just go over the top. That worries me again now, because going out with a blaze of glory is something I could imagine him doing,” he said.