Trump Was ‘Morose In Defeat And Eager For Revenge’ And Vowed To Leave

ABC News chief Washington correspondent Jonathan Karl says that as Donald Trump exited Washington on January 20, he was “morose in defeat and eager for revenge,” and his anger boiled over in a phone call with RNC chair Ronna McDaniel, who called the former president to wish him well. “It was a very unpleasant conversation,” Karl writes in his new book, “Betrayal: The Final Act of the Trump Show.”

In an interview on ABC’s Good Morning America Monday morning, Karl described the tense mood aboard Air Force One as Trump settled in for the flight to Florida and his post-presidency. “It was one of his final acts as president…angry and vindictive, he told the chairwoman of the Republican Party he was leaving the GOP…and he didn’t care if the move destroyed the party that brought him to the White House.”

“Donald Trump was in no mood for small talk or nostalgic goodbyes,” Karl writes. “He got right to the point. He told her he was leaving the Republican Party and would be creating his own political party. The president’s son, Donald Trump Jr., was also on the phone. The younger Trump had been relentlessly denigrating the RNC for being insufficiently loyal to Trump. In fact, at the January 6 rally before the Capitol Riot, the younger Trump all but declared that the old Republican Party didn’t exist anymore.”

Karl reports that Trump told the RNC chair he would walk away from the Republican Party. “I’m done,” Karl quotes Trump as saying. McDaniel responded “you cannot do that. If you do, we will lose forever.”

Karl says Trump’s response was blunt: “Exactly. You lose forever without me. I don’t care…this is what the Republicans deserve for not sticking up for me.”