Donald Trump turned a classic, cantankerous diatribe disparaging a new book about him into a classic, cantankerous proclamation that he’s Team Kanye and definitely not Team Kim on Truth Social.
The ex-president’s latest post began as an invective against ABC News reporter Jonathan Karl, whose book Tired of Winning: Donald Trump and the End of the Grand Old Party was published this week. The book includes nuggets about Trump’s obsession with far-right conspiracies that he might be reinstated as president following his resounding 2020 election loss, as well as a bit about how Trump liked to brag that former German Chancellor Angela Merkel had “complimented” his ability to draw large clouds — potentially unaware that Merkel was, in doing so, comparing him to Adolf Hitler. (“She told me that there was only one other political leader who ever got crowds as big as mine,” Trump apparently said.)
But, shocking no one, the part of Karl’s book that Trump wanted to focus on was a section involving another famous celebrity. According to the book (via Axios), Kardashian was pushing for more prisoner commutations in the final days of Trump’s presidency when Trump “demanded a straight-up quid pro quo,” saying he’d grant the commutations if Kardashian “leveraged her celebrity connections to get football stars who were friends of hers to come visit him at the White House.” (This would’ve played out as Trump oversaw an unprecedented spree of federal executions, as Rolling Stone previously reported.)
Per Karl, Kardashian actually tried to appease Trump, “seeing it as a small price to pay to get justice for people she believed were serving unjust sentences.” But, apparently, all the players she approached declined the offer. “In the final two weeks of his presidency, nobody wanted to be anywhere near him,” Karl wrote.
Trump, of course, declared the story “Fake News,” and that Kardashian — “the World’s most overrated celebrity” — would be “the last person” he’d ask to get football players to visit the White House. “I’ve had many teams, from all sports and leagues, in the White House,” Trump asserted. “If there was even a slight reluctance, I would immediately withdraw the invitation, there would be NO Negotiation – But this did not happen often.”
Trump went on to state he “did help with prisoner commutation, but only if deserving, and much more so for Kanye West than for Kim, who probably voted for Crooked Joe Biden, and look at the mess our Country is in now.”
As for everything else in Karl’s book, Trump insisted, there were “many other false stories” in the “very boring book, but nothing worth mentioning!”
Karl’s anecdote — and Trump’s claims in his Truth Social post — echo some of Rolling Stone’s reporting about the 13 federal executions carried out during the final six months of his presidency. Kardashian had taken up the cause of one death row inmate, Brandon Bernard, but at that time, Trump refused to speak with her. While they’d previously worked together on commutations and criminal justice issues, Kardashian had sent a tweet congratulating Joe Biden and Kamala Harris on their 2020 election victory.
Trump reportedly said he didn’t want to hear “a word” from Kardashian about anything and stated: “They’re gonna have to get Kanye to call me instead.”
