Of all the tell-alls, this one Trump's all

We’ve had a summer deluge of Trump books but if your time is short — along with your attention span for reliving those chaotic years — I’m here with the one book that truly distills the test the nation faced under the 45th president.

Washington Post journalists Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker reconstruct the final year of Trump’s presidency, a herculean task given the global pandemic, the economic uncertainty, the presidential election and the Jan. 6 insurrection.

They chronicle how the events unfold from New Year’s Eve 2019, when Center for Disease Control and Prevention scientists in China alert the headquarters in Atlanta to unexplained cases of pneumonia in Wuhan, and they take us right through the president’s behind the scenes refusal to let infectious disease experts guide the response. When he continues to insist that it will all go away, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie tells Trump: “People don’t want to hear that. You tell people we’ve got it under control but it's clear that we don’t…”

When news in mid-May of encouraging trials of the AstraZeneca vaccine reach the White House, Trump is upset that it’s not an American vaccine, saying: “I’m going to get killed… This is terrible news. Boris Johnson is going to have a field day.”
The book, titled “I Alone Can Fix It,” also documents how Joint Chiefs of Staff Chair Mark Milley watches the president’s lies about an illegitimate election take hold and fuel what becomes the insurrection of Jan. 6. Gen. Milley, they report, feared Trump was trying to engineer a coup.
On Inauguration Day, as Joe Biden is sworn in, the journalists write that Milley tells Michelle Obama: “No one has a bigger smile today that I do. You can’t see it under my mask, but I do.”
The book closes with a lengthy interview at Mar-A-Lago with Trump who, when asked about Jan. 6, extolls the crowd size, the so-called election rigging and how friendly the rioters were. “They showed up just to show support because I happen to believe the election was rigged at a level like nothing has ever been rigged before. There’s tremendous proof.”
My Thread Must-Read is “I Alone Can Fix It” by Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker of the Washington Post. If you missed my interview with Leonnig of July 28, you can find it on my podcast.