Lessons from the Book 📚 betrayal

Overview

Donald Trump, the forty-fifth president of the United States, is regarded as one of the most influential but chaotic presidents in history. What was his downfall really like?

Political journalist Jonathan Karl wrote Betrayal as a documentation of Trump’s final days as president. He knew Trump better than any other reporter in the White House, and had a front-row seat to the final showdown of his presidency. Karl details the events leading up to the 2020 election and subsequent attack on the US Capitol by angry Trump supporters on January 6, 2021. From crazy loyal personnel to alleged treachery, Karl explores it all.

Big Promotion

On February 20, 2020, as the COVID-19 outbreak was starting to look more menacing, President Donald Trump still was not concerned with the worldwide spread of the virus. He instead met with Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney to put Johnny McEntee in charge of the Presidential Personnel Office. McEntee was Trump’s “body guy” who carried his bags wherever he would go, yet he was about to be promoted to a position that made him responsible for hiring presidential appointees through the federal government.

According to Trump, McEntee was the most fit for the job, as he was the most loyal to him. McEntee had been fired from a previous job at the White House due to illegal gambling, but he came back 20 months later, in January 2020, when Trump was going through his first impeachment trial. Within 48 hours of the vote against impeachment, 70 holdovers from the administration of President Barack Obama were fired from the National Security Council, and McEntee had a huge role in the decision.

The Growing Pandemic

On March 4, 2020, journalist Jonathan Karl sat down for a meeting with Trump to discuss the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, an event Trump had skipped for the past three years, after declaring the free press as the enemy of the people. Karl was not eager to invite him. Trump joked about shaking hands due to the growing severity of the pandemic, and assured Karl that he would get back to him about the dinner in a week. This dinner then was canceled, as a week later most of the country went into lockdown.

Trump disregarded the gravity of the COVID-19 risk, referring to it as “small and temporary,” when he put Vice President Mike Pence in charge of the White House Coronavirus Task Force. Trump kept claiming that the US was the most prepared country to handle the pandemic, and predicted that it would be over in a couple days. To his surprise, the number of cases was growing rapidly, and major events around the country were being canceled

Every day, Trump and some health experts would go into a briefing room to give updates about the current situation of the pandemic. Trump would keep insulting and attacking reporters who alluded to his downplay of the pandemic. He repeatedly spread false and dangerous information about potential cures, such as injecting yourself with disinfectants to kill the virus.

George Floyd Riots

By the end of May, almost 100,000 people had died of coronavirus, and George Floyd had just been murdered by police in Minneapolis. On May 29, some of the protests against his killing started getting violent, and demonstrators breached an annex of the Treasury Building near the White House. Trump was taken to a safety bunker until the situation was under control again an hour later. Trump was encouraging police brutality through his tweets, and undermined the severity of a clearly racial issue by stating that white people get killed too.

Trump asked Defense Secretary Mark Esper and Joint Chiefs Chairman Mark Milley to immediately deploy ten thousand active-duty troops to stop the protests. They both refused.

After giving a speech in the White House, Trump walked over to St. John’s Church, which had been vandalized, to pay his respects. Esper and Milley accompanied him, and Milley was wearing his combat fatigues. Trump proceeded to take pictures as he held up a Bible. This photo op was damaging to Milley and Esper’s image, as the military is supposed to stay out of politics and simply protect the people.

Tulsa Rally

Trump’s daily television appearances where he spread misinformation about the pandemic were costing him support from voters, and he was advised to step back for a little while. A drive-in rally was suggested for Trump’s campaign relaunch; however, he was opposed to the idea as he wanted a crowd, not cars. He settled on a huge indoor event in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

The June 18 rally ended up being one of Trump’s most disastrous campaign moments. The night before the event, Trump’s staffers were celebrating together with little regard to COVID-19 safety regulations. The next morning, eight staffers tested positive for the virus. Only 6,200 supporters showed up at the rally. Trump’s speech was a disaster, as he didn’t mention the George Floyd murder. He instead boasted about how well he was handling the pandemic, and suggested stopping testing for the virus to lower the number of reported cases.

Loyalty

As the pandemic darkened every aspect of the country, McEntee was carefully picking out whoever he thought was not loyal enough. McEntee was hiring unqualified personnel, from attractive young women to his close male friends, all based on how loyal they were to Trump. McEntee was also rooting out anyone he considered disloyal. This went so far as to include a cabinet secretary’s assistant who had tapped the like button on a Taylor Swift Instagram post in which one of the pictures had Biden-Harris cookies.

McEntee was especially targeting Pentagon personnel, even fairly competent and loyal ones, such as Acting Assistant Secretary of Defense Katie Wheelbarger, and forcing them to resign. He employed a 25-year-old Trump supporter, Josh Whitehouse, at the Department of Homeland Security. Although he had a low-level job, Whitehouse was arrogant, bossy, and moody. He constantly threatened his coworkers, and was eventually given an even more important job at the Pentagon as White House liaison.

The First Debate

After the death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell convinced Trump to wait until after her memorial service to nominate Amy Coney Barrett as her replacement. On September 26, Trump announced the nomination in the White House Rose Garden in a press conference that was attended by many, with no regard to COVID-19 restrictions. At least eleven attendees then tested positive.

Trump was preparing for his first presidential debate, which was three days after the announcement. Key people helping him prepare were also infected with the virus. Before the debate, The New York Times reported that Trump only paid a total of $1,500 in federal income taxes since his election in 2016, and was badly in debt. Trump handled it the only way he knows how, by denying the claims and attacking the press. The debate ended up being a disaster, as Trump kept claiming that the upcoming election was illegitimate, and that the voting ballots were fraudulent. It was clear that the only election result he was going to accept was his own victory.

Patient Zero

On October 1, it was announced that Trump and his wife, Melania, had just tested positive for COVID-19. The White House physician, Dr. Sean Conley, said they were both doing well, and that Trump would continue his presidential duties while in isolation. However, the president’s entire schedule for the upcoming week was canceled, and he was flown to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center to receive extensive treatment. The next day, a press conference was held at the hospital with Conley, who assured reporters that Trump was doing great. However, right after, Chief of Staff Meadows rushed to correct those claims, stating that Trump was in a dire condition, and his vitals had been concerning.

Three days into his hospital stay, Trump posted a video on Twitter saying that he learned a great deal about the virus. By the next evening, he was well enough to return to the White House.

The Great Mirage

By November, Trump and his supporters were convinced that he was going to win the election. They all claimed that if he didn’t win, the election had to have been rigged.

With the virus making it dangerous to vote in person, voting by mail dramatically increased, especially by Democrats. Trump claimed that this would only increase voter fraud. Because mail-in ballots took longer to count, red and blue mirages were occurring on Election Night. This meant that a state would look Republican leaning until the mail-in ballots were counted, which would shift the state to Democratic. This tricked Trump into thinking he was going to win.

Trump’s chances of winning were slowly fading away. By midnight it was clear that the winner wasn’t going to be announced on Election Night. His opponent, Joe Biden, announced that he was feeling good about the results so far, which made Trump angry, and he decided he was going to give a speech. In it, he claimed that the election was rigged, was an embarrassment, and that he actually won the election.

The Biggest Loser

Election Night turned into election week, and the numbers weren’t looking good for Trump. He continuously demanded the stop of the count, as it was the only way he could win. His adviser Rudy Giuliani and his campaign team were making all sorts of false claims about fraudulent elections. These included dead people voting, votes being switched, and conspiracies about the involvement of the CIA, Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez, who died in 2013, and a computer farm in Germany.

On November 7, Trump was playing golf when news organizations started announcing Biden as the winner of the election. After he came back to the White House, his deputy campaign manager Justin Clark assured Trump that there was still a slim chance of victory, and that they needed to win Arizona. Within a couple days, Biden was declared the winner in Arizona, and Trump had officially lost the election, despite all the efforts to prove fraud, such as setting up a hotline for people to report it.

Infidels at the Pentagon

On November 9, Christopher Miller was asked to lead the Department of Defense after Esper was fired. McEntee then contacted retired Army Colonel Douglas McGregor and asked him to be Miller’s senior adviser. A couple days later, the International Atomic Energy Agency estimated that Iran could have two new nuclear bombs within six weeks. Trump demanded air strikes to destroy their nuclear program. He was backed by Miller, despite everyone else advising him against it.

During Miller’s short tenure as acting secretary of defense, two conspiracies were being pushed by Giuliani’s team. The first one was that CIA Director Gina Haspel was hurt on a mission to seize a computer server in Germany, which was used to switch votes and rig the election. The second claimed that two imprisoned men in Italy had used satellites to rig the election in favor of Biden. Both these theories were insane and untrue, as Haspel was not on any secret operation, and the second one was simply a QAnon conspiracy.

False Claims

In an interview in May 2020, Trump claimed that the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election was a crime that stemmed from spying on his campaign, and that Obama and Biden should be imprisoned for what they did to him. That year, Attorney General Bill Barr had appointed US Attorney John Durham to find out the origins of the Russia investigation, a move that sat well with Trump. Barr responded to Trump’s latest claims by saying that neither Obama nor Biden would be prosecuted.

Barr expected Trump to lose the election, and did not get involved in the fraud allegations. However, on November 9, he sent a letter to federal prosecutors, stating that alleged voter irregularities could be investigated before the election was certified, if they were thought to potentially affect its outcome. In this investigation, the allegations of a large number of fake ballots in Milwaukee and Detroit, out-of-state voters in Nevada, and rigged voting machines were all proven to be untrue. On December 14, the results of the election were certified in all states, and Trump had clearly lost. Barr met with him and gave him his resignation letter.

Trump was having a hard time accepting his loss, and turned to a new tactic. He went to Republican-led legislatures and demanded that they throw out the election results and announce him as the winner. This strategy was, to some extent, legal, but was still very far-fetched. As expected, this did not work. Federal courts in multiple states kept shooting down lawsuits filed by Trump’s legal team in order to prevent them from certifying Biden’s victory.

On November 25, Giuliani organized a hearing in Pennsylvania in front of Republican state senators, claiming to have statistical evidence proving a rigged election, because the number of the final count was greater than the ballots that had been sent in. This turned out to be false, and Giuliani had confused the ballots sent out for the primary election in June and those of the general election in November.

Overturn

On December 18, a meeting was held in the Oval Office where attorney Sydney Powell was present. She had been pushing the idea of a fraudulent election harder than anyone, and it was exactly what Trump wanted to hear. Trump was considering appointing Powell as a special counsel.

The next day, Trump announced on Twitter that there would be an election protest in Washington on January 6, the day of the ceremonial counting of electoral votes. On December 21, Trump had another meeting, this time with far-right House Republicans, who still believed he could win. The focus of the meeting was the upcoming protest. Kevin McCarthy, the House Republican leader, quietly let McConnell know that he also did not approve of a showdown of electoral objections. McConnell was trying hard to talk everyone out of it.

Media Image

On January 1, Trump supporter and attorney Lin Wood issued a tweet defaming Pence as a traitor and a coward for refusing to say he could and would overturn the election when he presided over the ceremonial vote count. As a response to Wood, campaign lawyer Jenna Ellis disagreed on her personal Twitter account, but she was not speaking for Trump. Trump never stopped tweeting about his plans for January 6.

Some disagreements were occurring inside the Republican Party itself over the Trump campaign to reverse the election results and whether to support it. The Republicans still hadn’t acknowledged Biden’s victory.

Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s secretary of state, was surprised to get a call from Trump to discuss the ballot numbers. Raffensperger recorded the call, in which Trump was arguing with him and using false data. The next day, Trump denied all of it in a tweet, but the recorded call was released soon after. The following few days were hectic for the Trump campaign team. Trump had been talking secretly about putting in a new head of the Justice Department who would support his cause, but it never happened.

Hang Mike Pence

A couple days after Christmas 2020, Trump had become convinced that Pence had the power to overturn the outcome of the election. On January 6, when Congress was to count the final electoral votes and officially announce the result, the vice president could refuse to accept it. This was backed by a text message McEntee sent to Pence’s chief of staff. In it, he claimed that Thomas Jefferson had used his vice president’s privilege to win. However, his reasoning was flawed, as Jefferson had actually won the election of 1800.

Pence knew his role on January 6 would only be ceremonial, but Trump was convinced otherwise. Trump issued a statement claiming that he and Pence agreed about Pence’s ability to overturn the election, which wasn’t true. Pence followed this with his own statement, focusing on the fact that one person deciding the outcome of the election would be antidemocratic and anti-American. Pence ended up choosing loyalty to the Constitution, not to Trump.

Day of Infamy

On January 6, 2021, Trump gave a speech to supporters who were standing with him outside the White House. He encouraged them to “fight like hell” and march with him towards the Capitol building.

The police were dealing with a safety threat, as an unexploded pipe bomb had been discovered a few blocks away. Congressman Cedric Richmond was one of the people forced to evacuate their offices. He watched as the protest started becoming more violent and rioters seized the west media tower on the inaugural platform. Trump did not join his supporters in the march, and was instead watching them safely from the White House.

Protesters breached the Capitol and started flooding in through smashed windows. Pence refused to leave the room behind the Senate floor where he was hiding until his lead Secret Service agent convinced him otherwise. While Capitol Hill police officer Eugene Goodman distracted the rioters, Pence and the senators made their escape. Some other personnel were hiding in closets or in bathrooms, and more violence was arising.

One of the Senate parliamentarians decided to take the boxes that contained the certified electoral votes with him during the escape. These boxes were what the protesters were after, as destroying them would stop the election from being finalized. Rioters started chanting “Hang Mike Pence” while Trump was safe and justifying their actions. He was finally convinced to address them, and told them to go home. By 6:14, the rioters were finally ejected from the Capitol building by the police and the National Guard.

The Aftermath

After everything cooled down, congressional leaders decided to resume certifying the election immediately. Giuliani was still scheming to try to reverse the outcome while the Senate reconvened at 8 p.m.

Trump’s hands were tied, as his Twitter account had just been suspended for the first time. As he watched everything unfold on TV, several Republican figures spoke out against the violence and the riots, such as Bill Barr. There was talk about possibly invoking the Twenty-Fifth Amendment to declare Trump mentally unfit for presidency and forcibly remove him from the White House. This would take time, however, and Trump only had two weeks left in office. By 3:39 a.m., all objections were rejected, and the final count came down to 306 electoral votes for Biden and 232 for Trump.

Trump’s comeback to Twitter was brief, as he only had the chance to announce that he would not be attending the Biden inauguration before getting banned again. It was later found out that just before this announcement, he was informed that he would not be invited.

Transitions

Chris Liddell, the longest-serving official in the Trump White House, made sure to preserve his privacy in the media. This was due to him being the head of the White House Transition Coordinating Council, which meant that he worked with Biden’s team to ensure a smooth transition of power. Trump had demanded that Republican leaders send in Trump electoral votes instead of votes for Biden, which they didn’t do. Pence was asked to refuse to accept Biden’s victory, but he didn’t. Many officials deeply loyal to Trump rejected his irrational demands, and it was thanks to them that democracy prevailed. On January 20, most officials from the Trump administration had left, and the transition went smoothly. The last moments of his presidency, unlike the rest, were quiet and uneventful.

One American tradition is for the outgoing president to welcome their successor at the White House and give them a tour of the place. Trump, however, was already out of town at 8 a.m. January 20. Trump refused to call Biden, but he did write him a letter and leave it in the Oval Office desk. According to Biden, it was a very generous letter.

As punishment for the leaders that betrayed him, Trump thought of starting his own political party. He viewed this as a way to destroy the Republican Party. He was advised against it, as he would only be destroying himself. He didn’t end up leaving the Republican Party, but had instead taken it over. Despite his deep resentment towards Republican leaders, they still visited him in his exile in Mar-a-Lago, and considered him their biggest endorsement.

Author’s Style

Jonathan Karl is a well-experienced journalist. He offers details about what he witnessed from a close and objective point of view. He includes segments of his interviews with political personnel in the White House, looking deeply into each one’s role in Trump’s campaign. However, he does tend to assume that the reader is already quite familiar with American politics and White House personnel.

Author’s Perspective

Jonathan Karl is the chief Washington correspondent for ABC News. He has been reporting under four presidents and fourteen press secretaries. He has interviewed many important political figures including Trump.