FRONT ROW AT THE TRUMP SHOW

By Jonathan Karl

368 pp. Dutton. $28.

Karl, the chief White House correspondent at ABC News, has known Donald Trump since 1994, and it shows. While “Front Row” is primarily a straightforward first-person chronicle of Karl’s time covering the president, the 26-year relationship helps shape the author’s reflections on the role of today’s news media and its necessary relationship with a democratic government. Still, the book is mostly a procession of stories. Karl recounts a number of well-known Trump-era controversies, and details plenty of the behind-the-scenes intrigue that readers of Trump books now expect.

Karl documents the Trump inner circle’s reaction to the release of the “Access Hollywood” tape in October 2016, for example. And one of the book’s most vivid passages is a retelling of the White House’s disastrous attempt to smooth out its response to the white supremacist violence in Charlottesville: At one point, Karl reports, Trump privately insisted the protesters had a good cause in protecting the statue of Robert E. Lee, praising the Confederate general before abruptly offering aides a tour of the Lincoln Bedroom. But “Front Row” is at times more about the experience of covering the president than about the man himself, and some of its most noteworthy sections recreate revealing interactions with Trump orbit figures during inflection points in the presidency, like the firing of James Comey. Karl offers insights about many personalities surrounding Trump — the former chief of staff Mick Mulvaney once recommended that colleagues read a book drawing approving connections between great leaders and certain kinds of mental illnesses, he writes — though he dwells enough on the campaign and early years that many such characters are now long gone. (Remember Sean Spicer?)

The book feels weightiest toward its end, when Karl addresses “the president’s incessant telling of untruths” and Trump’s dangerous relationship with the press. Unspooling a distressing private Oval Office meeting with the president on the matter, he concludes, “I fear President Trump’s war on truth may do lasting damage to American democracy.”

THE MAGA DOCTRINE

The Only Ideas That Will Win the Future

By Charlie Kirk

256 pp. Broadside. $28.99.

What kind of book is “The MAGA Doctrine?” Kirk’s musing about whether “The Art of The Deal” might one day be considered a “religious tract” comes just nine chapters after the book highlights the importance of “a healthy dose of skepticism about authority figures and experts who think they knew best.” And that’s just pages after its dedication to Donald Trump, which is five chapters before Kirk wonders whether Trump might “be remembered as the president who brought about world peace.”