A night after the PBS News Hour hosted a book-plugging interview with CNN’s Abby Phillip, they turned on Wednesday to ABC Chief Washington Correspondent Jonathan Karl to plug his fourth anti-Trump book, Retribution: Donald Trump and the Campaign That Changed America.
They could have interviewed Fox News contributor Joe Concha in April about his book about the 2024 race, The Greatest Comeback Ever. They did not.
Karl’s latest effort carries a blurb from liberal legend Bob Woodward that’s truly preposterous: “An exceptionally brilliant portrait of how politics pulled America, kicking and screaming, into 2025 by one of the best, toughest, and non-partisan reporters the United States is so very fortunate to have.”
So when Karl goes on national television to compare Donald Trump to Walter White, the murderous drug kingpin at the center of the TV series Breaking Bad, that’s “nonpartisan”? This is what PBS chose as the highlight!
GEOFF BENNETT: So you open this book by recounting a phone call with President Trump right after the election. And you say the president wanted to hear you acknowledge his election victory, and you compare this interaction to a scene from Breaking Bad. Tell us about that and what it suggested to you about how he was approaching the second term.
JONATHAN KARL: Look, this was such an incredible election, so many twists and turns. And you know what it's like on election night. You are up all night, and then you have to be on the morning shows of you're in television doing this. So I had been up all night, and I just figured I would call Trump to congratulate him, which is strange, by the way. Why would you call Trump? I had been talking to him throughout the campaign, like every and — some weeks, every couple of days.
BENNETT: And you had known him for some 30-plus years.
KARL: And I have known him for a long time, and so I didn't think he was going to answer, by the way. I mean, he's the president-elect now.
BENNETT: Right.
KARL: But he answered, and I said: "President-Elect Trump, I'm just calling to say congratulations." And he paused and he said: "On what? On what, Jonathan? You tell me. Congratulations on what?" And I said "on the greatest comeback victory in the history of American politics," which is what it was.
But it reminded me, in Breaking Bad, the Walter White character played by Bryan Cranston, who is out there at one point with some other drug dealers he's clearly bested. And he says: "Say my name. Say my name." Trump wanted to hear me say what had happened, wanted to hear me say, after all that I had written about him, to hear me say that he had won this great victory.
There's certainly an alternative interpretation of the call -- yes, Trump may have been seeking to underline that he had triumphed despite Karl and his journalist comrades doing everything to ruin him. But it could also be his response to one of those smarmy Washington conventions for reporters -- to grovel a little and congratulate the guy you just tried to destroy -- because, hey, you want access to hardball interviews down the road. It might sound like civility, but it carries the odor of aggressive insincerity and careerism.
From there, Bennett prompted Karl through predictable anti-Trump themes: Vice President Pence and January 6, Trump trolling about a third term, appointing Kristi Noem as DHS Secretary despite allegedly being unqualified, and the book's title, about retribution. Karl concluded:
KARL: He seems like almost everything that he is doing now is either punishing the people that he feels betrayed him or went after him, rewarding friends, and also kind of like a legacy pitch, whether it's building the big ballroom. He's very serious about wanting the Nobel Peace Prize. These are different than the first term. He is thinking about lasting changes to this country. And he's dead serious about getting back at his enemies.
