Jonathan Karl > Quotes

“It struck me that there is a reason James Madison put freedom of speech and freedom of the press in the very first amendment. If we can't speak out, if we cannot challenge those in power, there is no guaranteeing the rights that follow.”
― Jonathan Karl, Front Row at the Trump Show

“In fact, the Justice Department argued, the president could ban the entire press corps from the White House: “No journalist has a First Amendment right to enter the White House.” As a reporter who has covered the White House on and off for two decades, I thought this was a terrifying argument, and it was especially disturbing that it was being made by the US Department of Justice on behalf of the president.”
― Jonathan Karl, Front Row at the Trump Show

“When a source speaking off the record lies to me, the implicit agreement between reporter and source has been violated. It is no longer off the record.”
― Jonathan Karl, Front Row at the Trump Show

“He lacks any shred of human decency, humility or caring,” the former White House official wrote of the man he had served for more than a year. “He is morally bankrupt, breathtakingly dishonest, lethally incompetent, and stunningly ignorant of virtually anything related to governing, history, geography, human events or world affairs. He is a traitor and a malignancy in our nation and represents a clear and present danger to our democracy and the rule of law.”
― Jonathan Karl, Tired of Winning: Donald Trump and the End of the Grand Old Party

“And, as a reporter, sometimes you need to fight back. If the president declares real stories fake, the record must be corrected. If a president attempts to block reporters from covering the work of his administration, we need to fight back. If a president attempts to use the tools of law enforcement to target reporters for doing their jobs, reporters and news organizations need to fight back.”
― Jonathan Karl, Front Row at the Trump Show

“Kessler is a tireless and fair journalist who does not shy from calling out untruths uttered by either Democrats or Republicans. By mid-2019, Kessler’s team had documented more than ten thousand false or misleading statements by the president—an ignominious record unlikely to be matched by any other public figure.”
― Jonathan Karl, Front Row at the Trump Show

“In a situation like that, it is the reporter's responsibility either to get an answer or to demonstrate that the politicians are ignoring the questions.”
― Jonathan Karl, Front Row at the Trump Show

“Donald Trump lies for comic effect, he lies to make himself feel good, he lies to make you feel good, he lies because he likes to, he lies because he can.”
― Jonathan Karl, Front Row at the Trump Show

“I've tried to deserve the privilege the best I can,' John McCain] said. 'And I've been repaid one thousand times over with adventures and good company, with the satisfaction of serving something more important than myself, of being a bit player in the extraordinary story of America. And I am so grateful.”
― Jonathan Karl, Front Row at the Trump Show

“The proliferation of news outlets and the democratization of information through the internet gives Americans the power to be more informed than ever, but it also makes it easier for us to feast on a diet of information that echoes and never challenges our biases and our beliefs. This deepens our divisions and makes them more difficult to overcome.”
― Jonathan Karl, Front Row at the Trump Show

“What am I supposed to do,” I asked, “hail a taxi at the Mexico City airport and say, ‘Take me to Donald Trump’?”
― Jonathan Karl, Front Row at the Trump Show

“Tuberville took the call from Trump about fifteen minutes after rioters broke into the Capitol and at a point of maximum danger for Pence. Secret Service agents had just whisked the vice president out of the Senate chamber. A few minutes later, at 2:24 p.m.,[6] Trump posted his infamous tweet saying, “Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution.” Just two minutes after Trump posted that tweet, rioters came within a mere forty feet of Pence as the Secret Service rushed him down the stairwell behind the Senate chamber on his way to a loading dock below the Capitol. The crowd’s reaction to Trump’s tweet proved the rioters were taking their cues from him. In video presented by the January 6 Committee, a man with a bullhorn can be seen on the steps of the Capitol reading the tweet to the crowd. After the man reads the tweet, the crowd starts chanting, “Bring out Pence! Bring out Pence!” Those chants soon changed to the more direct and unforgettable chants of “Hang Mike Pence! Hang Mike Pence!”
― Jonathan Karl, Tired of Winning: Donald Trump and the End of the Grand Old Party

“KARL: I’m pretty convinced he was born in the United States. And now Trump thinks he’s got me. I’ve admitted that I’m only “pretty convinced” that Barack Obama is a natural-born citizen!”
― Jonathan Karl, Front Row at the Trump Show

“In fact, the Justice Department argued, the president could ban the entire press corps from the White House: “No journalist has a First Amendment right to enter the White House.”
― Jonathan Karl, Front Row at the Trump Show

“KARL: He put out his birth certificate!”
― Jonathan Karl, Front Row at the Trump Show

“The WHCA amicus brief addressed the far-reaching implications of the president’s argument—implications not just for reporters or news organizations but for American democracy.”
― Jonathan Karl, Front Row at the Trump Show

“As he left the White House for the last time, Trump walked over to a group of White House reporters and said, “It was a great honor. The honor of a lifetime.” He’s right. It was the honor of a lifetime. But unlike any of the forty-three presidents who served before him, he repaid that honor by betraying the very democratic system that made it possible for him to be president. We now live in a nation where a large part of the population does not trust our elections. There are many reasons for this, but none greater than Donald Trump and the lies he told about the 2020 election. —”
― Jonathan Karl, Betrayal: The Final Act of the Trump Show

“A US”
― Jonathan Karl, Front Row at the Trump Show

“an untenable choice is not something the First Amendment can tolerate. Nor can the First Amendment—or our democracy as a whole, for that matter, tolerate yielding to the President the power to effectively choose who does and who does not cover him.”
― Jonathan Karl, Front Row at the Trump Show

“I’m sure the attorney general would acknowledge that anybody who touches US soil has a right to due process,” she said.”
― Jonathan Karl, Front Row at the Trump Show

“As former Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan famously said, ' You are entitled to your own opinion, but you are not entitled to your own facts.”
― Jonathan Karl, Front Row at the Trump Show

“How do you report on a president who will look you in the eye and tell you something he knows is not true? How do you maintain standards of fairness and objectivity when reporting on somebody who has branded you a traitor to your own country?”
― Jonathan Karl, Front Row at the Trump Show

“I didn't become a reporter to dutifully record the words of the people in power. I became a reporter, in part, to hold those in power accountable.”
― Jonathan Karl, Front Row at the Trump Show

“skulked”
― Jonathan Karl, Betrayal: The Final Act of the Trump Show

“the president himself told Lesley Stahl, the reason he goes after the press is that he wants to be able to cast doubt on genuine reporting. Negative story? What do you expect from the opposition party? As reporters, we make that strategy destructively effective if we act like the opposition.”
― Jonathan Karl, Front Row at the Trump Show

“it to discredit you all and demean you all, so when you write negative stories about me”
― Jonathan Karl, Front Row at the Trump Show

“As a thirty-seven-year-old Donald Trump told New York Times sportswriter Ira Berkow in 1984, ‘‘Creating illusions, to an extent, is what has to be”
― Jonathan Karl, Front Row at the Trump Show

“Future generations will wonder how Trump came to be president in the first place and how so many remained loyal to a man who offered loyalty to nothing but himself.”
― Jonathan Karl, Betrayal: The Final Act of the Trump Show

“Monday after John McCain died. I showed up for work and noticed that the flag over the White House was not at half-staff. Why would the flag not be at half-staff following the death of someone widely seen as an American hero?”
― Jonathan Karl, Front Row at the Trump Show

“First, the WHCA amicus brief outlines the clear implications of the president’s argument as put forth in the Justice Department response to the CNN lawsuit: The President of the United States maintains that he has absolute, unbridled discretion to decide who can report from inside the White House. Under the President’s view of the law, if he does not like the content of an”
― Jonathan Karl, Front Row at the Trump Show