Betrayal

INTRODUCTION

One of the first calls I made as I watched the rioters move toward the Capitol building on January 6, 2021, was to John Kelly, the retired four star Marine general who previ
ously had served as President Trump s first chief of staff. More than a year before the 2020 election, as I was finishing Front Row at the Trump Show, I had asked Kelly what would happen if Trump lost the election and refused to concede. Back then the question was a hypo thetical one, but it was one I had been thinking about for a long time. What if Trump tried to stay in the White House? How would this all end?

Oh, he ll leave, Kelly told me back then. And if he refuses to leave, there are people who will escort him out.

As chief of staff, Kelly had seen firsthand how Trump operates and he knew how the White House really functions. Clearly he had thought about this before and had played out the scenario in his mind.

If he tried to chain himself to the Resolute, Kelly told me, refer ring to the enormous desk in the Oval Office, they would simply cut the chains and carry him out.

Kelly has a deep and commanding voice befitting a retired four star Marine general. He said these words with authority, as if he was speaking an immutable truth that needed no further discussion. To Kelly it wasn t complicated. If Trump loses, he ll be gone at noon on January 20, 2021. That s what the Constitution dictates. It s as simple as that. I didn t ask any more questions, but I still had a few. Who would escort him out? Who would cut the chains? Who were they ? Would it be the Secret Service? Would it be the Marine who stands sentry at the entrance to the West Wing? The image Kelly described was a crazy one: a defeated president getting dragged from the White House while he refuses to admit defeat. Since John Adams lost reelec tion to Thomas Jefferson in 1800, every defeated president has ac cepted the results and voluntarily left office. The scenario described by John Kelly

Jonathan Karl is the chief Washington correspondent for ABC News and co-anchor of This Week with George Stephanopoulos. Karl has covered every major beat in Washington, D.C., including the White House, Capitol Hill, the Pentagon, and the State Department. He has reported from the White House under four presidents and fourteen press secretaries. He is a former president of the White House Correspondents' Association. Front Row at the Trump Show was an instant New York Times bestseller.

Praise for Betrayal

One of the books that will define the month of November is Betrayal, the new end-of-Trump-era tome by ABC's Jonathan Karl. Betrayal convincingly makes the case that the period between Election Day and Inauguration Day was even more precarious than we knew at the time. Karl isn't a progressive pundit or a hyperbolic columnist. He is one of the most-respected correspondents in D.C. He and so many others are saying: America was on the precipice of a constitutional crisis. And we could wind up back there again soon. Brian Stelter, CNN's Reliable Sources newsletter

Newly revelatory in a surprising way. Booklist (starred review)

In the follow-up to Front Row at the Trump Show, the ABC News political correspondent delivers fresh news on the last months of the Trump presidency. Kirkus (starred review)

ABC s man in Washington delivers a second riveting and horrifying read about how close America came to disaster. The Guardian

As a long-time TV reporter, ABC News chief Washington correspondent Jonathan Karl brings an eye for life as presented on screen that is acutely appropriate for the Trump saga. That alone might justify widening our Trump lit shelf, but Karl also adds substantially to the record of this parlous period especially in the chaos of its final months.... On substance, and on the most important subject in Betrayal, Karl shows no hesitance or equivocation. Karl sees Trump as a past, present, and future threat to the orderly process of American politics and the constitutional separation of powers far beyond that posed by past presidents (or would-be presidents).... Enough of this material is new, or renewed in Karl's retelling, that it can all be compelling to read once again even for those who have read more Trump books than they can count on their fingers ('We few, we happy few, we band of brothers...').