According to ABC News correspondent Jonathan Karl, former President Donald Trump shows “no remorse” for the Capitol insurgency.
Karl appeared on MSNBC last year to promote his new book, “Betrayal.” He used the opportunity to highlight his interview with Trump at the former president’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.
“I was looking for something,” Karl said. “I wanted to see any hint of regret, any hint of remorse for what happened on Jan. 6. … Absolutely none.”
Karl claimed that Trump was in a “good mood” and became “excited” while discussing the awful things that fellow Republicans, such as former Vice President Mike Pence and former Attorney General Bill Barr, had done to him.
Joy Reid, the show’s host, then questioned Karl if Trump came across as “somebody who is rational (or) mentally all there.”
“It’s a very strange thing,” Karl responded. “He comes out — he’s gregarious. He’s got a way of trying to charm you. He doesn’t seem like he’s somebody who’s completely insane at all. He conducts himself, he conducts his business. But it’s the lack of any sense of remorse, I think, that really comes across as, there’s something that’s just not right.”
According to Karl’s book, Trump issued an angry statement through his spokesperson on Monday, denying a report from ABC’s Jonathan Karl that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) plotted with fellow Republicans to “disinvite” him from Joe Biden’s inauguration ceremonies out of fear he would cause a ruckus.
“McConnell’s letter and his attempt to stop Trump from coming to the inauguration never came to fruition,” Karl writes, adding that “a top adviser to the Kentucky Republican informed Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows that McConnell wanted to disinvite Trump and McCarthy separately told the White House of McConnell’s plan, Trump preemptively put out a tweet — his very last on the platform — announcing his decision to not attend.”
The story is bogus, according to Trump, and he used it to accuse McConnell and his wife Elaine Chao of being “too busy working on deals with China for his wife and family!”
From Election Day, November 3rd, the day I realized that the 2020 Presidential Election was rigged, I would never have agreed to go to Joe Biden’s Inauguration. This decision was mine, and mine alone,” before later saying of the proposed letter, “This was nothing I ever heard of, and actually, if he ever did get it signed, I probably would have held my nose and gone. The Election was rigged, the facts are clear, and Mitch McConnell did nothing,” Trump wrote.
According to a new book, McConnell (R-Ky.) attempted to disinvite former President Trump from President Biden’s inauguration following the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
According to an excerpt from Karl’s book, “Betrayal,” McConnell wanted to have Trump removed off the Biden inaugural guest list because he “felt he could not give Trump another opportunity to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power,”
According to Karl, McConnell wanted the four congressional leaders to inform Trump that he had been disinvited from the constitutionally mandated event, but House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) rejected the plans, “arguing it would be an important message of unity” to have Trump be at the Capitol for the official transfer of power, Karl writes.
Karl adds that a top McConnell adviser informed Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows, that the Republican leadership wanted him disinvited from the event, and McCarthy separately informed the White House that McConnell wanted Trump disinvited from the event, prompting Trump to announce his absence from the inauguration on Twitter.
