The Dispatch Podcast - Jonathan Karl on Trump's Final Days

Episode Date: December 3, 2021

In his new book, Betrayal: The Final Act of the Trump Show, Jonathan Karl, ABC News' chief Washington correspondent, details what was really going on in the final months of the Trump administration, and in the aftermath of the 2020 election. What was happening behind-the-scenes as Trump left the White House? How should the press cover a potential 2024 campaign by the former president?   Show Notes: -Betrayal: The Final Act of the Trump Show by Jonathan Karl Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Dispatch podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Isgir, joined by Steve Hayes. And this week, we are talking to ABC News, Chief Washington correspondent, Jonathan Carl, about his new book, Betrayal, The Final Act of the Trump Show. Let's dive right in. John Carl, there is now new news coming from Mark Meadows, the president's former chief of staff, about a positive COVID test that the president had about a week before the final debate. He then tested negative several times right before the debate, but then tested positive a few days later. Mark Meadows now trying to walk this back, reports that the president is furious.

What are we supposed to make of this? Well, first of all, I've kind of a unique vantage. point on this because I had heard precisely this when I was doing the reporting for betrayal and it was one of the things that I spent quite a bit of time trying to chase down. I had heard that there was an initial positive test just as Meadows is now saying in his book. And one of the people that I asked about that was a guy named Mark Meadows. And Meadows at the time told me not true, not true.

And I said to him, and I feel comfortable talking about this now that he has written a book, I said, okay, can you tell me that on the record, like with your name attached, Mark Meadows tells me, you know, not true. And he said, well, let me get back to you. Let me get back to you. I got to see if it's okay. Let me give me the impression he was going to check with Trump. And believe it or not, he never got back to me.

And then I also, when I sat down with Trump in Mar-a-Lago for the book in March, I asked him specifically, and he'll get the question, And as precisely as described by Meadows, I said, you know, I had heard people say that there is, there was an initial positive test. I didn't say you had COVID during the debate. I said that there was an initial positive test before the debate. Is that true or is that not true? Is the way actually asked?

I wanted to really just kind of get a very specific answer from Trump. And listening to the audio now, which I have done for the first time since the interview of that part of, you know, of that section of the interview. he says no no that's not true but i swear when you listen to the tone of voice he's obviously lying i mean he like he gets like he gets a little quieter and he's like he's kind of weighing it and it's um but anyway i you know um the other thing meadows writes in in his book uh is that trump was displaying symptoms that he was tired and seemed to have a slate cold uh so you take that combination, that combined with the fact that there was this initial positive test. Now,

they did go and he says retest the sample on a different machine. I still don't know exactly what he means by that. And it came back negative. Now, as you know, there are, these tests are not perfect, but the more common mistake is a false negative, not a false positive. I mean, if the infection is there, it's there. So, you know, the height of recklessness. And one other thing, on this, because again, as I said, I really looked rather deeply into this because I was convinced that they had violated the rules of the debate rules. The debate, by the way, was hosted by the Cleveland Clinic, and I was there, and the protocols were very strict in terms of testing before you go in, in terms of a mask in the

hall, all that stuff. Well, Jason Miller posted photographs that day, did they have the debate of Johnny McEntee and Max Miller and various other luminaries, Robert O'Brien, the National Security Advisors, Trump advisors with Trump on the stage, doing the walkthrough as soon as they got to Cleveland. This is before the debate. You guys have all been part of this stuff. You know what it is. And none of these guys are wearing masks, a total violation, which was outrageous at the time. But, I mean, not wearing masks when they knew that there was, there had been a positive test of the guy that, I mean, it's, I don't know, it's unbelievable. Oh, it's believable. It's shocking and entirely believable.

Back in the day when, when the late Charles Crowdhammer was still with us, we would have that reaction to so much that was in the news regarding Trump. both during the campaign and then afterwards and said there has to be a word that means shocking but totally believable or incredible but not at all incredible. I want to jump to another episode that you cover deeply in this book. And let me just as an aside recommend this book as highly as I can recommend the book. I love the first book. I think in the first book it really came through that you knew Trump and had been covering him for a long time, which I think gave you a real advantage over people who were kind of just coming to Trump and trying to understand what he was and what the Trump phenomenon was. And if that was true of the first book, I think it's even more

true of this book and just phenomenal reporting. You spend a chapter, you spend some time on the famous Lafayette Square incident and give us really, I think, a terrific look at what was happening behind the scenes, particularly with Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mark Millie and Secretary of Defense, Esper. I'd love for you to talk just about what you learned that sort of advanced the story from what we knew as we saw it and learned in the days after that. But I want to focus in particular, in light of what we were to see, in light of what we were to see in the post-election period, in particular with January 6th, about the concerns

that Mark Esper had about Trump deploying active-duty military on on American streets. And you report, this is on page 50 of the book, you report at the end that Asper went rogue and said he opposed the Insurrection Act. He did not want the president to invoke the Insurrection Act, even as he wanted to keep his job to try to keep things from really going off the rails. But you report that Asper said his goal was to keep the president from using the military against American citizens during the days, quote,

the days before, the day of, and the days after the election. What were Esper's concerns? And did he anticipate that we would see the president object to the election results the way that he did and what we saw in the days leading up to January 6th? Was that the concern? Esper was concerned that Trump would do anything he could to hang on to power and I think clearly saw that there would be, that he would object, he wouldn't concede a loss, but more than that, that he would potentially take the next step and use the military in his efforts to overturn election results. I think he was quite prescient on. all of this, but to go back to June 1st and the walk across Lafayette Square, the significant thing there that I had learned, because we all saw those images, and we were horrified by those

images, and one of the things that was particularly bad about the images of the walk itself before we get to the actual hoisting of the Bible in front of St. John's Church, was that image of Mark Millie in his fatigues. And, you know, and the secretary of defense walking with him. And the image was, you know, I got my military brass here. And by the way, I got bar here. And I got, I got all the, got all the big guns. And, you know, we're going to, we're going to, we're going to, we're going to shut this thing down, you know, meaning the riots, the protests. And what's interesting is first of all i i go into some detail about how um esper and milly were sandbagged on this they they truly didn't know what was going to be happening which was not obvious at the time at all

it seemed like there were i mean there was a lot of criticism of both of them obviously particularly of of milly wearing those those those fatigs um but what what you learn is that the morning of June 1st. There had been a very heated meeting in the Oval Office with Barr, Esper, and Millie, all three of them adamantly opposing the Interaction Act, barred saying, look, I've got roughly 5,000 various law enforcement troops, you know, at my disposal at DOJ, we can activate some of these people to, you know, to deal with combating the riots. And Esper, and Millie saying it would be, you know, the National Guard is the force and active duty would be, would be, would be a, would be wrong. And it's not really resolved when, when the meeting, you know, breaks up. And Esper goes about doing everything he can to keep Trump from pulling the trigger of invoking the Insurrection Act. And what he knows is, as the, you know, civilian head of DOD, he can't defy a presidential order. So he wants to prevent the presidential order from being issued.

So he starts to deploy active duty troops to the Washington, D.C. metro area, the 82nd Airborne and other units, units from Kansas, units from Port Drum, New York, to the D.C. area and lets it be known that those troops are on their way and proceeds to get hammered in the press. you know what is esper doing bringing activity troops to dc is he about to and the hammering was was part of the design uh he wanted trump to see it he had he wasn't he had no intention to actually bring them into the city of washington i mean much many of them were were put out to um fort belvoir uh in in virginia some were uh were sent to andrews joint joint base andrews in maryland they were not brought into the city um but he was as i described it in the the book, he was deploying troops not to quell a riot, but deploying troops to quell the

dictatorial urgings of the commander-in-chief. And Esperr knew that once he came out after the walk, you know, after the mess in St. John's Church, he came out publicly and opposed the Insurrection Act. You know, he knew that he was on a knife's edge of being fired. But he you know, and people say, and Sarah, you and I have had this conversation a lot, you know, you resign in situations like this. He wanted to keep his job because he was really worried about what Trump would do. And by the way, Steve, it's more than just the deploying of active duty troops, either to quell riots or to effectively go through with a coup d'etat and to overturn an election. He was also concerned that Trump would do dramatic efforts on the foreign, you know, in terms of the rest of the world, whether it be an invasion of Venezuela, I'm not kidding, was one of the things that Trump would muse about and ask about, you know, an attack on Iran or a wholesale withdrawal of U.S. troops from Korea, Germany, the Middle East.

All this stuff. It wasn't any coherence to it. It would just be something dramatic that would help him. And, you know, as somebody told me, I don't name the official, but a very senior official at the Pentagon, said, you know, that there would be time. Trump would often go from talking about total withdrawal to, you know, massive bombing in the same conversation. Just something to help him move the needle. I actually want to talk about the title of this book as well.

So your first book was called Front Row at the Trump Show and is literally where you sat in the White House briefing room, but it's also where I think readers got to sit in that book. They were getting the front row view that you had through your eyes going all the way back to when you first interviewed Trump through those first years in the White House. This book is called betrayal. Very different. Betrayal refers to an act. So what is the act of betrayal that you're referencing? So first of all, it was not my original title. Early on, I was, I mean, actually, we actually announced a title, a working title called Aftermath, which I never really liked, but that was kind of like a placeholder. There was a time before January 6th where I hadn't actually started writing yet, but I was, but I was preparing to write, were actually toyed maybe half seriously, but with the title, the biggest loser. because, you know, had a reality show, a vote to a reality show, but also Trump was losing everything. I mean, you know, all the legal cases, obviously, the presidential election itself, you know, vetoing the defense bill and then getting overridden, you know, massively by, you know, by Republicans. He was losing every step of the way. And it was, you know, for a guy that built his

entire brand on winning. I thought that was kind of notable. But that went away once I realized this was a much, this was a more serious thing. And I settled on the title betrayal after I sat down with Trump in Mar-a-Lago. And the thing that struck me about my conversation with him is that he was obsessed with the idea that everybody around him had betrayed him. He, and mostly Republicans and people that worked for him. And, you know, much more so than Democrats or even the press. He was filled with rage at Mitch McConnell, at Bill Barr,

Kevin McCarthy when I spoke to him. And he felt that if people had truly fought for him, maybe as those who came to Washington on January 6th did, but if these people who had been his so-called allies had fought harder for him, he would still be in the White House. So that was part of it, But then, you know, the more direct reason is that I came to truly believe that he had betrayed the country.

He had betrayed all of us. He had betrayed the democratic system that enabled him in the most improbable election victory of all time in the United States to become president of the United States. All of this, he had been given this tremendous gift. And then he set out to betray that system. So betrayal, there were many levels of it, and it became clear that it was really the only title. This book was about betrayal. Let me pick up on that. You did an interview with CNN, and you were asked about what it would mean or how you would cover Trump if he runs again in 2024.

And certainly he seems to be saying all the things you would expect if he were to do. decide to run. And you said that it would be a huge challenge, I think in light of, and I'm putting words in your mouth, so correct me if I'm wrong, in light of what we saw, in light of what you just described as a betrayal, in light of what we saw on January 6th, and light of what we've seen in the time since, be an immense challenge because you're covering essentially an anti-democratic candidate. And it would require journalists to sort of look at him and what he represents to cover him and what he represents in maybe a fundamentally different way. What do you mean by that?

Well, traditionally we would cover a campaign by, you know, looking at the major candidates, doing stories on their platforms, interviewing them during the primary phrase phase, you know, having, you know, primetime debates. we would Cables would be carrying you know speeches from time to time

in their entirety live none of that is possible I at least it's hard for me to see how any of that is possible with Donald Trump in a 2024 presidential campaign

because he is going to be using whatever platform he has to to perpetuate lies, relentlessly. I mean, this is what he does. He's focused, even if he runs, he'll be focused entirely on 2020. And further, you know, the old, you know, the old saying, you know, if you repeat a lie often enough people believe it, you've got a good chunk of the

country that has come to believe this stuff. It's not entirely because of how often he is. and relentlessly he has lied about it, but that's a big part of it. And he's managed to undermine this system already. And I just, I just, it wouldn't be, he's not a normal candidate. You can't do all that. I mean, I don't know, with it, would, would networks, and fortunately, I'm just a reporter, so I don't have to make decisions on this stuff, even at ABC. But could you, could you run a debate with Donald Trump?

on the stage? It's a real question. I mean, I don't know. I mean, I don't know the answer to that. We're also not, we don't live in a one-party state. I mean, what if the guy's the nominee? Which, I mean, Sarah and I have a bet that about whether he will be. I mean, I think if people are putting money on it, probably most people would bet that he would be the nominee.

Most people would, wouldn't bet that. So I'm a little different on that. I would bet that, first of all, he won't run. And then if you give me some odds. Steve, I would also bet that if he runs, he would not get the Republican nomination. So I'm where you are. You can join my side of the bet against Sarah and then she can take us both out to dinner. You know what? I'll take it. Y'all are, that'll be fun. I enjoy where the two of you can afford to take me to dinner. But so, John, I saw your answer to that question. And

even now, I'm unsatisfied with it. I don't know what that means. Well, I'm not satisfied with it either, Sarah. I mean, I don't have an answer, really. I mean, I just know that we can't do what we did in the past. But it's too high level. You're the reporter. You're going to be the one covering the campaign. What did you learn in 2015 covering the GOP primary that you would not do again or change or something more specific that I can like actually sink my teeth into? So let me speak from a broader perspective than my own actions during 2015, because I'm not sure that I'm not sure that I would do much different. You know, I covered his campaign. I had many interviews with him. They were often very contentious interviews. And I, you know, I don't think that I, I don't think I gave him a free ride in any sense of, of that phrase.

But I think that the problem with the early coverage of Trump was twofold. One, news organizations typically, and you know this because you've worked for various candidates, news organizations dedicate a significant, significant resources towards kind of vetting and investigating potential high, you know, top level candidates for president. We have, you know, we have big meetings. We have people assigned to doing nothing but looking into the background. We look into, you know, everything that we can find. And sometimes that work never ends up making because the candidates fade away before they're major. But my sense with Trump is that there was not significant investigative work done

because nobody took him seriously as a candidate. It was like a bit of a sideshow. And even though there was a much more target-rich environment, you didn't see the kind of investigative reporting that you saw, for instance, of Jeb Bush, particularly Scott Walker, you know. early on you saw just go back and rewind the tape and see the pieces that were done looking you know looking into various issues uh trump got that treatment but it was after he was clear far away the the the favorite for the republican nomination so that's one uh the second thing

is um uh the cable networks i mean i'm sure you know i mean CNN particularly i mean how much time did they devote to just airing Trump speeches and you know know, I mean, I remember one of our mutual friends, Sarah, we complain about, they're even showing, they're broadcasting the empty podium live saying, coming soon, you know, soon, Trump speech, you know, in Grand Rapids, and there's the podium. You know, the other candidates weren't being carried live, and that's because they were boring, let's be honest, and they were giving the same damn speech over and over again. And, you know, the last thing the world needed to do was to listen to another Ted Cruz speech. But, you know, but Trump was saying

outrageous things and who the hell knew it was happening and the crowd was electric. Now, CNN stopped that and actually even before Trump got the nomination. But again, it was too late. And it's not just CNN. I'm not only to pick on CNN, but there was just a lot of uncritical, unfiltered coverage because it seemed like a sideshow that wasn't necessarily serious, but it's kind of entertaining to watch. But how do you think, looking forward to 2024,

let's assume he does run? I mean, one of the things you wrote about extensively in your first book was some criticism of the media for how they covered Trump, not just giving him kind of endless time to, you know, covering every speech

and endless coverage, but also the tone of the coverage. You know, you said, and I agreed strongly with you, that there were lots of journalists who covered him as if they were the opposition. And that is how it felt. And, you know, I guess the question, and I don't know the answer to this too, either. The question is, how do you cover him as an anti-democratic candidate who, I mean, it's worth pausing.

I'm not sure we sort of at the risk of seeming dramatic. sensationalistic, what you just said sort of casually about Mark Esper, deploying troops as a fake to the commander-in-chief to keep him from deploying troops for real to potentially execute a coup? Like, these are holy shit moments. And I think there were so many of them, particularly leading up to the election in the days afterwards that sometimes we don't appreciate the gravity of them. And it's also the case. that they'd been, so many of the smaller things that Trump had done had been miscovered by the press broadly as, you know, potentially the end of America, the American experiment is

ending because Trump said something, you know, in some interview. It made it harder, I think, for typical news consumers to distinguish between those things that were truly sort of republic threatening and the things that were kind of silly Trump things. So with that long, background, how do you resolve that problem that you identified in your first book, where you don't want to look like the opposition party, but if you cover him in anything as anything other than an anti-democratic actor, you know, who is doing things that could lead to the end of the republic, not to be dramatic? How do you do that? How was the balance there? By the way, on the Esper point, one other thing I report in the book is that Mark Millie, uh,

and the vice chief of staff and the head of cyber command had a briefing with one representative off-the-record briefing with one representative from each of the five major networks the weekend going into the election and to say that to reassure them all that they would not allow the military to be used to resolve an election dispute effectively saying we're we're not going to be part of who. Right. And the idea that the top of uniform leadership, you know, this is apart from Esper, Sper, Sper wasn't part of this.

So, you know, I do think that, first of all, that was a major problem and contributes to the situation we are in. It's this idea that the press became Trump's opposition, just as he wanted them to be. And by the way, you know, Steve, because we were talking, I hate the media, press. So it's, I'm doing my, I'm committing a senior by even doing this. But there was a, there was an overall tone to the coverage because he was doing outrageous

things every single day. It was very easy, you know, and again, particularly so much of the perception of what the so-called press is or the media is, is what we see on cable television. It was a 24-7, holy shit, look what this guy did now. Can you believe this? toned to everything, every day. Some days entirely deserve that. Other days didn't.

And the example I gave in front row at the Trump show was when Trump had said incorrectly that the hurricane, was Dorian, was headed towards Alabama. Alabama, yes. And the poor soul, he's probably at Gitmo now, the National Weather Service for Alabama, said, no, actually, we're not in the path of the hurricane. And then Trump for the next week kept on refusing to acknowledge he had made a mistake. Now, I was actually the first person on a network newscast to point out the mistake. I didn't make a big deal out of it, but I just noted it.

It was a slow day. It was much less going on. So I put it in there. But then for the next five days, it was like you would think that we had invaded Iraq again. And, you know, I mean, it was just this relentless. Oh, my God. Look. And he put it at mass.

Sharpie on the weather service map. And there were people like really serious about this. Like this is, you know, how can we trust what the government is putting out if he's going to lie about, I mean, and like, you know what? It was ridiculous what he was doing. Let's acknowledge that. Totally ridiculous. But did it warrant wall-to-wall coverage for a week? I mean, but he loved it because he was playing into it. And he was given more ammunition every day to to fuel that coverage. And we all played along and people may be out, you know, watching from Toledo were saying, you know, what? Give the guy a break. Who cares where the hurricane was going? You know, and he was wrong. Okay, you made a mistake. But now, fast forward, he's not lying about what direction

the hurricane is going in. He's lying about the way our elections are conducted. And, and There's a real track record in a sense that if you were to get elected, you know, he could maybe this time get it right and and truly, you know, undermine and maybe destroy our democracy. So, you know, we can't be the opposition party, but we also have to be opposed as reporters to, to attempts to deceive the public and to lie about anything, but especially something that's fundamental about. as our elections. Not long ago, I saw someone go through a sudden loss and it was a stark reminder of how quickly life can change and why protecting the people you love is so important. Knowing you can take steps to help protect your loved ones and give them that extra layer of security brings real peace of mind. The truth is the consequences of not having life insurance can be serious. That kind of financial strain on top of everything else is why life insurance

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and thousands of families already applying through ethos, it builds trust. Protect your family with life insurance from ethos. Get your free quote at ethos.com slash dispatch. That's E-T-H-O-S dot com slash dispatch. Application times may vary, rates may vary. John, you and I have a few long-running conversations that have spanned years. One of them you have referenced already, which is the responsibility of those already in government service. You know, you obviously don't go into government service. because you agree 100% with anyone. That's never been the case for anyone.

But should you go in, when do you leave, your responsibility to quit, or do you stay because the person who might replace you is worse, what your ego does to trick you in those situations, all of that? With that conversation in mind, what caused January 6th? Well, one key factor that has been underre,

appreciated that caused January 6th is the idea that Trump was left at the end with nobody but sycophants around him that there was nobody left that was truly willing to challenge him to question him to talk him back from a ledge to you know to try to prevent him from from from doing what what would what happened uh i i write in the book at some length about johnny mackinty's role in all of this he's not the sole factor but i think he's a prime factor johnny mackinty as both of you know became the head of presidential personnel normally nobody knows who the hell the head of pPO is unless you're somebody trying to get a job uh in an administration um you know it's uh but but you know he he he took over this office

It was responsible for the hiring and firing of 4,000 political appointees across the executive branch, including the very top appointees. You know, everybody below the rung of vice president goes through PPO. And it's actually, it's an incredible story, and it's one that I had heard bits and pieces of while it was going on. But the more I, as I was reporting from the book, the more I learned, the more astounded I was. at the extent of it, you know, McEntee went about and was, and conducted interviews with officials, top officials at all the agencies over the course of the summer of 2020 and into the fall. And these people were forced, and by the way, McEntee's staff, you know, he essentially fired everybody in PPO or almost everybody in PPO and filled it with,

there's about 30 people that run that office. And he filled it with his, friends. These were like some of his college buddies. And how old is he? He was 29 at the time when he when he got this job. But he had never as Mick Mulvaney once mentioned to me, he had never actually hired anybody or fired anybody in his life before he took over the most powerful HR department, you know, in the US government. But here he was. And he filled it with his buddies, three of these people that I know of, there may have been more, had actually not graduated college yet. A couple of them were Instagram influencers who he approached by DMing them on Instagram. Hey, you want to come work at the White House? These were like the Red

Guard, you know, and these were like the Mao's Red Guard. Or as people at the White House, they said, this is our Stasi. Some would say Gestapo, it was amazing the number of kind of like Nazi references. And I, I tread very lightly on any of that, but it was like, there were like a number of people who worked in that White House right to the end who referred to McEntee's little Gestapo operation. But they went out and they would, they would go in Paris, these two, McAdeed into the interviews himself. He would send his two little people out and they would sit down with, you know, the head of the antitrust division at the Justice Department. I mean, these are Senate-confirmed assistant attorneys general.

It had to re-interview for their jobs, basically. By 20-somethings, who did not know what antitrust was. Yeah, yeah. And we're asking questions that these very senior lawyers found hilarious at times, at least. And they were going through social media posts of not just the employees or the officials, but their families. You know, in one case, an official, his wife on Facebook had posted a family portrait that had a Biden watermark on it, you know, was right at the time of the election. It was like, oh, my God, this is, this is a fireball offense. Her wife just posted something with Biden's, you know, name.

There's the famous, you know, Taylor Swift like in Instagram. People were questioned about their voting records if it had been determined that they had voted in Democratic primaries in previous years. people, you know, the most one I loved was the poor guy out at the Environmental Protection Agency that was asked, do you support withdrawal troops from Afghanistan? And he's like, what's the right answer here? I'm sure. I mean, but there was one senior Justice Department official who was asked whether there were any more Sarah Isgars running around the Justice Department. That was Well, and heaven help us if there were, you know. But the point is, to answer your question, is there was a, there was an effort to, first

of all, literally fire people. And we saw in the case of the Pentagon with the entire top leadership, but the Pentagon was decapitated right after the election and filled with, you know, people that were deemed McEntee loyalists, Trump loyalists. But, you know, but also the people that stayed were kind of cowed into silence. Now, there were some, so, you know, like Pat Cipollone is an interesting character because he did a lot to facilitate stuff that Trump wanted to do. I mean, just go back to that whole, you know, the first impeachment in the way he, you know, blocked and proudly proclaimed he was blocking anybody within the executive branch from cooperating with the impeachment committee, subpoenas be damned. But Cipollone, you know, is a guy that tried to keep everything on the level, even at the end.

But he was largely, like, in some cases, blocked from meetings. You know, he's the White House counsel. On January 4th, there was a very important meeting, the early evening of January 4th, with Trump and Mike Pence. John Eastman was in the meeting. Pence's counsel was in the meeting. And it was Trump, you know, making his most direct and forceful push that you have to overturn the election on January 6th. And one thing that's notable to me is I talked to a few people that were at that meeting. I reconstruct it and describe it in some detail. Pat Cipollone's not in that meeting. I mean, how do you have a meeting on something like

that without the White House counsel? And the reason why he wasn't there is because he would have said what he thought, which is, you can't do this. So there were some people, but they were marginalized. And the people really around Trump were only those, like Mark Meadows, willing to facilitate anything that he wanted to do. So, John, looking really specifically at January 6th then, what do you make of the philosophical question of whether we want good people to stay in government, even in a Trump administration, or whether they had a responsibility to quit that day as January 6th was unfolding as they saw what was happening,

where do you fall on that? I think that if I had been serving, haven't helped me in that administration, I would have resigned immediately, but I will quickly add that thank God, some of those people did not resign. And he was still president for another two weeks. He still had the power of the presidency.

And there were people who stayed on, and one of the ones I described as a guy that most people have never heard of, Chris Liddell, who was a deputy chief of staff. He's just one. I'll put Tony Ornado and other deputy chief of staff in the same category. And both of those two men over the course of the next two weeks, while Trump was still in power, quietly helped facilitate the transition to the Biden administration. and, you know, thank God they did. And there are others. You know, Jeffrey Rosen at the Justice Department, thank God he stayed on and did what he was doing.

So, you know, it's not an easy answer. I think that the, in some ways, the easiest thing to have done is to say, I want no part of this. I'm resigning. But again, thank God, some of those people that were there and in a position to protect our country and serve our country state. All right. Final question.

And obviously with both of you on the podcast at once, we have to talk about wine. Top wine recommendations for the holidays. John, what have you got for us? I'm going to say, drink some Greek white wine. Get yourself some Asertico from Santorini. If you're, and while I stay on the Greek kick, some of the most underappreciated wines, I think, in the world right now are wines from Crete, red wines from Crete. So that's my, that's my recommendation. Wow, most people think red for the holidays.

John Carl goes. I wouldn't write to white because it's so good. It's so good. It's so good. Wow, I love Acerico's. So let me, yeah, let me just tell our listeners how smart, Jonathan, is it? in that recommendation. So I went to a restaurant, a fancier restaurant than I normally go to called Range here in D.C., which I think is no longer in existence, but it was opened by Voltagio Brothers

who won some Iron Chef Award. I'm getting the, they won some, you know, chef contest. They were sort of celebrity chef types. I went there with my wife and another couple. We looked at the food prices on the menu and immediately decided that we were going to have to skimp on line because the food was so expensive. So I asked the question, I asked this question a lot of Somaliers in restaurants that have Somaliers. I said, tell me what the best value wine on your menu is. Like if you guys were going to have a Somali a party and you wanted to really impress people by bringing a wine that was awesome that they would be talking about, but wasn't expensive, which one would you bring on this menu? And this was one of these restaurants. You

know, it had like a, it looked like a phone book, the old school white pages of, of wine. And he immediately flips it open to an Assyrtico wine from Santorini, and it was $22, and it was phenomenal. So that is the Somalié's choice when I asked the tough Somalié question, and it's the same answer you just gave. So that's, that is, that is a fantastic suggestion, by the way, a great way to, to, to ask the somelier and to be directed towards something good. I'll give you a corollary to that.

It's similar. If you are at a restaurant that clearly has a really good wine list, you can tell it's been carefully selected and it's got a lot of wines that you can't afford. As a result, go and look at the wines from the more obscure regions. Because if this is a really smart sommelier, they're not putting stuff on their list willy-nilly. And if they're putting a wine, you know, from, basilicata in Italy in there, it's because they found something really cool from

Basilicaata. And because nobody is thinking about basilicata wines, you know, chance are it's going to be a lot less expensive. It used to be that way of Sicily. Unfortunately, Sicilian wines have caught on and become more expensive. And unfortunately, people are starting to discover our assertico, which is, you know, which means we're going to have to go to Robolo from Cphalonia in the Ionian Sea, which has got some, which is another, you know, it's kind of the, they call it the Ascerico of Cephalonia. Anyway, we've gotten to too much. We can keep going.

We can keep going. Another podcast. We will actually bring some wines, have you back. I like that. And do a wine-only podcast. I keep threatening to do it. At some point, I'm just going to do it. Let's do it.

It's true. It's true. All right, John Carl, author of Betrayal, the final act of the Trump show. You can get it anywhere. Fine books are sold. Thanks, John. Thank you, guys. Great talking.

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