I Alone Can Fix It

I Alone Can Fix It by Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker covers the final year of Donald Trump's presidency, from January 2020 through his departure from office on January 20, 2021. The authors reconstruct a year in which the president faced converging crises and, in their account, consistently prioritized his political and personal interests over the public good.

The book opens as the coronavirus emerged in Wuhan, China. On December 31, 2019, CDC scientists in Beijing alerted headquarters to unexplained pneumonia-like cases. CDC Director Robert Redfield called his Chinese counterpart and grew suspicious when he could not get clear answers about human-to-human transmission. Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, shared these doubts. Yet Trump was focused elsewhere: on the assassination of Iranian General Qassim Soleimani, which he ordered on January 3, and on his upcoming Senate impeachment trial. Intelligence agencies began including coronavirus warnings in the President's Daily Brief, the president's daily intelligence summary, but Trump ignored them. When Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar finally reached Trump by phone on January 18 to discuss the virus, the president spent most of the call berating Azar about a vaping policy before asking, "What's a coronavirus?" and hanging up to attend a party at Mar-a-Lago.

Through February and into March, the authors trace the widening gap between scientific consensus and the president's public statements. Trump told CNBC on January 22 that the virus was "totally under control." Deputy national security adviser Matt Pottinger received a call from a doctor in China comparing the outbreak to the 1918 Spanish flu; Pottinger relayed the warning to national security adviser Robert O'Brien, who told Trump it could be "the most severe national security threat of your presidency." A China travel ban was approved on January 31, though Trump directed Azar to announce it rather than doing so himself. The Senate acquitted Trump on February 5, and he launched a retribution campaign, firing or removing officials who had cooperated with the impeachment inquiry.

As the virus spread, internal dysfunction crippled the response. Azar, Pottinger, and domestic policy director Joe Grogan ran competing White House meetings. Trump had praised President Xi Jinping at a January 15 trade deal ceremony even as advisers warned China was concealing critical information about the virus. He installed Vice President Mike Pence to lead the coronavirus task force, and Dr. Deborah Birx, a veteran immunologist and global AIDS coordinator, reluctantly joined as White House response coordinator.

The authors describe a months-long battle between task-force doctors and political advisers over lockdowns, reopenings, and messaging. In late March, Birx and Fauci presented projections showing up to 2.2 million American deaths without social distancing, persuading Trump to extend shutdown guidelines through April 30. But economist Kevin Hassett was quietly brought back to build an alternative model with lower fatality numbers, which Jared Kushner, the president's son-in-law and senior adviser, and other political aides embraced to justify reopening. Trump pushed unproven treatments, particularly the antimalarial drug hydroxychloroquine, and on April 23, he mused on live television about injecting disinfectant into the body. The "bleach" moment prompted his political advisers to curtail his daily press briefings. On May 15, Trump announced Operation Warp Speed, a public-private partnership to develop vaccines by year's end.

The killing of George Floyd, a 46-year-old Black man, by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin on May 25 ignited nationwide protests. Demonstrations reached the White House, and the Secret Service rushed Trump to an underground bunker on May 29. On June 1, federal police forcibly cleared peaceful protesters from Lafayette Square with gas canisters and rubber pellets so that Trump could walk to St. John's Episcopal Church and hold a Bible aloft for cameras. Defense Secretary Mark Esper and Joint Chiefs Chairman Mark Milley, who accompanied Trump, were blindsided by the political staging. Esper publicly broke with the president days later, stating he did not support invoking the Insurrection Act, a law allowing the president to deploy the military domestically. Milley apologized for his presence at Lafayette Square and privately outlined four missions for the remainder of Trump's term, chief among them preventing U.S. troops from being used against American citizens.

The narrative tracks Trump's faltering reelection campaign through the summer and fall. His first post-pandemic rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on June 20 drew only about 6,200 people; campaign staff halted COVID testing after six attendees tested positive beforehand. Trump replaced campaign manager Brad Parscale with Bill Stepien. Internal polls showed Trump trailing former Vice President Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, in multiple states he had won in 2016, and Attorney General Bill Barr privately warned Trump he was "going to lose the election." Dr. Scott Atlas, a neuroradiologist with no infectious disease expertise, became Trump's preferred pandemic adviser, advocating a "herd immunity" approach while the task-force doctors were increasingly sidelined. At the first presidential debate on September 29, when asked to condemn white supremacists, Trump told the Proud Boys, a far-right extremist group, to "stand back and stand by." Days later, Trump announced that he and the first lady had tested positive for COVID-19 following a superspreader event at the White House for Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett. His blood oxygen dropped dangerously, and he was hospitalized at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center before returning on October 5, dramatically removing his mask on the South Lawn balcony.

The book's final act chronicles Trump's refusal to accept his defeat. On Election Night, Rudy Giuliani, Trump's personal attorney, urged Trump to declare victory regardless of the count. Trump addressed supporters at 2:00 a.m., falsely claiming he had won. Campaign professionals told him he had at best a "five to ten percent chance" of prevailing through legal challenges, but Giuliani reinforced the president's conviction that the election was stolen. On November 9, Trump fired Esper and installed loyalists at the Pentagon, alarming Milley, who began planning with the Joint Chiefs to block any illegal military orders. On December 1, Barr told the Associated Press there was no fraud "on a scale that could have effected a different outcome in the election." In a tense meeting, Trump jabbed his finger at footage from One America News Network, a pro-Trump cable channel, while Barr debunked each conspiracy from memory, calling Trump's legal effort "a clown show." Barr resigned on December 14, the same day the electoral college certified Biden's victory.

Trump spent his final weeks pressuring state officials and Pence to overturn the results. On January 2, 2021, he called Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and asked him to "find 11,780 votes." He insisted that Pence had the power to reject electoral votes on January 6, despite Pence's counsel concluding there was no constitutional basis for this claim. At a rally near the White House on January 6, Trump told supporters to march on the Capitol. Rioters breached the building, forcing the evacuation of lawmakers. Pence refused to leave the Capitol entirely, telling his Secret Service agent, "I'm not getting in the car." Trump watched on television for hours without intervening. At 4:00 p.m., Pence called acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller and ordered troops deployed, assuming the command role the president had abdicated.

Congress reconvened that evening and completed certification of Biden's 306-to-232 electoral victory at 3:24 a.m. on January 7. The House impeached Trump a second time on January 13. On January 20, Trump skipped Biden's inauguration and flew to Mar-a-Lago, while Pence attended as the sole representative of the outgoing administration. In an epilogue, the authors describe their interview with Trump at Mar-a-Lago on March 31, 2021. Trump insisted he had won the election, blamed Barr and Pence for failing to act, and expressed interest in running again in 2024.