The Long Game

Jonathan Karl on his "Trump Show" book, media as the opposition, and the "fakest thing" of the Trump era

04.29.2020 - By Jon WardPlay

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Jonathan Karl is chief Washington and White House correspondent for ABC News. His new book is “Front Row at the Trump Show.” 

Jonathan writes in his book that Trump’s attack on “fake news” are “fake” is that Trump actually loves the press, because it is both a vehicle and a villain for him. It gives him a stage on which to act, to play out the Trump show. And as he plays out this soap opera, Jonathan's point is that he wants the press to go too far in its criticism, to move from holding power accountable to seeking to get him. He wants the press to overstep. 

And in Karl’s view, often they have.

Karl uses his long-running relationship with Trump to illustrate how fake the president’s behavior and attacks on the press often are. Karl has known Trump since the mid-90’s, almost 30 years. He first interviewed him in 1994, when Jonathan was a print reporter at the New York Post.

“Donald Trump is aggrieved,” Jonathan writes. "And arguably he has reasons to be aggrieved. But his response is to wage a war on truth that I fear may do as much or more lasting damage to America than any of the mistakes made by the presidents who went before him.”

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