Tired of Winning: Donald Trump and the End of the Grand Old Party

Donald Trump is one of history’s great losers and is dragging the Republicans down with him, argues this hard-hitting chronicle of Trump’s post-presidential doings. ABC News Washington correspondent Karl (Betrayal) surveys the past three years, beginning with the waning days of Trump’s presidency, when his cabinet considered deposing him as mentally incapacitated while he flirted with declaring martial law. In the years afterward, Karl notes, Trump’s political losing streak continued in the 2022 midterm elections when several of the Republican congressional and senate candidates he endorsed lost winnable seats, while he struggled under an avalanche of indictments that threaten him with prison. Yet Trump continued to dominate the GOP as politicians lined up at Mar-a-Lago to curry his favor, even at the price of parroting his claim to have won the 2020 election—a line that weighed down Republicans’ chances in the general election. Karl shows a brooding, frustrated, narcissistic Trump dining with antisemites, cheating at golf, raging at a world that rejects his delusions, and gnawing for consolation on absurd election denial theories, including a deranged fixation on the notion that his presidency would somehow be reinstated in the summer of 2021. Drawing on his own meticulous reporting and interviews with Trump and his associates, Karl’s portrait is uncompromising in its negativity. Trump haters will find plenty of red meat here. (Nov.)