December 11, 2023
Donald Trump is one of history’s great losers and is dragging the Republicans down with him, argues this hard-hitting chronicle of Trump’s post-presidential doings. ABC News Washington correspondent Karl (Betrayal) surveys the past three years, beginning with the waning days of Trump’s presidency, when his cabinet considered deposing him as mentally incapacitated while he flirted with declaring martial law. In the years afterward, Karl notes, Trump’s political losing streak continued in the 2022 midterm elections when several of the Republican congressional and senate candidates he endorsed lost winnable seats, while he struggled under an avalanche of indictments that threaten him with prison. Yet Trump continued to dominate the GOP as politicians lined up at Mar-a-Lago to curry his favor, even at the price of parroting his claim to have won the 2020 election—a line that weighed down Republicans’ chances in the general election. Karl shows a brooding, frustrated, narcissistic Trump dining with antisemites, cheating at golf, raging at a world that rejects his delusions, and gnawing for consolation on absurd election denial theories, including a deranged fixation on the notion that his presidency would somehow be reinstated in the summer of 2021. Drawing on his own meticulous reporting and interviews with Trump and his associates, Karl’s portrait is uncompromising in its negativity. Trump haters will find plenty of red meat here.
November 28, 2023
The third and, dare one hope, final installment in Karl's Trump trilogy--preceded by Front Row at the Trump Show (2020) and Betrayal (2021)--finds the veteran journalist's previous astonishment at Trump's outlandish behavior elevated to one of outrage and even anguish. He subtitled his previous book The Final Act of the Trump Show, but as his latest expos� reveals, the show is far from over. "Trump's story," Karl simply states, "is one of failure." These failures have led to losses in elections, in the courts, and in the court of public opinion. Thanks to the "all Trump all the time" media ecosystem, Trump's travails are well known to even casual political observers, and Karl's retrospective revisits many established episodes. There are, however, numerous new bombshells ripping into this familiar turf, disturbing revelations that build to a sobering and scary crescendo. Trump's fiery rhetoric and blatant 2024 campaign threats of political retribution for his 2020 loss have been so consistent that few doubt that a future Trump administration will be more punitive than the last. In Betrayal, Karl cautioned readers to worry about what a second Trump term would look like. Now, with evidence mounting by the day, Karl's previous warning appears frighteningly prescient. Karl delivers a read-in-one-sitting narrative every bit as riveting as the most adrenalin-fueled political thriller. But, sadly, it's not fiction; it's very real and, Karl warns, things are set to get a lot realer.
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Starred review from January 1, 2024
Another damning portrait of a disastrous administration. "I am your retribution," Trump promised his followers in a recent speech, since elaborated on with threats to root out "junkies, Marxists, thugs, radicals, and dangerous refugees that no other country wants." As ABC News chief Washington correspondent Karl writes, none other than Steve Bannon himself pointed out to him that retribution was a code word employed by Confederate agents in a plot to assassinate Lincoln. Trump may be undisciplined and often unhinged, but he tells you who he is and what he means: The promised concentration camps for undocumented immigrants are likely not metaphors. After the 2020 election, Karl reveals, an irate, ego-deflated Trump threatened to leave the GOP and form his own party. He was dissuaded from doing so not by RNC chair Ronna McDaniel's pleas for party loyalty, but instead by her threat of withdrawing millions of dollars in funding from him. Karl rightfully asks, Why not let the "wounded, vindictive, and angry former president" go? After all, as many GOP insiders have said behind closed doors, Trump is a loser. With him, the GOP has lost two midterms and a presidential election, and it's demonstrable that non-Trump GOP candidates won in 2022 while pro-Trumpers lost. Still, Karl notes, Trump has a stranglehold on the GOP, so much so that "there may be no quicker way to lose a 2024 Republican presidential primary than to admit you'd consider trying to oust Donald Trump from office." Just ask Liz Cheney. Other intriguing nuggets from this news-packed and newsworthy book: Trump fell full tilt under the sway of a QAnon theory that he'd be reinstated as president by a court decision, and, "more detached from reality than ever," he now views the Jan. 6 rioters as heroes. Excellent reporting and assured writing--an ominous warning.
COPYRIGHT(2024) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.