Publication Date: March 31, 2020 Publicity Contact: Price: $28.00 Amanda Walker, 212-366-2212 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE [email protected]
NOW A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
“Jonathan Karl is a straight-shooting, fair-minded, and hardworking professional so it’s no surprise he’s produced a book historians will relish.”—Peggy Noonan, Wall Street Journal FRONT ROW AT THE TRUMP SHOW Jonathan Karl Chief White House Correspondent for ABC News
EARLY PRAISE FOR FRONT ROW AT THE TRUMP SHOW “Jon Karl is fierce, fearless, and fair. He knows the man, and the office. Front Row at the Trump Show takes us inside the daily challenge of truthful reporting on the Trump WH, revealing what’s at stake with vivid detail and deep insights.” —George Stephanopoulos
"In this revealing and personal account of his relationship with our 45th president, we learn what it is really like to be on the White House beat, about the peculiarities of dealing with the personality in the Oval Office, and ultimately the risks and dangers we face at this singular moment in American history." —Mike McCurry, former White House press secretary
“No reporter has covered Donald Trump longer and with more energy than Jonathan Karl. It pays off in his account of what he calls the Trump Show with some startling scoops.”—Susan Page, Washington bureau chief, USA Today
“The Constitution is strict: It says we must have presidents. Fortunately, we occasionally have reporters as talented as Jonathan Karl—an acute observer and gifted writer—to record what presidents do. Karl is exactly the right journalist to chronicle the 45th president, who is more—to be polite—exotic than his predecessors.” —George F. Will
“Front Row at the Trump Show provides an unvarnished view of the deceptions, eccentricities, and occasional achievements of the Trump presidency from a first-rate television correspondent with a ringside seat.”—Lou Cannon, author of President Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime
Jonathan Karl has known Donald Trump longer than any other White House reporter and virtually anybody on the White House staff with the exception of his daughter Ivanka.
His new book, FRONT ROW AT THE TRUMP SHOW (Dutton; on sale March 31, 2020) tells a story only he can tell—from his first encounter with Donald Trump behind police lines at Trump Tower in the early 1990s, to the first minutes of the Trump presidency in an eerily empty White House, to the fallout from asking the questions that sealed the president’s fate on impeachment. Trump has charmed Karl, lectured him in the Oval Office, and screamed profanities at him.
With extraordinary access during the campaign and at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Karl delivers essential new reporting and surprising insights. The stories he tells and the scenes he describes will become defining moments of the Trump presidency.
This is the real story of Trump’s unlikely rise; of the struggles and battles of those who work in the administration and those who report on it; and of the plots and schemes of a senior staff enduring stunning and unprecedented unpredictability.
He shows us an administration rewriting the role of the president on the fly and a press corps struggling to make sense of it all while playing a role that has never been more vital. This book is only possible because of the surprisingly open relationship Donald Trump has had with Jonathan Karl, a reporter he has praised, fought, and branded an enemy of the people.
FRONT ROW AT THE TRUMP SHOW reveals: • How they first met: In 1994, Karl, then a young New York Post reporter, called Trump’s assistant to pitch a story on Lisa Marie Presley and Michael Jackson choosing to honeymoon at Trump Tower. He got a call back immediately from Trump himself. • The first time Karl witnessed a shocking side of Trump, when the then-candidate screamed at him backstage at a rally, calling Karl a “fucking nasty guy” after Karl had acknowledged polls showing Hillary Clinton beating Trump. • A frightening attack on photojournalist Stuart Clark, who was just doing his job during a campaign rally: “Donald Trump was inciting 10,000-plus supporters. But instead of raging against ‘the media’—a broad and vague target—he was raging against Stuart Clark.” It set the tone for later media attacks. • New details and a riveting behind-the-scenes description of the day the infamous Access Hollywood tape came out, including the first on the record comments from former White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus about what he told Trump on that day. • Three days before election day in 2016, Karl attended a closed-door Republican National Committee briefing where GOP officials revealed their data showed Trump would be trounced. Sean Spicer later denied this, but Karl has audio recordings to prove it. • Karl details lies told off-the-record by senior White House officials and names names—arguing that once you lie it is no longer off the record — including Sarah Huckabee Sanders lying, off the record, to reporters about airstrikes on Syria. • Karl’s fascinating and surreal moments on the front lines of reporting, including being the only TV reporter in the room during Obama and Trump’s first-ever meeting; sharing an elevator ride with Kim Jong Un’s sister in Hanoi; getting an impromptu hug from Kanye West in the Oval Office; and more. • How former Acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney, who came to believe Trump may be mentally ill, suggested his mental illness would make him a great president. He recommended White House senior staff read a 2011 book, A First-Rate Madness: Uncovering the Links Between Leadership and Mental Illness by Nassir Ghaemi, director of the mood disorders program at Tufts Medical Center. • Inside Trump’s private dinner with Kim Jong Un, at which the North Koreans became alarmed about the prospect of the United States buying Greenland. • The scene in the Lincoln Bedroom just after Trump privately praised Confederate generals and the protestors marching to keep their statues on display in Charlottesville. None of Trump’s top advisors stepped forward to challenge the president’s praise for a protest organized by white supremacists. A day later, he said it all again in public—a moment widely considered the low point of his first year in office. • The time an enraged Trump ordered National Security Advisor H. R. McMaster to get a war plan for Venezuela from the Pentagon—and how John Kelly defied that order. And McMaster’s response: He tells Karl, “I didn’t need John Kelly to tell me how to do my job.” • Karl’s criticisms of some in the news media who have fallen into the trap of appearing too much like members of an opposition party. • Eye-opening accounts of his interactions with top officials in the Trump administration, including Sean Spicer, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Bill Shine, and John Kelly. Spicer, Karl writes, “turned out to be comically unfit for the job.” Spicer also slammed a door in Karl's face—twice in one day. • The frantic efforts of the White House press office in the failed attempt to prevent Attorney General Jeff Sessions’s recusal from the Russian Investigation—an effort the Mueller investigation missed. • The time John Kelly was overheard heard calling the President a “fucking bastard” in the Oval Office after Trump told top military leaders, “I know more about nuclear weapons than anybody. I know more about them than all you people.” • Karl recounts for the first time how Trump called Karl into the Oval Office personally to rebuke him about 14 seconds of an accurate story Karl did for the evening news. • The fallout from the extraordinary moment in the White House briefing room when Mick Mulvaney, responding to Karl’s questions, made the admission that sealed his fate on impeachment. • Karl’s dark warning about the president’s war on truth: “What is at stake is the survival of our nation as a place where differing views are tolerated and debated, where election results are trusted and accepted, where people in power are held accountable, and where the truth is accepted, even when it challenges our beliefs. The Trump Show will eventually become a distant memory. The question is whether we’ll ever be the same again.” • Why, despite the perilous stakes, Karl continues to believe that a war on truth is doomed to fail.
There has never been a better—or more important—time to be a White House reporter. FRONT ROW AT THE TRUMP SHOW is an indispensable read for anyone who cares about media, politics, or how it all works.