Front Row at the Trump Show
by Jonathan Karl
View on GoodreadsJonathan Karl's first Trump book — covering the 2016 campaign through 2019 — from his vantage as ABC's chief White House correspondent, told as a working journalist's memoir of trying to report on a president who treats journalism as theater.
Core ideas
- The "show" frame is operative: Trump treats the press conference, the rally, the cabinet meeting, and the bilateral as variants of the same television format — and Karl's job is to keep doing journalism inside an environment built to disable it.
- Karl's relationship with Trump goes back decades to his New York tabloid days; the book leans on that history to show how the public Trump is continuous with the private one, not a political invention.
- The book is more measured than the breathless Wolff books or the Woodward set pieces — Karl is reporting, not narrating revelations.
Published2020
Pages368
ISBN9781524745646
ReadNov 2023
