Over the past few years, Kim Kardashian has been using her platform for more than just reality TV and selling clothes. Following in the footsteps of her late father Robert Kardashian, Kim went to law school and has been advocating for criminal justice reform. She famously teamed up with President Donald Trump in 2018 — apparently taking the president’s call in the nude — to get Alice Marie Johnson’s sentence commuted, but excerpts from the new book Tired of Winning: Donald Trump and the End of the Grand Old Party by Jonathan Karl tell another story of their partnership, in which Trump allegedly hung on The Kardashians star.
Kim Kardashian wasn’t afraid to go straight to the top in her efforts to get a pardon for Alice Marie Johnson — a first-time nonviolent offender who had been sentenced to life in prison. President Trump commuted her sentence in 2018, and Kardashian continued to call him about other cases. However, after the 2020 election, it seems her good graces with Trump ran out, as — according to an excerpt from Tired of Winning released by Axios — the former president believed the reality star had voted for Joe Biden. Recalling a 2021 phone call between the two, Jonathan Karl writes:
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. 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. … After a few more choice words, the line went dead. Trump had hung up on her.
I’d imagine it can’t be a very good feeling to get hung up on by the former president of the United States, especially when her work was so important to the people she was trying to help. Regardless of her political leanings, Kim Kardashian doesn’t seem to associate her work with one party or the other, saying in 2019 that “the people that I’ve met behind bars, I guarantee you, they don’t care who signs that clemency paper.”
In fact Kim Kardashian had continued to visit the White House after Alice Marie Johnson was freed in 2018, working on other clemency cases and to advocate for criminal justice reform. However, even before her relationship with Donald Trump was tarnished by the election, Jonathan Karl writes that in his final weeks in office, the president allegedly started asking the reality TV star for favors in exchange for the commutations. Another excerpt from Tired of Winning reads:
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.
The author writes that Kim Kardashian tried to accommodate the president’s request but was unable to follow through in his final weeks in office.
Tired of Winning by Jonathan Karl is a look at modern politics, Donald Trump and the Republican Party, and is available to purchase now. Kim Kardashian may not have the White House on speed dial like before, but she continues to get tons of letters from inmates, and her prison reform work can sometimes be seen on The Kardashians, with new episodes available to stream on Thursdays with a Hulu subscription.
