Author(s): Philip Carol; Rucker Leonnig

Politics

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, Philip 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. Anna Hart is a seasoned missing persons detective in San Francisco with far too much knowledge of the murkiest side of human nature. When unspeakable tragedy strikes her personal life, Anna turns to the Northern California village of Mendocino to grieve. She spent summers there as a child with her beloved foster parents, and now she believes it might be the only place left for her. Yet the day she arrives, she learns that a local teenage girl has gone missing; a crime that feels frighteningly reminiscent of a crucial time in Anna's childhood, when the unsolved murder of a young girl changed the community forever. Anna becomes obsessed with this missing girl, but as past and present collide around her she is forced, once more, to confront the darkest side of humanity. This propulsive and powerfully affecting story is about fate, unlikely redemption, and what it takes, when the worst happens, to reclaim our lives – and our faith in one another.