Jonathan Karl's new book, "Tired of Winning," reveals his frustration as a reporter trying to get answers on Jan. 6, 2021, as the U.S. Capitol came under attack by Donald Trump's supporters.
Karl recalled that he, like most reporters, was desperately trying to get the White House to respond to questions about the president's comments on that day.
"The utter lack of response on such a critical day was so dumbfounding that at 7:42 a.m. the next morning, I sent McEnany a message intended to note for history that a White House press secretary had been missing in action on a day that looms large in the history of the United States. For the subject line of my message I wrote, 'Message to the National Archives.'"
He told her that thanks to the Presidential Records Act, everything that McEnany or anyone else in the White House did or did not do to stop Jan. 6 would forever be preserved for history.
"The process of releasing them to the public will begin in 15 years," Karl said. "Let the record show that throughout the extraordinary events of January 6, multiple emails, text messages and phone calls to the White House press secretary have gone unanswered. Attempts to get answers to basic questions this morning have also been fruitless."
McEnany never responded.
Trump will be long gone by 2036, but McEnany won't.
"I would later learn that McEnany’s own deputies were pleading with her to condemn the violence and call off the rioters," Karl continues in the book. "She had the honor and responsibility of being the lead spokesperson for the White House and did absolutely nothing."
Deputy press secretary Sarah Matthews testified to the Select Committee about an argument she had about condemning the violence.
“A colleague suggested that the president shouldn’t condemn the violence because they thought it would be ‘handing a win’ to the media if he were to condemn his supporters,” Matthews testified. “And I couldn’t believe that we were arguing over this in the middle of the West Wing, talking about the politics of a tweet, being concerned with ‘handing the media a win’ when we had just watched all of that violence unfold at the Capitol. And so, I motioned up at the TV and I said, ‘Do you think it looks like we’re effing winning?’"
Karl wrote that with that one sentence, the "twenty-five-year-old junior press aide displayed more common sense—and acted more decisively—than either the president of the United States or his chief of staff or his press secretary."
She quit at the end of that day, effectively immediately.
Read more from coverage of Karl's book here.
