‘the final act of The Trump Show’ and it is very well written." An NPR review says, "The overarching theme of Betrayal is that the former president did not merely flirt with defying the 2020 election result, he focused on it obsessively and conducted a months-long campaign to make it possible. This effort began well before Election Day and continued well after the constitutional process had been completed and Trump's opponent had been elected and inaugurated as president." The review adds: "As a longtime 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." The New York Times review said the book "is less insightful about the Trump White House and more revealing of Karl's own gradual, extremely belated awareness that something in the White House might in fact be awry." Karl had complained in his 2020 book that "the mainstream media coverage of Donald Trump is relentlessly and exhaustively negative." He acknowledged in his new book that Trump's "lies turned deadly and shook the foundations of our democracy." The book gives an inside look at the Trump White House, including scoops on memos by aide John McEntee, "who went from carrying President Trump's bags to becoming the director of the Presidential Personnel Office — 'responsible for the hiring and firing of more than 4,000 political appointees across the federal government.'" In the messages, McEntee insisted that vice president Mike Pence "had the authority to overturn the results of the November election" and that defense secretary Mark Esper should be fired. Karl released audio from his March 2021 Trump interview for the book in which Trump defended the "hang Mike Pence" chants of insurrectionists during the 2021 United States Capitol attack on January 6 as "understandable" since Pence had not overturned the 2020 election results as requested. Awards Karl twice received the Joan Shorenstein Barone Award for excellence in Washington, D.C.-based reporting — in 2010 and 2015, the 2013 Walter Cronkite Award for National Individual Achievement, an Emmy Award in 2009 for his coverage of the Presidential Inauguration of Barack Obama, and the National Press Foundation's Everett McKinley Dirksen Award in 2001. In 2021, Karl received the Merriman Smith Memorial Award for Excellence in Presidential News Coverage for his reporting on Donald Trump's infection with COVID-19. References External links How Pete Peterson Made America