A veteran political reporter explained his chief concern about President Donald Trump as he discussed a new book about his 2024 campaign and the early days of his second term.
ABC News correspondent Jonathan Karl appeared Tuesday on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" to discuss his newly published book, "Retribution," and Politico's Jonathan Martin asked what the president's intentions were for the rest of his term and beyond.
"For folks who are watching this right now, they know you as a prominent TV figure on a different channel, but they don't know, perhaps that you also have covered Donald Trump when you were a cub reporter at the New York Post," Martin said. "You've known Donald Trump perhaps longer than anybody else in the White House press corps, going back for 30-plus years. The question I think all of us have, that all of us get almost every day from people, is this, and I want your your view on this: Will Donald Trump voluntarily leave the presidency in 2028?"
"Everything you know about this man, all these years you interact with him still almost daily today in Washington," Martin added. "You see him in person, you talk to him. Tell me where you think this all ends."
Karl had a two-part answer to Martin's question.
"One is, I do think that the reason why he keeps bringing up Trump 2028: He's got the hats," Karl said. "He shows everybody in the White House. I mean, it's trolling, it is absolutely trolling, and frankly, Steve Bannon, who was the one that really started to get this going, is trolling not just in, you know, Trump's critics and Democrats. He's also trolling JD Vance – Bannon, privately, not a big JD Vance fan at all."
Host Joe Scarborough interjected to say publicly musing to run for an unconstitutional third term and selling hats announcing those plans was also a way to tamp down his lame duck status, and Karl agreed.
"I don't think that Trump has any designs on actually staying, you know, past the end of this term," Karl said. "He tells people privately, people close to him, 'No, no, I'm, you know, I'm done,' and he also, by the way, he's started doing this thing where he will especially go down to Air Force One. He'll go to people [and] say, 'So what do you think, JD or Marco, JD or Marco?'"
Martin said he's noticed that, as well, saying that Trump brought up Secretary of State Marco Rubio's name unprompted whenever he's asked the question, but Karl admitted he couldn't envision the president voluntarily giving up the power he's amassed.
"But here's the thing. I don't know how he voluntarily goes lame duck," Karl said. "I don't know how he, at what point does he actually make it clear? 'No, I'm not running and it's one of these guys, or it's that guy,' and now all the attention shifts. I covered the Obama White House, right? You know what it's like in late 2015, 2016 when you're a lame duck, nobody pays any attention. Yeah, certainly not the kind of attention Trump wants. So so I don't know how he voluntarily passes the baton."
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