feeling that he had falsely contributed to an incorrect general idea of Trump ' s personality and business sense . Maybe he should of thought of that dishonesty before he raked in half the royalties I hear he ' s gotten ~ 1 . 5 million so far and half the advance ? He also thinks Trump would likely end civilization if he gets the nuclear codes when that ' s not how that works . He also says he made the Faustian bargain due to first world problems , because he ' s a privileged liberal , a product of a childhood spent growing up in Manhattan in a bourgeois , intellectual family , and was worried about how to fit his growing family into his highly mortgaged Manhattan apartment . He thought Trump was giving him a huge windfall , and coming out on the short end of the deal , by giving him half the advance and half the royalties on the book , when in fact Trump was using him to promote himself and for the first in a long line of profitable book deals The ghostwriter did virtually all the work and Trump made like $ 2 million so far off of just that book , and parlayed the reputation created into who knows how many money making business deals and things like The Apprentice .