'He can insult me all he wants': ABC's Jonathan Karl spills on covering the Trump Show

Jonathan Karl, chief Washington correspondent and co-anchor of This Week for ABC News, is also the author of four books on Donald Trump and his seismic impact on American politics.

First, Front Row at the Trump Show covered the first Trump presidency from a viewpoint built on Karl’s experience of reporting on Trump before he entered politics, in his years as a New York businessman and gossip column staple.

Next, Betrayaland Tired of Winning dealt with Trump’s defeat in 2020, his incitement of the January 6 insurrection, and criminal and civil court cases which seemed set to knock him out of public life, even send him to prison.

Karl’s fourth book, Retribution: Donald Trump and the Campaign that Changed America, was published late last month. Raw Story caught up with Karl to discuss the book, which not only follows Trump through two assassination attempts to victory and into the chaos of his second term, but also covers Democrats’ own wild 2024 campaign, which saw Joe Biden’s historic withdrawal and replacement by Kamala Harris.

The conversation has been edited for clarity and length.

This is your fourth Trump book. Would you have written it if Trump had lost?

Yeah. I decided to write the book right after Biden dropped out. I just knew this was going to be a campaign for the ages, and I wanted to write that story. So I signed the contract and began thinking and compiling material over summer 2024. I definitely would have done it, win or lose.

I don't think I would have called it Retribution if Trump had lost, but as soon as he won, I just knew that was the chief motivating factor of his campaign.

In a previous book, you noted Trump ally Steve Bannon’s loaded use of ‘Come Retribution’ — a Confederate phrase linked to plans to kill Abraham Lincoln that now seems incredibly loaded.

Yeah, I think that chapter in Tired of Winning is, in all my books, maybe the best chapter. It really set the groundwork for what was to come. It feels pretty pressing, looking back.

You finish Retribution with the February Oval Office meeting when Trump and JD Vance brutally bullied Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky. You quote Trump saying, ‘This is going to be great television.’ Does the ‘Trump Show’ concept from your first book, that he governs like a reality TV host, hold true?

Totally. I talk about it in the conclusion of this book. What I said in Front Row… was, “He's the star, the executive producer, the publicist, He's everything in the Trump Show.” And he's still programming. But I think a lot is different in his approach to the presidency now, because he's actually trying to change the world. It didn't always feel that way in the first term.

In another key passage in Retribution, you write about those who say Trump threatens democracy. You write, ‘I have long believed — and still hope — that those fears are overblown.’ Why?

I think the key word in that is “hope.” I don't think that Trump's major motivating force is that he wants to become a dictator or a king or the supreme leader. I think he likes to play that sometimes on television. I think he is very focused on going down in history as the greatest president ever, with the possible exception of George Washington. He cares about that stuff now, but he never really seemed to care about much before. It's the obsession with the Nobel Peace Prize and all that.

But my point in saying that is this: he has provided a roadmap for how you can destroy American democracy. I’ve known the guy for a long, long time. I don't think he actually wants that. But who knows? It's amazing even to have the conversation.

You’ve had a back-and-forth with Trump since your days at the New York Post, and call him regularly. But his most recent insult, when he said maybe his attorney general should investigate you for supposed “hate speech”, seemed particularly harsh. How did that feel?

I've been so used to it over the last 10 years that I don't let it bother me or affect how I deal with [the White House]. I don't think I should ever be in a situation where I'm in a back and forth with the President, except about the facts and the reporting and the questions. So he can insult me all he wants. He can praise me all he wants. It's irrelevant to my work, is the way I look at it.

Controversially, ABC agreed to pay Trump $15 million over remarks about one of his court cases. Has that affected your reporting?

It hasn't because I've just charged ahead and I haven't felt in any way restrained. I basically do what I've always been doing.

In terms of character studies in Retribution, Vance comes across to me as rather hapless. Is that fair?

I wouldn't use that word. I describe kind of vividly his coming on the scene as Trump's choice for running mate, and it was a pretty rough rollout, which I think Vance would probably acknowledge. But I think now, if you talk to people in Trumpworld, most would say he's the most likely heir. Not all of them, for sure. Steve Bannon would not say that.

What would Bannon say?

Bannon is saying publicly it would be Trump. Trump will stay. Maybe Steve ultimately wants it to be Steve, but certainly not JD, and probably not [Secretary of State] Marco Rubio either.

Do you think Trump will try to stay after 2028?

I think it's highly unlikely. I think Trump, as of this moment, does not actually have any intention of trying to stay in office past 2028. But it's a long way away. And given what happened at the end of 2020 and the beginning of 2021, I don't think I'd rule anything out.

Retribution is not just a Trump book. Do you think Kamala Harris could run again?

I think you can't rule anything out: whenever somebody seems like they're done, they may not be. We saw that with Richard Nixon. We saw that with Ronald Reagan. We saw it more than anybody with Donald Trump. So who knows?

The Harris campaign had massive highs and very low lows, I think she electrified Democrats in a way that really nobody besides Barack Obama in 2008 has done, and then she ran out of gas.

There were deep, deep, deep flaws to that campaign and they were up against a political environment that was going to be impossible: the deep unpopularity of Biden, high inflation, all that anguish and anger at the state of immigration.

But let's not forget, when she took that nomination, her first few weeks were absolutely electrifying to Democrats. The convention might be the best Democratic convention I ever saw. And in her performance in that one and only debate with Trump, she looked like somebody that could and maybe even would win. And then she ran out of gas. And I think there are detailed reasons in the book.

The narrative of Biden’s downfall is still contested. Was that a challenge to report?

Yeah. I'm very proud of the sections on Biden in this book, because I really felt this was an historic series of events and although they won't get the attention right now, because all the things that Trump is doing will be studied for years and years and years, I spent an enormous amount of time trying to get kind of a blow by blow, day by day account of what was happening with Biden. And I think it's a very clear and accurate and thorough picture of what was happening as he made that extraordinary decision to drop out of the race.

What do you make of complaints that the mainstream media fails to cover Trump's age and fitness for office as it covered Biden?

I'm never a big fan of hand-wringing about the so-called mainstream media, as it’s so diverse in this country, so fragmented. I think you report the facts and let people make up their minds. As a reporter, your job isn't to go out and say somebody's old and feeble — you just report the facts, what you can glean. And by the way, people have been saying that stuff about Trump for 10 years. At some point it'll be true, but I don't know when.

Have you got a fifth Trump book in you?

I'm sure I'll do one more, depending on how everything turns out but it’ll be a retrospective, not in the midst of it.

I've read a lot of Trump books. I'm not saying this because you're on the phone: I usually recommend yours and Maggie Haberman’s, largely because of the mixture of real-time reporting and knowledge of New York, where Trump came from. I wonder, therefore, what your favourite Trump books are.

Certainly, Maggie's book [Confidence Man] is fantastic. Her descriptions of early Trump in New York are just fantastic, and she's a great reporter. Bob Woodward has written some really important books on Trump. And, you know, he's Bob Woodward. And certainly I would put Peter Baker and Susan Glasser [The Divider] up there too. But there are a lot of good books out there.

• Retribution is out now