Trump hung up on Kim Kardashian in 2021 because he thought she voted for Biden, book says
- Trump hung up on Kim Kardashian after he assumed she had backed Biden, per a forthcoming book.
- In "Tired of Winning," Jonathan Karl writes that Trump rebuffed Kardashian after she asked for help with a clemency plea.
In 2018, then-President Donald Trump welcomed Kim Kardashian to the White House as the reality star advocated for sentencing reform for nonviolent offenders.
Kardashian was seeking Trump's help to obtain clemency for several people who were serving time in prison. She made it known that she wanted to play a role in aiding offenders who had already paid a considerable debt to society — and whom she felt deserved a second chance at life.
In March 2020, Kardashian returned to the White House to again advocate for criminal justice reform, meeting with Trump and ex-offenders whose sentences had been commuted.
But after Trump lost his reelection bid in 2020 to now-President Joe Biden, his admiration for Kardashian's star power seemingly went cold, according to an upcoming book by ABC News correspondent Jonathan Karl.
Months after Trump left the White House, Kardashian reportedly called Trump to get his endorsement for a clemency plea. Instead, the former president angrily accused her of voting for Biden, according to Karl's book, "Tired of Winning: Donald Trump and the End of the Grand Old Party."
"Hell no," the ex-president told Kardashian after hearing her request, per the book. "You voted for Biden and now you come asking me for a favor?"
"After a few more choice words, the line went dead. Trump had hung up on her," Karl writes.
Axios' Mike Allen first reported the excerpts from Karl's book.
Kardashian has never publicly disclosed who she backed in the 2020 election, but after Biden declared victory in the contest, she tweeted a post that included a photo of Biden and now-Vice President Kamala Harris with three blue hearts.
Shortly before Trump left the White House, Kardashian appealed to the then-president once more to grant more commutations in the waning days of his administration, according to the book. Trump reportedly told Kardashian he would oblige if she was able to get several football players in her orbit to visit him at the White House.
"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," Karl writes. "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."
In a statement provided to Axios, a Trump spokesperson blasted the book.
"This filth either belongs in the discount bargain bin in the fiction section of the bookstore or should be repurposed as toilet paper."