Looking back now, the story of what took place in Donald Trump’s White House during 2020 seems like a dream--or nightmare. The events passed by us on television while we were all hunkered down during the pandemic. Two Washington Post reporters looked into that year a little further with interviews of 140 people. 

Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker wrote “I Alone Can Fix It,” a book published in 2021. Old news? With hearings on the Jan. 6 insurrection still going on, the book serves as a reminder of the amazing and upsetting events that took place that year.

What was really going on around the president as a government failed to contain the coronavirus and over half a million Americans perished? The authors also focus on who was influencing Trump after he refused to concede an election he had clearly lost and spread lies about election fraud. 
 
Leonnig told Steve Tarter in the 2021 interview that she never covered anything like the Trump presidency in 20 years of reporting at the Post. “There’s nothing that came across my plate like this. It was like a firehose times ten,” she said.

Along with relating the many difficulties that occurred in the 2020 White House, Leonnig made a point of recognizing what made Trump a winner in the first place when he upset Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election.

While acknowledging that no one was more surprised than Trump, himself, to have attained the presidency, Leonnig outlined what she felt carried the Republican standard bearer to victory: convincing rural America and those who felt they were being ignored in Washington that he would be their defender, she said.