Betrayal – The Final Act of the Trump Show

 

Betrayal – The Final Act of the Trump Show – by Jonathan Karl

This book is a follow up to the author’s “Front Row at the Trump Show”.  My guess is that Jonathan Karl may not have intended to write a follow up, but with our idiotic Commander in Chief continuing to make blunder after blunder culminating with the outbreak of COVID 19, Mr. Karl probably realized that he couldn’t just stop his narrative where his first book ended.  Unfortunately, there was a lot more story to tell.

This book made me angry. It made me furious. I frequently had the urge the close the book and throw it against a wall. There were parts of the book that I honestly had to skim because I simply couldn’t relive the awfulness that Donald Trump and his ilk inflicted upon the entire country.  I’ve tried to be forgiving. I’ve tried to resign myself that maybe, just maybe, Trump wasn’t the worst U.S. President ever (James Buchanan and Andrew Johnson come to mind as contenders for that moniker), yet after reading this book and knowing that this dangerous man is still alive and might be plotting a comeback, I have to sadly resign myself to the fact that, yes, Donald Trump was, in fact, the worst president of the United States ever.

For those who might not know, Jonathan Karl was the White House correspondent for ABC News, so no one had a better inside scoop and “front row seat” at the Trump Show than this man. A front row seat is usually a good thing, but when the event your watching is a catastrophic train wreck, it can be a quite unnerving experience.  This book starts around Trump’s idiotic response to COVID and it ends shortly after his failed coup attempt that almost destroyed the nation.

How dangerous was Donald Trump?  Well, several months before the election, he claimed that if he lost in November, the only reason would be because the election would be stolen from him.  Yes, he actually said that. What’s sad is that many of his minions believed him – both when he said it, and after election day despite no credible evidence.  Then we read about him practicing for the first presidential debate against Joe Biden.  During “practice”, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie plays the part of Biden. During the practice, Trump gets so annoyed that he stops the practice and begins screaming and threatening Chris Christie. Why? Because Christie is doing his job and bringing up things that Joe Biden is likely to say during the debate. It’s really tragic how disengaged from reality Donald Trump proved to be time and time again.

There’s an awful lot here about his planned and failed insurrection after he loses the election, and it is incredibly scary how close he actually pulled the whole thing off.  Of course, he still has an awful lot of apologists out there who refuse to believe anything that doesn’t come from the mouth of Fox News.  Speaking of Fox News, another part of this book that I found scary was when the Biden administration finally arrived in the White House, they found that every single television (including multiple ones in the same rooms) were all turned to the Fox News channel.  Scary indeed.

Well, as I write this, Donald Trump is still alive, and we can hope that he spends the remainder of his life in the background, perhaps even prison. Let’s hope he stays out of the limelight. Let’s hope the multitudes that still voted for him in 2020 will somehow be enlightened. And let’s hope, and let’s pray, that Jonathan Karl never ever gets enough material to write a Volume 3.