I Alone Can Fix It: Donald J. Trump's Catastrophic Final Year - Softcover

Leonnig, Carol; Rucker, Philip

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0593300629 ISBN 13: 9780593300626

Verlag: Penguin Press, 2021

Inhaltsangabe

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.

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Carol Leonnig is a national investigative reporter at The Washington Post, where she has worked since 2000, covering Donald Trump’s presidency and previous administrations. She won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for her reporting on security failures and misconduct inside the Secret Service. She also was part of the Post teams awarded Pulitzers in 2018, for reporting on Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election, and in 2014, for revealing the U.S. government’s secret, broad surveillance of Americans. Leonnig is an on-air contributor to NBC News and MSNBC and the author of Zero Fail: The Rise and Fall of the Secret Service.
 

Philip Rucker is the senior Washington correspondent at The Washington Post and led its coverage of President Trump and his administration as White House Bureau chief. He and a team of Post reporters won the Pulitzer Prize and George Polk Award for their reporting on Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election. In 2021, the White House Correspondents’ Association honored Rucker with the Aldo Beckman Award for overall excellence in White House coverage. Rucker joined the Post in 2005 and previously has covered Congress, the Obama White House, and the 2012 and 2016 presidential campaigns. He serves as an on-air political analyst for NBC News and MSNBC and graduated from Yale University with a degree in history.
 

Von der hinteren Coverseite

The definitive behind-the-scenes story of Trump's final year in office, by Philip Rucker and Carol Leonnig, the Pulitzer-Prize winning reporters and authors of the #1 New York Times bestseller, A Very Stable Genius

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, Philip 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.

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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...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Penguin Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2021
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0593300629
• ISBN 13: 9780593300626
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 592
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar