I Alone Can Fix It, Carol Leonnig
I Alone Can Fix It, Carol Leonnig
103 Rating(s)
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I Alone Can Fix It
Donald J. Trump's Catastrophic Final Year

Bestseller

Author: Carol Leonnig, Philip Rucker

Narrator: January LaVoy, Carol Leonnig, Philip Rucker

Unabridged: 19 hr 24 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Penguin Audio

Published: 07/20/2021


Synopsis

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.

About The Author

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. 


Reviews

AudiobooksNow review by Anthony Moore on 2021-08-20 03:41:32

This one is as impossible to put down as Game of Thrones. Probably the best-written and definitely the best-narrated book of its type. However ... the problem with this type of access journalism is that to get a detailed view of Trump, Rudy, Meadows, Pompeo, Patel et al, they had to whitewash four of the most evil figures of the century: William Barr, Jared Kushner, Ivanka Trump and Pence. It's a Faustian bargain to give those sources an image rehabilitation in exchange for their first-hand observations of Trump. The only positive portrayals of Executive Branch insiders that pass the smell test are Fauci, and especially General Milley--both genuine American heroes of the highest order. The authors bend over backwards to paint a fair-and-compassionate portrait of Trump but it's physically impossible for even the most diehard MAGA fan to come away from this with even a molecule of respect for the guy in spite of the authors' ardent attempts to humanize him. But a 5-star review should end positively, so I'll go back to the narrator, January LaVoy. She's absolutely brilliant and the way she does Trump is absolutely uncanny. Not dramatized, not over-the-top, but she gets deep into his head. It's a female voice with no attempt to caricature him, but the personality and emotion she puts across ring utterly true and real. She puts you right in the Oval Office and right in his head, and once you start listening, there's no stopping.

Goodreads review by Will on November 03, 2023

Historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, who worked in Lyndon Johnson’s White House and closely studied many presidents, including Abraham Lincoln, said, “I have spent my entire career with presidents and there is nothing like this other than the 1850s, when events led inevitably to the Civil War.-------......more

Goodreads review by Jill on July 19, 2021

Okay, so, it’s a Tuesday in summer 2021 and the latest book about Donald Trump and his presidency has been published. I’ve read most of them so far. I’m not going to write about my feelings - personal and political - about Donald Trump, but rather if Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker’s new book, “I Alo......more

Goodreads review by Lois on July 21, 2021

This attempts to be fair and balanced, for the most part it succeeds though I would agree it has a liberal slant. This was longer than it needed to be since it was focused basically on a 14-16 month period. This was detailed as fuck and boring in places. The most shocking quotes have already been relea......more

Goodreads review by Heather on August 05, 2021

Yes, he was awful. And yes, he was even worse than you thought. A detailed recap that professes journalistic integrity and demonstrates just how awful he was and just who knew it.......more


Quotes

“A meticulous history. . . . An essential read for anyone seriously concerned with the fate of democracy in the United States. The book belongs in every library seeking to record the major forces and personalities shaping the 21st century.” New York Journal of Books

“A deeply-reported look at President Donald Trump and his chaotic administration . . . Shocking revelations.” —People
 
“What [I Alone Can Fix It] argues in a detailed case is that the catastrophe of 2020 was a result of Trump's proclivity to put political optics above all else, including American lives.” —USA Today

“A blockbuster follow-up to A Very Stable Genius, in which Leonnig and Rucker chronicled the chaos of Trump’s first three years in office. I Alone Can Fix It pulls back the curtain on the handling of Covid-19, the re-election bid and its chaotic and violent aftermath. The pair are Pulitzer winners, for investigative reporting. Their book is essential reading. They have receipts, which they lay out for all to see.” The Guardian

"Incisive, dramatic and masterful . . . Leonnig and Rucker capture it all. Just when we think, in absorbing these horrific events of the transfer of power to Joe Biden, that we can’t be shocked any morewe are. The tumult is raw and real and ugly. The Trump Oval Office is a place defiled. As they showed us previously, their reporting is as authoritative and seamless as the legends they have now succeededBob Woodward and Carl Bernsteinunder the shield of the venerable Post." The Sydney Morning Herald

“We begin tonight with breaking news on just how unhinged the final days of the last administration were and how much worse they might have gotten . . . These and other chilling scenes are contained in a new book, I Alone Can Fix It.” —Anderson Cooper, CNN’s “Anderson Cooper 360”
 
“We begin with explosive new revelations about just how close American democracy came to the edge. Jaw-dropping excerpts from a new book about the aftermath of the 2020 election . . . I don’t want people to lose sight of the historic nature of what is being reported here.” —John Berman, CNN’s “New Day”
 
“We are now getting some bracing new revelations about Donald Trump’s final year, his final days in the White House, and they come from the Pulitzer Prize writing duo, friends of this broadcast, Phil Rucker and Carol Leonnig of the Washington Post in their new book, I Alone Can Fix It.” —Brian Williams, MSNBC’s “11th Hour”
 
“In never-before-seen excerpts from the brand-new book I Alone Can Fix It by Phil Rucker and Carol Leonnig, we are learning that the Trump presidency was much, much worse than any of us imagined and that the people around him all knew it. They also knew he had autocratic tendencies and would do anything to cling to power, including endangering the life of his own Vice President and the Vice President’s family. Blockbuster new reporting in this yet-to-be-released book bears that out and adds to our understanding of the horrors of January 6th.” Nicolle Wallace, MSNBC’s “Deadline White House”
 
“Thank God we have reporters like Phil and Carol . . . to be able to go back and tell us what was actually going on. Everything is shocking.” —John Heilemann, MSNBC’s “Deadline White House”
 
“Explosive new reporting tonight describing the country’s most senior military officer comparing former President Trump’s lies about election fraud to Nazi-era Germany. . . . That’s according to the new book by two Washington Post reporters based on interviews with more than 140 people, with newly revealed details of fears from top military brass of how close the country was to chaos.” —Hallie Jackson, “NBC Nightly News”
 
“Bombshell reporting.” —David Muir, “ABC World News Tonight”
 
“That’s the importance of this book . . . We’re finally getting behind the scenes as to what our leaders were saying and knew about Trump.” —Carl Bernstein, CNN’s “New Day”