How the Trump-Kardashian team-up came to an end

Kim Kardashian was once cozy with the Trump White House. Together, the former president and the celebrity entrepreneur spearheaded criminal justice reform, providing the Kardashian with the political experience she desired and giving Trump one of the PR stunts he lives for. But the snuggling ended when Trump found out that Kim wasn’t all in with Team Trump, as she expressed her support for Joe Biden, hitting Trump where it hurts him most — loyalty.

Jonathan Karl takes us behind the scenes of this spat in his new book Tired of Winning. According to the ABC News personality, when Kim called Trump for help with a clemency case, Trump hung up on her.

According to an excerpt obtained by Axios, at the end of the Trump presidency, Kim attempted to get Trump to commute more sentences. Kim’s disloyalty, though, resulted in a closed door, which had previously been widely opened by Trump.

“A source familiar with the conversations tells me Trump listened to her requests and demanded a straight-up quid pro quo. He would grant the commutations, he told Kardashian, if she leveraged her celebrity connections to get football stars who were friends of hers to come visit him at the White House,” Karl writes. “Kardashian actually tried to do what Trump demanded, seeing it as a small price to pay to get justice for people she believed were serving unjust sentences. But all the players she approached declined. Trump had become too toxic. In the final two weeks of his presidency, nobody wanted to be anywhere near him.”

Karl suggests that after leaving the White House, Trump received a call from Kardashian. This time, the celebrity was asking for an endorsement of another clemency plea. The author writes that Trump quickly called back: “Hell no, the former president told her. He wouldn’t do it. ‘You voted for Biden and now you come asking me for a favor?’ Trump told her.”

Karl says that “Kardashian has never publicly said who she voted for in 2020, but after Biden was projected the winner, she posted a tweet of Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris along with three blue hearts.” As Trump began his fight after what he alleges was a stolen election, the tweet was seen as a betrayal.

“Disgraceful and talentless John Carl [sic] is a back-bencher who could never get his own show for obvious reasons,” a Trump spokesperson told Axios. “Excerpts previously released from this ‘book’ have already been thoroughly debunked.

“This filth either belongs in the discount bargain bin in the fiction section of the bookstore or should be repurposed as toilet paper.”.

On Monday night, Karl will be discussing his book with Peter Baker of the New York Times in an event in New York City’s Arnhold Center. 

The Trump-Kardashian feud, along with the subsequent collapse of Kanye West’s remaining reputation, marks the ending of two of Trump’s most high-profile relationships with celebrities. No names as big as those two seem to be cozying up to Trump. Cockburn wonders if when the former president heads to UFC, he’s scouting for big name endorsers — because one thing is certain, Kid Rock, Badman Kevo (whoever this is) and Lil Pump, who have expressed their support for Trump, won’t cut it.