I Alone Can Fix It

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I Alone Can Fix It: Donald J. Trump's Catastrophic Final Year is a nonfiction book by Washington Post reporters Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker. Published in 2021 by Penguin Press, it became a New York Times bestseller. The book is a follow-up to their 2020 work A Very Stable Genius and covers Trump’s last year in office. The authors spoke to about 140 people, including a 2.5-hour interview with Trump himself.

The narrative starts on New Year’s Eve 2019 with an email from a CDC scientist in Beijing about unusual pneumonia in Wuhan and follows 2020’s events: Trump’s impeachment, the COVID-19 pandemic, Black Lives Matter protests, the 2020 election, and its aftermath. The book emphasizes how these events affected Trump and his presidency.

A notable focus is General Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and his efforts to prevent what he feared could be a coup. The book also quotes Trump telling the authors that, without the pandemic, he might have still won against Washington and Lincoln. It portrays Trump as harshly criticizing and humiliating people around him, including former Attorney General William Barr.

Critics generally viewed the book positively. The Guardian described it as another striking portrait of incompetence and malevolence in the White House. USA Today called it essential reading. The New York Times’s Dwight Garner described it as a dense, day-by-day look at a dismal year. NPR’s Ron Elving praised the way the authors capture conversations and thoughts, giving readers a strong sense of being there. Overall, the book presents a detailed case that 2020 was a catastrophe driven by Trump’s focus on optics over American lives.