I alone can fix it : Donald J. Trump's catastrophic final year / Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker.

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

The instant #1 New York Times bestseller | A Washington Post Notable Book | One of NPR's Best Books of 2021

The definitive behind-the-scenes story of Trump's final year in office, by Phil Rucker and Carol Leonnig, the Pulitzer-Prize winning reporters and authors of A Very Stable Genius.

"Chilling." - Anderson Cooper
"Jaw-dropping." - John Berman
"Shocking." - John Heilemann
"Explosive." - Hallie Jackson
"Blockbuster new reporting." - Nicolle Wallace
"Bracing new revelations." - Brian Williams
"Bombshell reporting." - David Muir

The true story of what took place in Donald Trump's White House during a disastrous 2020 has never before been told in full. What was really going on around the president, as the government failed to contain the coronavirus and over half a million Americans perished? Who was influencing Trump after he refused to concede an election he had clearly lost and spread lies about election fraud? To answer these questions, Phil Rucker and Carol Leonnig reveal a dysfunctional and bumbling presidency's inner workings in unprecedented, stunning detail.

Focused on Trump and the key players around him--the doctors, generals, senior advisers, and Trump family members-- Rucker and Leonnig provide a forensic account of the most devastating year in a presidency like no other. Their sources were in the room as time and time again Trump put his personal gain ahead of the good of the country. These witnesses to history tell the story of him longing to deploy the military to the streets of American cities to crush the protest movement in the wake of the killing of George Floyd, all to bolster his image of strength ahead of the election. These sources saw firsthand his refusal to take the threat of the coronavirus seriously--even to the point of allowing himself and those around him to be infected. This is a story of a nation sabotaged--economically, medically, and politically--by its own leader, culminating with a groundbreaking, minute-by-minute account of exactly what went on in the Capitol building on January 6, as Trump's supporters so easily breached the most sacred halls of American democracy, and how the president reacted. With unparalleled access, Rucker and Leonnig explain and expose exactly who enabled--and who foiled--Trump as he sought desperately to cling to power.

A classic and heart-racing work of investigative reporting, this book is destined to be read and studied by citizens and historians alike for decades to come.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Authors' Note (p. xi)
• Prologue (p. 1)
• Part 1 (p. 9)
• 1 Deadly Distractions (p. 11)
• 2 Totally Under Control (p. 30)
• 3 Seeking Revenge (p. 48)
• 4 The P-Word (p. 67)
• 5 Rebelling Against the Experts (p. 93)
• 6 Refusing to Mask Up (p. 116)
• Part 2 (p. 145)
• 7 Bunkers, Blasts, and Bibles (p. 147)
• 8 Staring Down the Dragon (p. 172)
• 9 A Sea of Empty Seats (p. 190)
• 10 The Skunks at the Picnic (p. 211)
• 11 Fear and Fantasy (p. 233)
• Part 3 (p. 255)
• 12 Self-Sabotage (p. 257)
• 13 Stand Back and Stand By (p. 278)
• 14 Nobody's Immune (p. 296)
• 15 Somebody's Crazy Uncle (p. 315)
• 16 The Reckoning (p. 335)
• Part 4 (p. 351)
• 17 The Big Lie (p. 353)
• 18 Strange Rangers (p. 377)
• 19 Cries of Injustice (p. 402)
• 20 Hitting a Dead End (p. 429)
• 21 The Insurrection (p. 455)
• 22 Landing the Bad Boy (p. 486)
• Epilogue (p. 506)
• Acknowledgments (p. 521)
• Notes (p. 529)
• Index (p. 555)

Excerpt provided by Syndetics

Prologue On January 20, 2017, Donald John Trump became president, unskilled in the machinery of government and unmoved morally by the calling of the position, but aglow in his unmatched power. The first three years of Trump's term revealed a presidency of one, in which the universal value was loyalty--not to the country, but to the president himself. Scandal, bluster, and uninhibited chaos reigned. Decisions were driven by a reflexive logic of self-preservation and self-aggrandizement. Delusions born of narcissism and insecurity overtook reality. In those early years, which we chronicled in our book A Very Stable Genius , Trump's advisers believed his ego and pride prevented him from making sound, well-informed judgments. His management style resembled a carnival ride, jerking this way and that, forcing senior government officials to thwart his inane and sometimes illegal ideas. Some of them concluded that the president was a long-term and immediate danger to the country that he had sworn an oath to protect, yet they took comfort that he had not had to steer the country through a true crisis. Trump's actions and words nevertheless had painful consequences. His assault on the rule of law degraded our democratic institutions and left Americans reasonably fearful they could no longer take for granted basic civil rights and untainted justice. His contempt for foreign alliances weakened America's leadership in the world and empowered dictators and despots. His barbarous immigration enforcement ripped migrant children out of the arms of their families. His bigoted rhetoric emboldened white supremacists to step out of the shadows. But at least Trump had not been tested by a foreign military strike, an economic collapse, or a public health crisis. At least not until 2020. This book chronicles Trump's catastrophic fourth and final year as president. The year 2020 will be remembered in the American epoch as one of anguish and abject failure. The coronavirus pandemic killed more than half a million people in the United States and infected tens of millions more, the deadliest health crisis in a century. Though the administration's Operation Warp Speed helped produce vaccines in record time, its overall coronavirus response was mismanaged by the president and marred by ineptitude and backbiting. The virus was only one of the crises Trump confronted in 2020. The pandemic paralyzed the economy, plunging the nation into a recession during which low-wage workers, many of them minorities, suffered the most. The May 25 killing of George Floyd, a Black man, under the knee of a white police officer in Minneapolis ignited protests for racial justice and an end to police discrimination and brutality. Yet Trump sought to exploit the simmering divisions for personal political gain, quickly declaring himself "your president of law and order" and relentlessly pressuring Pentagon leaders to deploy active-duty troops against Black Lives Matter protesters. The worsening climate crisis, meanwhile, was almost entirely ignored by Trump, who earlier in his term had rolled back environmental regulations and withdrawn the United States from the Paris Agreement. The president was instead preoccupied with stoking doubts about the legitimacy of the election. After he lost to Joe Biden, Trump fanned the flames of conspiracies and howled about fraud that did not exist. His false claims of a "rigged election" inspired thousands of people to storm the Capitol in a violent and ultimately failed insurrection on January 6, 2021. The year 2020 tested the republic. Yet the institutions designed by the Founding Fathers were still standing by the time Trump left office. America's democracy withstood the unrelenting assault of its president. Trump's cries summoned tens of thousands of angry citizens to Washington to overturn the election, but Vice President Mike Pence and scores of lawmakers followed their constitutional duties. "There is a good news story here," General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the military brass at the conclusion of Trump's presidency. "It's the strength of the country. There is polariza- tion. But at the end of the day, the country did stand tall. There was a peaceful transfer of power. There weren't tanks in the streets. And the line bent, but it didn't break." Senator Mitt Romney, who often stood alone among fellow Republicans in his criticisms of Trump, said the president's attacks on democratic institutions amounted to one of the greatest failings of any president. "I think as we all recognize, democracy is more than taking a vote," Romney said. "We've had a number of countries take votes to quickly fall into disrepair from a democratic standpoint in part because they don't have the institutions that allow democracy to survive. Attacking the institutions here puts democracy itself in jeopardy, whether it's our judicial system, our freedom of the press, our intelligence community, the FBI--these things underpin the strength of our democratic republic. So he attacked those along the way and then, as a final act, attacked election integrity itself. Those things have real consequences." The characteristics of Trump's leadership, blazingly evident through the first three years of his presidency, had deadly ramifications in his final year. He displayed his ignorance, his rash temper, his pettiness and pique, his malice and cruelty, his utter absence of empathy, his narcissism, his transgressive personality, his disloyalty, his sense of victimhood, his addiction to television, his suspicion and silencing of experts, and his deception and lies. Each trait thwarted the response of the world's most powerful nation to a lethal threat. "The last year you see what happens when you actually have erosion in the capacity of government to respond, when you have a president and appointees who don't take governing seriously and honestly don't know how to use it," said Margaret O'Mara, a professor of history at the University of Washington. "That's the great tragedy. It shows how fundamentally oblivious the president was to governing and the immense power for good at his disposal." Most of Trump's failings can be explained by a simple truth: He cared more about himself than the country. Whether managing the coronavirus or addressing racial unrest or reacting to his election defeat, Trump prioritized what he thought to be his political and personal interests over the common good. "There come moments where you have to decide, am I going to do something that's purely in my own self-interest if it is contrary to the interests of the people I represent," one of Trump's advisers remarked. "And in those moments, you've always got to pick the people you represent. The fact is that in 2020 Donald Trump put himself ahead of the country. When you do that as a leader, the people notice--and when they notice, they kick your ass out." Throughout his presidency, Trump cast himself as a long-suffering, tormented victim. He believed himself to be persecuted by what he called the "deep state," a reference to any number of national security, intelligence, and law enforcement officials. Because some of these officials investigated his campaign's contacts with Russian operatives amid Russia's effort to help Trump win in 2016, he saw them as enemies. He branded any investigation pertaining to his conduct--whether it was Robert Mueller's investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 campaign, probes into his finances, or an impeachment inquiry into his pressure on Ukraine to help him smear Biden--a "witch hunt." He also claimed the media were running a sophisticated disinformation operation to puncture his popularity. And he demanded apologies for criticisms and slights. Trump's incessant complaining ran counter to what had long been a core tenet of the Republican Party: personal responsibility. Yet Trump's strategy of self-victimization yoked him to his supporters, who similarly felt disrespected by elites in Washington and felt wronged by the fast- changing global economy. Trump's standard tool kit for getting out of trouble--bullying, bluster, and manipulation--was useless in managing the pandemic. He tried to cloak reality with happy talk. He promised cures that would never be realized. He floated dangerous and unproven treatments, such as injecting bleach into patients' bodies. He muzzled experts like Dr. Anthony Fauci who challenged his shaky claims and became more popular than the president. He refused to lead by example and wear a mask. He picked feuds with health officials and state governors scrambling to respond to emergency outbreaks, striking out at those who didn't praise his haphazard response. Not only did he fail to keep Americans safe; he couldn't even keep himself safe. Trump was hospitalized with COVID-19 in October 2020, zapping his false air of invincibility. The coronavirus changed the world, altering how people worked, how families lived, and what constituted a community. These profound changes were accelerated by the recession and heightened by the tensions in the aftermath of Floyd's killing. Trump, however, principally governed for a minority of the country--his hard-core political supporters--and chose neither to try to unite the nation nor to reimagine a postpandemic America. He egged on the anger and disaffection among many white people who felt economically threatened and culturally marginalized. He pitted groups of Americans against one another. He uttered racist phrases and used his immense social media platforms to spread messages of hate. He stoked fear and egged on violence. "His view of America is provincial, it's parochial, it's sullied, it's any other adjective that calls up a sense of narrowness and ugliness," said Eddie Glaude Jr., chair of the Department of African American Studies at Princeton University. "In so many ways, Donald Trump represents the death rattle of an old America, and it's loud and it's violent." A senior government official who worked closely with the president drew a parallel between Trump's handling of the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020 and Adolf Hitler's rise to power in Nazi Germany. "People either singularly or in crowds are interested in personal survival and stability and safety," this official said. "When you are experiencing confusion and chaos and things you can't quite make sense of, and you see this phenomena around you that's getting scary--the economy and COVID and losing your job and immigrants crossing the border--along comes a guy who takes fuel, throws it on the fire, and makes you scared shitless. 'I will protect you.' That's what Hitler did to consolidate power in 1933." Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic House Speaker whose opposition to Trump was as resolute as any, twice presided over his impeachment--in 2019 for seeking help from Ukraine in his reelection, and in 2021 for instigating the Capitol insurrection. After he left office, she told us in an interview that she was grateful democracy had prevailed but feared another president might come along and pick up where Trump left off. "We might get somebody of his ilk who's sane, and that would really be dangerous, because it could be somebody who's smart, who's strategic, and the rest," Pelosi said. "This is a slob. He doesn't believe in science. He doesn't believe in governance. He's a snake-oil salesman. And he's shrewd. Give him credit for his shrewdness." That shrewdness, coupled with shamelessness and unnatural political stamina, allowed Trump to deliver on many of his campaign promises. He pleased his conservative base by remaking the federal judiciary, including with three nominations to the Supreme Court; cutting taxes on corporations and the wealthy; expanding the military; toughening border enforcement; and weakening the regulatory state. Trump also forged new bilateral trade agreements, negotiated peace accords in the Middle East, and won concessions from European allies he had argued were taking advantage of the United States. Trump nearly won a second term. More than 74 million people voted to reelect him--the second-highest vote total ever recorded, the highest being Biden's 81 million. Were it not for Biden's victories in a handful of swing states, Trump would have won the electoral college and secured four more years in office. It would be foolhardy then to dismiss his presidency as a failure and to turn the page on this period. Rather, we must try to understand what made him appealing to so many, and what that reveals about the country. Trump almost certainly would have achieved more had he governed effectively and nurtured a professional and productive work culture. Instead, he allowed his White House to become a nest of vipers, with senior officials often advancing their personal agendas and vendettas instead of a collective mission. "It was by far the most toxic environment I could imagine working in, and I'm not a fragile person," a senior White House official recalled. "People were deeply cruel to each other." By his fourth year in office, Trump had surrounded himself as much as he could with enablers and loyal flatterers. Power in the West Wing consolidated around Jared Kushner, the president's son-in-law and senior adviser, and Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff who prioritized campaign politics and believed it was his duty to execute the president's wishes. "Where are the adults?" one Cabinet secretary lamented. "They are supposed to be in the White House advising the president. That's a big part of the story of this administration. The people he has around him are putting things in his ears, but they aren't giving him careful, thought- through advice. There are no adults." A few sturdy guardrails remained. Milley, Defense Secretary Mark Esper, and Attorney General Bill Barr were there when the president wanted to deploy the military to American cities. Barr, despite loyally looking out for the president's interests at the Justice Department, also fended off some of his efforts to prosecute and punish his enemies. The leaders of federal health agencies prevented Trump from corrupting the coronavirus vaccine development by rushing approvals before Election Day. And then there was Pence, who certified Biden's electoral college victory, after four years of unflinching fealty to Trump. "Even though almost everybody who worked with Trump ended up taking a lot of grief and having reputational risk as a result of it, there were a number of good people who tried to prevent the worst at the White House over the years," said a senior Republican lawmaker. "Clowns in one camp and people genuinely trying to prevent the worst in the other camp. There were some heroes there." "Good people at key moments taught him a lesson that the system is more important than anybody, including the president," this lawmaker added. These are conclusions drawn from our four years of reporting about Trump's presidency and reflect the experiences and opinions of many of the most senior principals who served in the final year of his administration. They divulged, some for the very first time, what they witnessed firsthand, to tell the truth about this extraordinary year for the benefit of history. As with A Very Stable Genius , the title of this book borrows Trump's own words. On July 21, 2016, when he accepted the Republican presidential nomination in Cleveland, Trump vowed, "I alone can fix it." He offered himself to the forgotten men and women of America as their sole hope for redemption, and as a president, he was powered by solipsism. He governed to protect and promote himself. "I alone can fix it" was the tenet by which he led. What follows is the story of Trump's final year in office told from the inside. Some events have indelibly marked our nation's collective memory; many behind-the-scenes episodes have never been reported until now. Some moments show perseverance and resilience; others expose cowardice and callousness. It is an attempt to make sense of a year of crisis, at the heart of which was a leadership vacuum. It is the story of how Trump stress-tested the republic, twisting the country's institutions for personal gain and then pushing his followers too far. And it is the story of how voters, both fearful for their own futures and their country, finally discharged him. by the calling of the position, but aglow in his unmatched power. The first three years of Trump's term revealed a presidency of one, in which the universal value was loyalty--not to the country, but to the president himself. Scandal, bluster, and uninhibited chaos reigned. Decisions were driven by a ref lexive logic of self-preservation and self- aggrandizement. Delusions b reality. rn of narcissism and insecurity overtook In those early years, which we chronicled in our book A Very Stable Genius , Trump's advisers believed his ego and pride prevented him from making sound, well-informed judgments. His management style resem- bled a carnival ride, jerking this way and that, forcing senior government officials to thwart his inane and sometimes illegal ideas. Some of them concluded that the president was a long-term and immediate danger to the country that he had sworn an oath to protect, yet they took comfort that he had not had to steer the country through a true crisis. Trump's actions and words nevertheless had painful consequences. His assault on the rule of law degraded our democratic institutions and left Americans reasonably fearful they could no longer take for granted basic civil rights and untainted justice. His contempt for foreign alliances weakened America's leadership in the world and empowered dictators and despots. His barbarous immigration enforcement ripped migrant chil- dren out of the arms of their families. His bigoted rhetoric emboldened white supremacists to step out of the shadows. But at least Trump had not been tested by a foreign military strike, an economic collapse, or a public health crisis. At least not until 2020. This book chronicles Trump's catastrophic fourth and final year as president. The year 2020 will be remembered in the American epoch as one of anguish and abject failure. The coronavirus pandemic killed more than half a million people in the United States and infected tens of mil- lions more, the deadliest health crisis in a century. Though the adminis- tration's Operation Warp Speed helped produce vaccines in record time, its overall coronavirus response was mismanaged by the president and marred by ineptitude and backbiting. The virus was only one of the crises Trump confronted in 2020. The pandemic paralyzed the economy, plunging the nation into a recession during which low-wage workers, many of them minorities, suffered the most. The May 25 killing of George Floyd, a Black man, under the knee of a white police officer in Minneapolis ignited protests for racial justice and an end to police discrimination and brutality. Yet Trump sought to exploit the simmering divisions for personal political gain, quickly de- claring himself "your president of law and order" and relentlessly pressur- ing Pentagon leaders to deploy active-duty troops against Black Lives Matter protesters. The worsening climate crisis, meanwhile, was almost entirely ignored by Trump, who earlier in his term had rolled back environmental regu- lations and withdrawn the United States from the Paris Agreement. The president was instead preoccupied with stoking doubts about the legitimacy of the election. After he lost to Joe Biden, Trump fanned the flames of conspiracies and howled about fraud that did not exist. His false claims of a "rigged election" inspired thousands of people to storm the Capitol in a violent and ultimately failed insurrection on January 6, 2021. The year 2020 tested the republic. Yet the institutions designed by the Founding Fathers were still standing by the time Trump left office. America's democracy withstood the unrelenting assault of its president. Trump's cries summoned tens of thousands of angry citizens to Wash- ington to overturn the election, but Vice President Mike Pence and scores of lawmakers followed their constitutional duties. "There is a good news story here," General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the military brass at the conclusion of Trump's presidency. "It's the strength of the country. There is polariza- tion. But at the end of the day, the country did stand tall. There was a peaceful transfer of power. There weren't tanks in the streets. And the line bent, but it didn't break." Senator Mitt Romney, who often stood alone among fellow Re- publicans in his criticisms of Trump, said the president's attacks on democratic institutions amounted to one of the greatest failings of any president. "I think as we all recognize, democra y is more than taking a vote," Romney said. "We've had a number of countries take votes to quickly fall into disrepair from a democratic standpoint in part because they don't have the institutions that allow democracy to survive. Attacking the in- stitutions here puts d mocracy itself in jeopardy, whether it's our judicial system, our freedom of the press, our intelligence community, the FBI-- these things underpin the strength of our democratic republic. So he attacked those along the way and then, as a final act, attacked election integrity itself. Those things have real consequences." The characteristics of Trump's leadership, blazingly evident through the first three years of his presidency, had deadly ramifications in his fi- nal year. He displayed his ignorance, his rash temper, his pettiness and pique, his malice and cruelty, his utter absence of empathy, his narcis- sism, his transgressive personality, his disloyalty, his sense of victimhood, his addiction to television, his suspicion and silencing of experts, and his deception and lies. Each trait thwarted the response of the world's most powerful nation to a lethal threat. "The last year you see what happens when you actually have erosion in the capacity of government to respond, when you have a president and appointees who don't take governing seriously and honestly don't know how to use it," said Margaret O'Mara, a professor of history at the Uni- versity of Washington. "That's the great tragedy. It shows how funda- mentally oblivious the president was to governing and the immense power for good at his disposal." Most of Trump's failings can be explained by a simple truth: He cared more about himself than the country. Whether managing the coronavi- rus or addressing racial unrest or reacting to his election defeat, Trump prioritized what he thought to be his political and personal interests over the common good. "There come moments where you have to decide, am I going to do something that's purely in my own self-interest if it is contrary to the interests of the people I represent," one of Trump's advisers remarked. "And in those moments, you've always got to pick the people you repre- sent. The fact is that in 2020 Donald Trump put himself ahead of the country. When you do that as a leader, the people notice--and when they notice, they kick your ass out." Throughout his presidency, Trump cast himself as a long-suffering, tormented victim. He believed himself to be persecuted by what he called the "deep state," a reference to any number of national security, intelli- gence, and law enforcement officials. Because some of these officials in- vestigated his campaign's contacts with Russian operatives amid Russia's effort to help Trump win in 2016, he saw them as enemies. He branded any investigation pertaining to his conduct--whether it was Robert Mueller's investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 campaign, probes into his finances, or an impeachment inquiry into his pressure on Ukraine to help him smear Biden--a "witch hunt." He also claimed the media were running a sophisticated disinformation operation to punc- ture his popularity. And he demanded apologies for criticisms and slights. Trump's incessant complaining ran counter to what had long been a core tenet of the Republican Party: personal responsibility. Yet Trump's strategy of self-victimization yoked him to his supporters, who similarly felt disrespected by elites in Washington and felt wronged by the fast- changing global economy. Trump's standard tool kit for getting out of trouble--bullying, blus- ter, and manipulation--was useless in managing the pandemic. He tried to cloak reality with happy talk. He promised cures that would never be realized. He floated dangerous and unproven treatments, such as inject- ing bleach into patients' bodies. He muzzled experts like Dr. Anthony Fauci who challenged his shaky claims and became more popular than the president. He refused to lead by example and wear a mask. He picked feuds with health officials and state governors scrambling to respond to emergency outbreaks, striking out at those who didn't praise his haphaz- ard response. Not only did he fail to keep Americans safe; he couldn't even keep himself safe. Trump was hospitalized with COVID-19 in Oc- tober 2020, zapping his false air of invincibility. The coronavirus changed the world, altering how people worked, how families lived, and what constituted a c mmunity. These profound changes were accelerated by the recession and heightened by the tensions in the aftermath of Floyd's killing. Trump, however, principally governed for a minority of the country--his hard-core political supporters--and chose neither to try to unite the nation nor to reimagine a postpandemic America. He egged on the anger and disaffection among many white peo- ple who felt economically threatened and culturally marginalized. He pit- ted groups of Americans against one another. He uttered racist phrases and used his immense social media platforms to spread messages of hate. He stoked fear and egged on violence. "His view of America is provincial, it's parochial, it's sullied, it's any other adjective that calls up a sense of narrowness and ugliness," said Eddie Glaude Jr., chair of the Department of African American Studies at Princeton University. "In so many ways, Donald Trump represents the death rattle of an old America, and it's loud and it's violent." A senior government official who worked closely with the president drew a parallel between Trump's handling of the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020 and Adolf Hitler's rise to power in Nazi Germany. "People either singularly or in crowds are interested in personal sur- vival and stability and safety," this official said. "When you are experi- encing confusion and chaos and things you can't quite make sense of, and you see this phenomena around you that's getting scary--the economy and COVID and losing your job and immigrants crossing the border-- along comes a guy who takes fuel, throws it on the fire, and makes you scared shitless. 'I will protect you.' That's what Hitler did to consolidate power in 1933." Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic House Speaker whose opposition to Trump was as resolute as any, twice presided over his impeachment--in 2019 for seeking help from Ukraine in his reelection, and in 2021 for instigating the Capitol insurrection. After he left office, she told us in an interview that she was grateful democracy had prevailed but feared an- other president might come along and pick up where Trump left off. "We might get somebody of his ilk who's sane, and that would really be dangerous, because it could be somebody w o's smart, who's strategic, and the rest," Pelosi said. "This is a slob. He doesn't believe in science. He doesn't believe in governance. He's a snake-oil salesman. And he's shrewd. Give him credit for his shrewdness." That shrewdness, coupled with shamelessness and unnatural political stamina, allowed Trump to deliver on many of his campaign promises. He pleased his conservative base by remaking the federal judiciary, in- cluding with three nominations to the Supreme Court; cutting taxes on corporations and the wealthy; expanding the military; toughening bor- der enforcement; and weakening the regulatory state. Trump also forged new bilateral trade agreements, negotiated peace accords in the Middle East, and won concessions from European allies he had argued were taking advantage of the United States. Trump nearly won a second term. More than 74 million people voted to reelect him--the second-highest vote total ever recorded, the highest being Biden's 81 million. Were it not for Biden's victories in a handful of swing states, Trump would have won the electoral college and secured four more years in office. It would be foolhardy then to dismiss his presidency as a failure and to turn the page on this period. Rather, we must try to understand what made him appealing to so many, and what that reveals about the country. Trump almost certainly would have achieved more had he governed effectively and nurtured a professional and productive work culture. In- stead, he allowed his White House to become a nest of vipers, with se- nior officials often advancing their personal agendas and vendettas instead of a collective mission. "It was by far the most toxic environment I could imagine working in, and I'm not a fragile person," a senior White House official recalled. "People were deeply cruel to each other." By his fourth year in office, Trump had surrounded himself as much as he could with enablers and loyal flatterers. Power in the West Wing consolidated around Jared Kushner, the president's son-in-law and senior adviser, and Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff who prior- itized campaign politics and believed it was his duty to execute the pres- ident's wishes. "Where are the adults?" one Cabinet secretary lamented. "They are supposed to be in the White House advising the president. That's a big part of the story of this administration. The people he has around him are putting things in his ears, but they aren't giving him careful, thought- through advice. Ther are no adults." A few sturdy guardrails remained. Milley, Defense Secretary Mark Esper, and Attorney General Bill Barr were there when the president wanted to deploy the military to American cities. Barr, despite loyally looking out for the president's interests at the Justice Department, also fended off some of his efforts to prosecute and punish his enemies. The leaders of federal health agencies prevented Trump from corrupting the coronavirus vaccine development by rushing approvals before Election Day. And then there was Pence, who certified Biden's electoral college victory, after four years of unflinching fealty to Trump. "Even though almost everybody who worked with Trump ended up taking a lot of grief and having reputational risk as a result of it, there were a number of good people who tried to prevent the worst at the White House over the years," said a senior Republican lawmaker. "Clowns in one camp and people genuinely trying to prevent the worst in the other camp. There were some heroes there." "Good people at key moments taught him a lesson that the system is more important than anybody, including the president," this lawmaker added. These are conclusions drawn from our four years of reporting about Trump's presidency and ref lect the experiences and opinions of many of the most senior principals who served in the final year of his administra- tion. They divulged, some for the very first time, what they witnessed firsthand, to tell the truth about this extraordinary year for the benefit of history. As with A Very Stable Genius , the title of this book b rrows Trump's own words. On July 21, 2016, when he accepted the Republican presi- dential nomination in Cleveland, Trump vowed, "I alone can fix it." He offered himself to the forgotten men and women of America as their sole hope for redemption, and as a president, he was powered by solipsism. He governed to protect and promote himself. "I alone can fix it" was the tenet by which he led. What follows is the story of Trump's final year in office told from the inside. Some events have indelibly marked our nation's collective mem- ory; many behind-the-scenes episodes have never been reported until now. Some moments show perseverance and resilience; others expose cowardice and callousness. It is an attempt to make sense of a year of crisis, at the heart of which was a leadership vacuum. It is the story of how Trump stress-tested the republic, twisting the country's institutions for personal gain and then pushing his followers too far. And it is the story of how voters, both fearful for their own futures and their country, finally discharged him. Excerpted from I Alone Can Fix It: Donald J. Trump's Catastrophic Final Year by Carol Leonnig, Philip Rucker All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Publishers Weekly Review

Washington Post reporters Leonnig and Rucker return (after A Very Stable Genius) with a comprehensive if stilted rundown of the tweetstorms, turf wars, denialism, and desperation that roiled the Trump administration from January 2020 to January 2021. It's a sweeping study of bureaucratic dysfunction caused by a "poisonous, disloyal atmosphere" that engulfed the White House and federal agencies tasked with dealing with Covid-19, protests over police brutality, and the transfer of power to a Biden administration. Among the plethora of galling anecdotes, Leonnig and Rucker reveal that Trump expected the FDA to approve remdesivir as a Covid-19 treatment because Oracle founder Larry Ellison said it worked, that chief of staff Mark Meadows considered Anthony Fauci a "fearmonger" and blocked his TV appearances, and that Rudy Giuliani's advice to Trump on election night was to "just say we won." Unfortunately, the book's moment-by-moment accumulation of detail grows dull at times, and the desire of Leonnig and Rucker's largely anonymous sources to shift blame and preserve their own reputations makes it hard to parse what actually happened during controversial events such as the violent removal of protestors from Washington, D.C.'s Lafayette Square for a Trump photo op. This deeply sourced first draft of history is long on access but short on definitive insights. (July)

Kirkus Book Review

A hard-hitting exposé of the last year of the Trump regime packed with appalling revelations. This book, write Washington Post reporters Leonnig and Rucker in their sequel to A Very Stable Genius (2020), recounts "how Trump stress-tested the republic, twisting the country's institutions for personal gain and then pushing his followers too far." Maundering, bloviating, and always enraged, Trump stalked the halls of the White House, bewildered to find that he could not explain away the pandemic with his spewing flood of misinformation. He was further enraged to find that the voters were not willing to overlook the "abject failure" that he personifies. In perhaps the most newsworthy moments of this newsworthy book, Trump plots to engineer a de facto coup d'état that will keep him in power. His one firm check is the book's hero, Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who told his lieutenants at the Pentagon, "They may try, but they're not going to fucking succeed….You can't do this without the military….We're the guys with the guns." Perhaps surprisingly, Melania and Ivanka Trump emerge as adults in the room, as well, even if a former Trump adviser characterizes the latter as a "stable pony": "When a racehorse gets too agitated, you bring the stable pony in to calm him down." In a carefully structured narrative that goes from bad to worse, the authors portray Trump as fully self-satisfied as the Jan. 6 insurrection was taking place, enacted by people whom Milley describes as "the same people we fought in World War II." To trust this account, Milley almost singlehandedly averted the unprecedented assault on democracy. In a plaintive yet characteristically blustering interview with the authors after Joe Biden's inauguration, Trump continued to insist that he won the election even while moaning that were it not for the pandemic, he could have beaten a ticket made up of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. A whirlwind of a book, full of Trumpian sound and fury--and plenty of news. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.