If there’s one thing that there has been absolutely no shortage of since 2016, it’s tell-all books about Donald Trump. There has likely never been a more scandal-filled presidency than Trump’s, and everyone who has worked for or with him or even briefly known him seems to know some of the stories.

Nobody seems to write them better, however, than reporters who had access to the White House the whole time.

Now ABC’s Jonathan Karl is out with Betrayal: The Final Act of the Trump Show, due some time this month. And one such anecdote contained within the book took place between Trump and the Chair of the RNC, Ronna Romney McDaniel.

She had called the outgoing president to bid him godspeed and good luck, but Trump was in no mood for it. As he boarded Air Force One for the final time, two sources say he lashed out, telling McDaniel, “I’m done. I’m starting my own party.”

McDaniel told him to stay, saying that the Republican Party would never win an election again without him. On that point, Trump agreed:

Exactly. You lose forever without me. I don’t care. This is what Republicans deserve for not sticking up for me.

Trump, of course, maintains a stranglehold on the GOP. He knows that a third party would not win elections even — maybe especially — with him at the helm. And he knows that siphoning votes from the GOP by being the more conservative option would hurt the survival chances of Republicans and whatever party he started on his own.

But this attitude has been a common theme for Trump. He has complained endlessly about “RINO” lawmakers who haven’t sided with him on things he thought were important.

And it could be that I am giving him too much credit for thinking through a possible defection. In the days after the phone call with McDaniel, Karl writes, the RNC informed him that if he actually did leave, he would face a raft of difficulties in running on his own.

First, the Party would stop paying his legal bills. But perhaps more importantly, he would lose access to the GOP mailing list. That list isn’t just worth an estimated $100 million. It is one of the only ways he can get messages directly to supporters without being filtered by fact-checkers since he lost access to his social media accounts.

Despite praising Karl’s last book, Trump was ready with a statement about this one:

ABC Non News and 3rd rate reporter Jonathan Karl have been writing fake news about me from the beginning of my political career.

It seems he’s still a little upset.

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