The Daily Beast Podcast - Trump Knows He’s Running Out of Time: Author

Episode Date: November 14, 2025

Jonathan Karl joins Joanna Coles to reveal the chaos inside Donald Trump’s orbit. Karl, ABC News’ chief Washington correspondent and author of the new book Retribution, calls Trump’s relationships “abusive,” with aides, journalists, and anyone nearby alternately lavished with attention and publicly humiliated, praised, and discarded. They also dig into reports of Trump’s poor diet, bad sleep hygiene, and total aversion to exercise, which open up a larger conversation about a leader showing unmistakable signs of physical wear. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

He's almost acting like a guy that feels like he's running out of time. I mean, like he's 79 years old. He doesn't really exercise. You know, his diet isn't exactly the model diet. I'm Joanna Coles. This is The Daily Beast podcast. And today in the studio, we have none other than the author of Retribution, Jonathan Carl, the Washington correspondent for ABC News.

This is a fascinating read. And, well, the man's here. Let's get into it. We are joined by Jonathan Carl, ABC's Washington Bureau Chief and the author of, God Help Us, only rivaled by Michael Wolfe, four books on Donald Trump, including his latest retribution, which is a gripping read. I will say I curled up with this book, big cup of tea, big under my blanket as the first cold of the winter. crept upon us and I couldn't put it down. And you start with a conversation that you have on the phone with Donald Trump when you call him to congratulate him on being the president-elect. And then you refer to many conversations you have throughout the book with him.

It feels like the two of you are in an abusive relationship. It feels like that with a lot of people with Donald Trump. I mean, look, it's, by the way, I should say one thing. I am not the Washington Bureau Chief. I am the chief Washington correspondent, and I want to thank you. Sorry to Rick Klein, who was our bureau chief. Rick Klein, I'm sorry, I insulted you. I'm so mad. And look, and I would never want that responsibility. That would mean I'd actually have to run, you know, the place. So I, you know, yeah, I mean, look. I'm just going to point out that the Daily Beast is so efficient that we have a Washington bureau chief and chief Washington correspondent in David Gardner.

Wow. Wow. We have a smaller team than ABC. Don't tell my friends at ABC that. I like, you know. All right. We've started off. This is very frightening. We've already. We've already started off and I've got your title wrong. But it does feel like you're in an abusive relationship with Trump. And sometimes he calls you and he loves you. And other times he calls you out in public and tells you you're part of the problem. Yeah. I mean, look, first of all, I've known the guy for 30 plus years.

I mean, I first interviewed him when I was a young New York Post reporter, you know, running around Trump Tower. And he was showing me all his glories and, you know, telling. I mean, it was like he's almost the same guy that he was back then. But I've known him when he came to the. the White House. I was the chief, you know, White House correspondent for ABC. I also was the president of the White House Correspondents Association, but I was somebody who knew him and somebody who he had known for a long time. So there is that relationship. And he gets, I think I've gotten the sense over time that he always thinks that he can pull me in and I'm going to be like, you know,

in his camp in some way. And he doesn't understand, I'm a journalist. We're not in anybody's camp. Right. And he doesn't really understand that. How can he not understand that after all these years? You've known him 30 years. How can he not understand that? You know, I mean, he said to me recently, first of all, he attacked me recently over my hair, which is very unusual. That's for Donald Trump. You know, he said to me, it was a truth social post and he said, what the hell happened to his hair? It was just an aside in this rant he was on.

And I texted him after I saw that. And I said, well, maybe I should get some advice from you on hair. I mean, you know, the hair. And, you know, he gave me an angry response. He was clearly genuinely upset. And in his response, he said, you back to the wrong side. And I said, back. As you know, I don't back any side.

I report the facts. And he's like, bullshit. And so it's, you know, you. He doesn't quite, you know... But in the book, you do say that you didn't expect him to win, that you didn't call it. No, I didn't. I didn't. You know, look, I guess I was wrong twice on this because I certainly didn't think he was going to win in 2016.

But back then, I'm not even sure Donald Trump thought he was going to win. No, he seemed incredulous on the night when he was actually clearly winning, he seemed, and Melania was crying. Yeah, I mean, this was a great adventure. I mean, I took a lot of heat, as Trump will remind me, at the time. I did the first network interview with Donald Trump up the 2016 cycle. It was back in 2013. He was out in Iowa at this, you know, religious right kind of event called the Daily Leader. And, you know, I figured it was a slow August Sunday.

We went out that I interviewed him for like a half an hour. It was a very lively interview. We only used a few minutes of it on the show. But people are like, why are you spending any time talking to Donald? Donald Trump, you know he's never going to run for president. You know this is never going to happen. He's just trying to get attention. He just wants to boost ratings for The Apprentice.

And, you know, we aired part of the interview. And Trump always remembers that. And he's brought it up to me. I can't tell you how many times. In a good way? Yeah, yeah. You did the interview. Seriously early.

And everybody gave you a hard time, but boy, did you get great ratings? I mean, I don't know what the ratings were. We only aired a few minutes of it. Right. But, you know, he was like, and he's constantly brought this up. He's changed the venue of the interview a couple times because I did a couple interviews in those early times. And I actually didn't think he was going to run either. But I thought he was an interesting figure.

Here was this, you know, liberal, big city developer who would back Democrats for his whole life, going around and courting these Republicans. I thought it was an interesting story. And I actually spent a lot of the time asking him what he thought of the other Republicans. And also, there was a moment I was like, and this birther thing, I mean, are you prepared now to just, you know, apologize for what you said about Obama? I mean, and admit that you were totally wrong. And he was like, no, I don't think I was wrong. And I was like, oh, come on.

But isn't he, and wasn't he as earlier as back then, an absolute gift of a politician's interview because he's not a politician? Well, especially at this time, especially at this time, because. Who are the main figures in the party going into that election? I can't even remember them. He's clipped everybody. I'll give you two and one on each side. There was Jeb Bush. Right.

And there was Hillary Clinton. Right. So low energy Jeb. And Hillary Clinton and what did they have in common is they were so careful about everything they said and calculated. You know, they did very few interviews. And when they did, they were very, and every speech was very disciplined. discipline message. And here's Trump coming out.

And it's like, you never know what he's going to, what he's going to say. And by the way, he's talking to everybody and at all times. And this is, you know, this was the fascination. And this is how he really, you know, caught on. So you've written four books about him. You've really, really studied the man. How would you describe his personality? What is his character?

I mean, you've referred to him as a Shakespearean character. What is his character? I mean, this is not a unique insight at all, but it's everything about him. He wants to be the center of attention at all times. And you asked a question about, you sounded like I had been in an abusive relationship. I'm not sure about that, but I will say that his relationships with people around him often feel like they are abusive relationships. Well, and to clarify, what I mean is you don't ever know where you are with him. Right, right.

You've no idea if he's going to be nice Trump or nasty Trump. He berates people publicly. He humiliates people publicly. He's done that to you when you've been in the press line. But then he'll call you and give you something. And so that feels like a complicated relationship to navigate from your position. But it's especially interesting with people that are in his, come in and out of his inner circle. Like his lawyers.

Like he brings people in. Donald Trump can make you feel like you are also the center of the universe. Because he wants, you know, if you're around him, it's like you must be a really big freaking deal, you know? And so a lot of these people who come in who would, by the way, never be within miles of a White House with another president derive so much of their worth from the praise they received from Donald Trump. And then he can turn that off in a second and make you feel like.

And then take away what is now core to your sense of self-worth. I mean, Michael Cohen is like the most glaring example of this. I mean, Michael Cohen, you know, a guy that was, you know, dealing with taxicab medallions and, you know, graduated from a, you know, fifth-tier law school. And suddenly he is there, you know, office next to Trump's Trump Tower. and he's the enforcer for the man. And Michael Cohen was as, you know, he was, I recounted in one of my earlier books, one of these early interviews I had with Trump, which was done through Michael Cohen, set it up. And Michael Cohen, like, told my producer, my young producer that was doing it, you know, if Carl asks anything I don't like, I'm going to knock your camera over, you better make sure this thing goes all right.

I mean, he was, and of course, Michael Cohen's the guy that says, I would take a bullet for Donald Trump. I would do anything for Donald Trump. And then, you know, Michael Cohen finds himself out on the ledge and he's kind of not defended by Trump. And he takes that turn. And now, like, it's. Well, and then he goes to jail for Trump, right? He goes to jail for that misplaced loyalty. So what is that about, though, this ability to turn on even his closest to people is it.

it some kind of chemical imbalance? Is it like a bipolar thing? What does, can you give us more of a sense of what it feels like to be in the orbit of it? And also what people used to say about Bill Clinton, which is that when you're with him, you can feel like the most important person in the world. Yeah. I mean, it is, look, Rick Riley in that terrific book, Commander and Cheat about Trump's golf game, recounts. Also a great title. I mean, you know, and Riley, Riley recounts covering a golf tournament that was at a Trump property and he's there and he's, he's there as a reporter for Sports Illustrated. And Trump keeps introducing him to people as the publisher of Sports Illustrated. And Riley is quietly saying, no, I'm a reporter.

I'm not the published. And he keeps doing it. And finally, Rick Riley writes that he pulls Trump aside and says, why do you keep saying that? You know I'm not the publisher. I've told you I'm not the publisher. Why do you keep saying it? And Trump's answers, it sounds better. It sounds better.

And so Rick Riley didn't like that. He's a guy that, you know, he has a respect for the basic truth. But, you know, for people around Trump, you know, he's elevating them and making them sound like they're the best. They're the smartest. But in a minute, he can turn. And he does turn. He'll turn back. But he does turn.

And I think what it does is it keeps people on edge. And it makes it so that that loyalty that they must express to Trump is always there. And they're on edge about it. I got to keep it. I'm happy. I got to keep him happy. I got to serve him right. And doesn't it also mean that he's always in control of them? Yeah, he's always in control of them. He's always the one in control, 100%. So if you're a lawyer for him, I mean, I heard this from people who covered the Stormy Daniels trial, that he would regularly just yell at his lawyers and tell them that they were stupid and they would say things,

and then he would give his own press conference and completely undercut them. Why do people stay working for him? Well, you know, look, he, he, I think that they're drawn to the magnetism. And for, for some of them, they, again, they're in positions that they would never have with anybody else. And what are they going to do? Like, leave Trump and then go work for Ron DeSantis or something? I mean, I mean, where are they going to be? They probably aren't going to get hired by Ron DeSantis. And if they are, they're not going to be, you know, given this elevated position.

So these are Republican operatives, you mean? Yeah, yeah. And the people, and look, and some people, look, there are people around Trump who have been around Trump for a long time, who have been through all those ups and downs, who are genuinely like infatuated with him and loyal to him and think that he is, I think he is a great man. I mean, look, he is the most consequential president of our time. Some people might look at that. Yeah, he's the most consequential. He's, you know, doing things that will be dealing with the negative consequences forever. And those who think he's, you know, doing great things. I mean, like,

Dan Scavino is a guy that. has been with Trump since he was working as a caddy for him. Now he is the deputy chief of staff. He's the head of presidential personnel. But he's been so much more than both of those things. He's always been by Trump's side. And, you know, I mean, Skamino is a total, total loyalist. And I think he genuinely has admiration and appreciation for the man.

And, you know, his all identity is bound up in Trump. And Trump, at this point, a guy like Skavino's been around so long, he's not, you. You know, I mean, he loves having dance-gabino around. And how does Susie Wiles figure in all this? I mean, the chief of staff, first female chief of staff. And I think the first time they met, she was still working for Ronda's centers. Yeah, yeah. I mean, she's got nerves of steel, and she is, you know, she's a loyalist.

she's also a pragmatist within that world. And, you know, I think that the secret to her success, and there's a debate, I think that she could well be there for all four years. I mean, I think that she's, you know, she's got no designs on leaving as far as I can tell. And I think that Trump would, Trump very much relies on her. I think the secret to her success is that she never actually tries to change Trump. She just, you know, she's not there to, like, debating him on this politics. or that policy or you got to do this. She's like, Trump's going to do what he's going to do,

and I'm going to make sure that I keep kind of the trains running on time, you know, in the White House and keep out the, you know, try to keep the infighting to a minimum. And I will kind of not tolerate any of the, any of that stuff that was so dominant in the first Trump administration. So she's not like a huge influence on what the guy actually does, but very effective. And now that's the hard.

I mean, press secretary may be the hardest. But chief of staff to Donald Trump is a very hard job. And she's somehow managed to pull it off. He's 79. Yeah. You've covered four presidents. How does his health and his energy seem to you? I mean, we've seen him covering up bruises on his hands with me.

I mean, look, there's all kinds of speculation about that. And much was making, made of the fact that he was closing his eyes in a recent, you know, overall office meeting. sleep. Yeah, I mean, all that. So, but I don't know. I think it's a very dangerous thing to get involved in speculating about health. People have speculated about his health since he was a candidate in 2016, 2015, about his mental state and all of that. I don't know. I mean, the guy, the guy actually seems to have a hell of a lot of energy, even, I mean, you know, like I said, he did appear to be dozing off at an event. I mean, I mean, you know, like I said, he did appear to be dozing off at an event.

I mean, but the... Well, to be fair, he'd just come back from an Asian. Yeah, and he doesn't sleep. I don't know how he does it. I don't really understand it. Bill Clinton was like this. Bill Clinton, like, slept like four hours a night. Margaret Thatcher didn't need more than five hours.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I don't know how, you know, it's like, it must be like a gene or something that you're going to go. I can do that for a couple of days. But, I mean, come on, after a while. And he's up. He's taking calls late at night. I would find that the best time to reach him if I wanted to call him during the campaign was either like late at night, you know, far later than you would ever call.

Yeah, and most other people. And very early in the morning. I mean, we talk to him sometime before seven. And he's already up. He's already watching television. He's already got his, you know, DVR going. He's, you know, he's constantly constant energy, constant activity. And he's almost acting like a guy that feels like he's running out of time.

So I, you know, I, who knows? I mean, look, he's 79 years old. He doesn't really exercise. You know, his diet isn't exactly the model diet. You know, at some point, all the speculation about his health will be true. I just won't be the one speculating on it. Okay. You've covered four presidents, as we've said.

What do you think of the cabinet that he has assembled around himself compared to previous presidents that you have known because certainly he's appointed people who have, like Dan Scavino, who you just mentioned, unusual backgrounds to run enormous departments with huge budgets and massive responsibilities. You know, it's not a team of rivals, although certainly some of them do fight amongst themselves for, you know, for Trump's good graces. This is a very different cabinet than his first cabinet. I mean, it's obviously different from other presidents. But his first cabinet, he felt a need. He comes to the White House. He's really never really spent any time in Washington. I remember when I interviewed him in Washington in 2014, you know, he had bought

that, he had gotten that lease, the 99-year lease on the old post office building. He was building the Trump International Hotel. There was a big sign out front saying, Trump coming 2016, meaning that the Trump Hotel was coming in 2016. Right. And he remarked to me just about how few times he had actually literally even been in the city of Washington. And it was almost like he was like bringing trophies to his cabinet. He wanted to get people of great stature.

You know, Rex Tillerson is hardly what you would expect the profile of the Secretary of State. He was the CEO of Exxon Mobil. This guy's a titan. John Kelly and Mattis, Jim Mattis, these are four-star Marine generals. These are big, you know, people of consequence. Put him in the cabinet, home insecurity, the Pentagon. Jeff Sessions was a former federal judge, leading conservative in the Senate.

Make him your attorney general. These were people of consequence and credentials. And all those people I just meant, I just mentioned, Trump feels particularly. trade him. It's like what good did it have to have these people if they weren't actually loyal to me? So this time around, he's not caring so much about those credentials. It's truly about the personal loyalty to him. And they weren't loyal to him. Rex Tillerson famously got quoted as saying Trump was an absolute moron. We know that they would try. Right. And we know that they were trying to stop Trump from doing what he wants to do. Mattis and and Kelly.

I mean, Kelly end up calling him a fascist. And Jeff Sessions refused to act like his personal attorney. I mean, Jeff Sessions agreed with everything Trump was doing, but he wouldn't take the step of, like, firing the independent counsel, the special counsel. Right. And Gary Cohn removed papers from his family. Yeah, yeah, Gary Cohn, another one.

I mean, there's a great, you know, Goldman's. I mean, these are like serious, serious people. But they were serious people. And they weren't willing to do whatever the boss wanted him to. do. John, quick pause for an ad break. And I'm back with John Carl, the Chief Washington correspondent for ABC News and author of The Best Selling Retribution. So by implication, are you saying that the people he has around him now are not serious? I'm not going to say they're not serious, but what I'm going to say is the people around him are not going to be trying to steer him and control him in

that way. And, you know, and they'll make the argument. Well, he's the one that the American people elected. I actually had a very interesting conversation with H.R. McMaster several years ago. He was his head of national security. He was the national security advisor. And he often clashed with Kelly, who was the chief of staff at the time, both of them generals. McMaster, a three-star Army general. Kelly, a four-star Marine general. And Kelly was constantly trying to like stop the president from doing things kind of quietly, not like confronting him head on. But there was an incident where it's actually really timely when you think about where we are now. This was in the first term where there was a meeting in the Oval Office, McMaster, Kelly,

and some of the other national security folks. And Trump is demanding a war plan for Venezuela. Totally timely. Yeah. Totally timely. And, you know, he had various ideas. You know, one was a naval embargo. But he wanted a whole list of –

military options for Venezuela. And McMaster is like saying, sir, I really don't think that's necessary. We have other tools that are, you know, we've got diplomatic pressure. We've got economic pressure. I really, and Trump is getting like angry with him. And he's like, what do you? I, damn it, I want a war plan for Venezuela. The meeting breaks up.

McMaster heads down the hall, you know, outside the Oval Office. And Kelly catches up with them and says, So what are you doing? And he's like, well, you know, I'm going to call, I'm calling the Pentagon and I'm going to get, you know, get him to do what he wants. Don't you do that? Are you kidding me? If you do that, there's going to be stories about how the military is preparing for war with Venezuela. We're not going to go to war with Venezuela.

So this is like a, you know, a fundamental disagreement about how you deal with a president that you disagree with. Kelly didn't confront him in the actual meeting. He just listens to him, lets him vent, lets him say what he wants to do. McMaster actually does, but then the decision is made. Nobody elected H.R. McMaster or John Kelly. They elected Donald Trump. So it's a fundamental disagreement about how you deal with it. Well, I think now you actually don't even have much of either of those approaches.

You don't have people that are quietly trying to undermine him. you do have some, like, you know, a recent example was the decision to indict Tish James. The first one, Comey, Comey and then Tis James out of the Eastern District of Virginia. And Trump did hear advice from the leadership of the Justice Department that that was not a strong enough case and not a good idea to go forward with. But he charges through. And the person who was asked to do it, in fact, stepped aside. Yeah, yeah, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern. Yeah, yeah.

Well, I was going to come on to the Justice Department because you call the book retribution. Yeah. Is it retribution against the people that stopped him in his first administration as much as it is retribution against his political enemies who are Democrats? So James Comey, Tish James, well, in fact, his own person, John Bolton. Yeah. Look, I think that it's multi-leveled. And I think that his retribution, and by the way, you have to. I'd really take time in the book to sketch out what brought him back into power.

And the depths of those criminal investigations and how he used that both to motivate himself and his people were going to get back at the people that did this. But so clearly he wants to go after the prosecutors. I mean, that's the Tish James of it. That's the talk of, you know, going after Jack Smith and all of that. Yeah. And at the end of your chapter on Jack Smith, you have Jack Smith hiring his own. because he knows what's coming.

His last, I mean, it's so dramatic. These scenes in January, this is the most fascinating transition in American history. And I devote a significant amount of time to what was going on. And also, just as an aside, and I want to come back to the retribution, but the personal details of him with Biden in the car, all of that is, it feels like you're in the car with them. But go back to Jack Smith and the drama of all that. And the cases that the Democrats had very slowly, according to some people, Merrick Garland, very slowly putting these together, obviously all fall apart. Yeah. But Jack Smith, after the election, has to wrap up his investigation. He knows that, obviously, they're not going to go to trial.

You have these indictments on the classified documents and on January 6th. It's not going to go to trial. First of all, you can't try a sitting president. It's pretty well established, Justice Department policy. And besides, he knows he's going to get fired the minute the Trump completely. So he knows he has to wrap it up. So he does these final reports. It's one final report, but it's got two parts. It's the classified documents, and it's the election case. And he drive, you know, his office is not at Maine Justice.

It's in another part of Washington. It's like an unmarked, non-descript building behind Union Station. He gets in the car with an aide. He comes to Maine Justice. He physically hands over the report to Merrick Garland and bids farewell. And then he literally goes from Maine justice to one of the big firms in D.C. and lawyers up because he knows that his work is done. He then quietly resigns. By the way, he announced his resignation in a footnote in a court filing. Right, right. But look, the retribution, what I was saying is, so he wants to go back after those people. He wants to get back at the Democrats who oppose him. But I think that the retribution that he is most infatribution. about are the Republicans who did not back him sufficiently or betrayed him. And by the way,

Jim Comey, a Republican. John Bolton, obviously Republicans, right? His national security advice at one point. And, you know, Steve Bannon recently floated the idea that Bill Barr should be prosecuted and should be in prison, he said. Bill Barr. I mean, this is like... Well, didn't Steve Bannon also say that if they didn't win the midterm, they would all be going to prison, himself included. I mean, look, you are going to, by the way, this is one of the really disturbing things about this era we are in. You have a feeling like there's almost like no coming back from this cycle of recriminations. Look, Trump is weaponized the Justice Department.

There is no question. Well, and he put his own, just to remind people, he put his own personal lawyers as the number one and number number two. Yeah. And Bondi and Todd Blanche. Yeah. And basically the number three too. Remember, Amel Bovi was over there. Right. So Paul Boeve, I'd forgotten about him. Yes.

Strange looking, man. And he was running the Justice Department because in the beginning because he didn't need Senate confirmation for his job. So he went over there before Bondi and before Blanche got in. And he's the one that spearheaded the

firing of those top career prosecutors, the firing of the senior leadership at the FBI career FBI agents. It was, you know, as far as a lot of the people who worked in Maine Justice spent their careers in Maine Justice, it was like a reign of terror. It was a purge of anybody remotely tied to any case that impinged upon Donald Trump or on January 6th. And these were, this was his legal team. I mean, literally, you watched the trial in New York.

Todd Blanche is there, Trump is there, and Emil Bovey are there. You've written four books about the guy. So when you write your fifth book, what do you think is going to be the narrative? I think that we are in for a hell of a lot more. I mean, it's mind-boggling to think that we are not even at a year. We are what, are we at 10 months yet? Or coming up for 10 months, it'll be the 20th, right?

I, you know, I don't know what to where we go from here. I don't know how Donald Trump acts if he's faced with a Democratic Congress. Because what we have seen is, you know, that he is going to charge ahead. He is going to shatter norms. I think there are people around him who would like to see him defy court orders. he did that to a degree with the Bozberg order on the flights to El Salvador. But for the most part, Trump has not gone as far as some people around him. There's that theory of the unitary executive where basically, as Nixon put it in his interview with David Frost, it's not illegal if the president does that.

Now, Trump hasn't quite pushed it to that degree, but there are certainly those who believe he can. so does he totally defy a Democratic Congress? Is there away for him to work in any way with the Democratic Congress? Well, he seems to be defying part of his own Congress, isn't he? I mean, he's got a conservative. He's got a Republican Congress and he's managed him. And he's operated largely through executive order. I mean, not entirely.

You need to do certain things. It's always, yet the government was shut down. I mean, but so I, I, I cannot tell you where we are going. I don't think that he's serious about. running for a third term or anything like that. I think that he'll be ready to go. But we're in for, I think, I mean, I don't want to use a, there's any one of many cliches you could use,

but this is obviously uncharted territory. So I, my crystal ball is not good on this one. All right. So final question. You say that, you know, if you want to get hold of him, you call him very late at night or you call him early in the morning. He clearly doesn't sleep very much. He seems to travel a lot to.

you have to cover all of it. I know you have a team, but you're the lead of the team. How do you, looking forward to the next three years, think about your own energy and how do you stay on top of it and make sure that you're bringing sort of a clear eye to it all? You know, Steve Bannon was the one that kind of invented that kind of flood the zone and then they can't cover it all. And they do that. I mean, any single day you feel like we're living through a month. I think that the key is to try to focus on what looks important and realizing there's no way you can be on top of all of it. And ultimately, I will write one more book, but it will be after it is all over and I will want to dig through what has happened.

Part of the challenge with writing this book and why I wrote it is this campaign was like that. So to have the chance to take a step back and say, what actually mattered? because there are things that like dominate the media cycle for, you know, days, which is like an eternity in our world now, that end up being like they didn't freaking matter at all. Well, part of that is the extraordinary drama. You will remember that Saturday evening when you got the call about Butler, Pennsylvania and someone trying to assassinate the president.

Do you think it was a genuine thing? Do you think that Matthew Crookes was. just a rando guy trying to kill someone that would bring him attention? Look, there is something strange in our world right now, which is the erosion of the idea that there is the truth, that you can depend on facts and official sources of information, and people don't believe anything. And this is actually the biggest challenge facing our democracy.

And with, you know, we focus so much on people on the right who are obsessed with conspiracy. and, you know, the craziness surrounding the 2020 election. And there was, I recounted in betrayal, you know, this theory that went all the way into the, into the west wing of the White House, that Italian spy satellites were used to flip votes in, you know, in Georgia voting machines. I mean, give me a break. This stuff was cuckoo, but it got the attention of the chief of staff at the White House

who ordered the Justice Department and the Pentagon to investigate. gate it. Cooky stuff. Now there's, I mean, there's cooey stuff everywhere. And I can't tell

you how many people believe that, um, that Butler was entirely, was a setup, right? It was entirely a setup. I mean, tell that to the family

of Corey Comparatore who got killed, or the other two, who got seriously wounded. Tell it to my friends, the photographers that were there, including Evan Vucci, took that picture. This is an amazing picture.

It's an incredible picture. Doug Mills, it took the picture of the bullet. He went back and looked and saw the bullet going right by. I mean, the Butler happened. It wasn't a, personally, if you tried to set that up, you would never be able to set it up that well. I mean, we can debate what exactly happened with his ear. I mean, did the bullet hit his ear?

I mean, I don't know. I don't know. I mean, they haven't been very transparent with the medical records. But Thomas Crooks climbed on that roof. He took those shots. A Secret Service sniper took him out. By one of the extraordinary things that I learned in the process of reconstructing Butler is that that was the first time in all of the history of the Secret Service that there were counter snipers at an event that didn't involve the president of the president of the. United States. So counter snipers are part of the security. Was that because he'd been a president

then? No. It was the first time a Donald Trump event had counter snipers. Was that event? That's crazy. Why? Here's why. This is wild. It's because the Secret Service had been tracking threats from Iran and increasing intelligence, non-specific, but consistent, that Iran was going to try to assassinate Donald Trump. So they decided we need an extra layer of protection. We're putting counter-snipers. Now, there was no specific threat from Iran at Butler, and there's no evidence that crooks or anybody else had any ties to Iran, that Iran had anything to do with that happened in Butler, but they were there because of the Iranian threat. So in other words, Trump's life might have been saved because of Iran.

You really can't make it up, can you? You can't make it up. It's extraordinary. Hold on one second. We're just going to take a word from our sponsors. And I'm back with Jonathan Carl, the chief Washington correspondent of ABC News. All right. So final question, because it's always in the news and it's always bubbling under. Jeffrey Epstein. Yeah. What do you think is in the Epstein files? What are, what even are the Epstein files?

I mean, it's like, it's not like a file in the cabinet. I mean, it's like, it's just, it just means everything that the Justice Department has that was part of the case against Epstein, everything that mentions Epstein's name. There is no, there's no like client, so-called client list. I mean, you can go through and pick out the names. I don't know, but I do know this, that when they were, when Pam Bondi made that promise, we're going to release the Epstein files. They put an extraordinary amount of manpower to compile everything that it had Epstein's name or been involved in any of the cases. And as they're going through it, you know, Trump's name appears. It appears, and this is actually not new. You know, he, as we've seen the pictures,

we've seen the video, Trump has actually said it. You know, they, they, he knew him, he went to, he went to some of his parties. He was in Epstein's address book. I mean, a lot of people were in Epstein's address book. A lot of Democrats were in Epstein's, I mean, this is not a unique thing to Trump. He's, he was on the flight logs. A lot of people were on Epstein's flight logs. So, I mean, I think it's highly likely that's why they didn't want to, you know, the breaks were put on releasing them, although that information wouldn't be new. So it's kind of, it's a strange thing. So I don't know. The emails coming out of the oversight committee seem new.

Yeah. And by the way, and those came from the estate. So those are not from the criminal case. Now maybe they're part of the criminal case as well. I don't know. But the estate is also where the birthday. book came from. The Jeffrey Epstein estate. It's interesting, by the way, that the Republicans in the House on that committee had to support releasing that stuff. It was the Democrats that put it out

and highlighted, you know, those particular emails. But the Republicans didn't block the release of that information. Do you think there is a circle of Republicans who sense that Trump is vulnerable. I mean, he's obviously in a lame duck type of phase, although he's still got to get to the midterms and are trying to get the party back from him. I mean, no, you don't think that. Right, okay, because it feels like the Republican Party's become the Trump party. And I hear that there are lots of Republicans out there who hate him and hate that and want to take it back, but you don't think that's going on. No, I mean, look, I think there are Republicans that are concerned about the direction. Marjorie takes.

Taylor Green is played an interesting role right now, but I don't see a significant move, move away from Trump among the Republicans at all. I don't, I mean, it'll happen eventually. I would, I would assume. I mean, it always, you know, I mean, he will be a lame duck. He will leave the White House. They will have to figure out where they go from there. But it is absolutely still Donald Trump's Republican Party. It's so interesting to hear your insights. Thank you so much for coming in. Yeah, thanks for having me. You know, I used to think of political biographies as being so dense and you couldn't get through them. And this is like an amazing character study of the most interesting man in the world. I mean, the most consequential figure of our time.

Yeah. And that is Shakespearean. There you go. Jonathan Carl, thank you very much. Great. Thank you. The most interesting thing about it is that you would imagine that retribution was about his democratic enemies. But as Jonathan says, it's also about. his Republican enemies, the people on the Republican side that actually tried to take Donald Trump down, that tried to stop him doing what he wanted to in his first administration. Anyway, strongly recommended, it's holding forth on the bestseller list. If you have been, thank you for joining us.

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