In an excerpt from his new book, Tired of Winning, Jonathan Karl reveals how officials were stunned when a presidential directive pulling troops out of Afghanistan and Somalia landed on their desk.
The book also contains a priceless anecdote about an exchange between then president Trump and the former German chancellor Angela Merkel. Following the engagement, he bragged to a Republican congressman, who promptly shared the story with Karl, that Merkel had gone out of her way to compliment Trump over the large crowds he attracted at his rallies.
“She said she could never get crowds like that,” Trump is reported to have gloated. “In fact, she told me that there was only one other political leader who ever got crowds as big as mine.”
Karl notes drily that the congressman was left wondering whether Trump had any idea of the individual to whom Merkel was alluding. “Which would be more unsettling: that he didn’t or that he did?” the author writes.
Despite losing the 2020 election, former President Donald Trump came to believe a fringe conspiracy theory that he could be reinstated long after leaving office and before the next election
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Former Rep. Mo Brooks, R-Ala., was the first lawmaker in December 2020 to announce plans to challenge the congressional certification of Biden's victory and spoke -- while donning body armor -- at Trump's rally immediately preceding the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
His steadfast support of the 2020 election lies earned Brooks Trump's endorsement in the 2022 Alabama Senate Republican primary.
However, by the summer of 2021, Brooks changed his tune and encouraged Trump supporters to move past the 2020 election fraud claims.
"There are some people who are despondent about the voter fraud and election theft in 2020. Folks, put that behind you. Put that behind you," he said in August 2021, prompting boos -- and chants of "fix it now!" -- from a hometown crowd in Cullman, Alabama.
Months after Brooks suggested voters move on from the election fraud claims, Trump called him with multiple election-related demands, Brooks told Karl earlier this year. Among them: "He asked me to publicly state that Donald Trump should be allowed to move back into the White House, reinstated as president."
Brooks said he refused and that his refusal led to Trump retaliating by rescinding his endorsement of Brooks the same month. Brooks went on to lose the primary to now-Sen. Katie Britt.
Karl asked Brooks if he thought Trump really believed he could be reinstated.
"I sure hope not," Brooks told Karl. "Because if he truly believed that, then he was way outside the bounds of reality."
Not in Karl's book, but I'm putting this here because it's another example of the Crazy Orange Man.
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Ellis specifically noted during the proffer session that the alleged comment from Scavino, who worked for Donald Trump for decades at the Trump Organization before joining his first presidential bid, came in response to her apologizing over the lack of success with their election challenges in court, culminating with a Supreme Court loss that indicated their ability to challenge the election "was essentially over."
"And he said to me, in a kind of excited tone, 'Well, we don't care, and we're not going to leave,'" Ellis said of the alleged Dec. 19 conversation with Scavino. "And I said, 'What do you mean?' And he said 'Well, the boss', meaning President Trump -- and everyone understood 'the boss,' that's what we all called him -- he said, 'The boss is not going to leave under any circumstances. We are just going to stay in power.'"
Ellis continued, "And I said to him, 'Well, it doesn't quite work that way, you realize?' and he said, 'We don't care.'"
