Trump ran to save himself in 2024. He won back America.
Post Reports
The Washington Post
4.4 • 5.1K Ratings
🗓️ 11 July 2025
⏱️ 30 minutes
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Summary
President Donald Trump left the White House in 2021 with a historically low approval rating. After the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, his attempt to overthrow the 2020 presidential election, and his handling of the coronavirus pandemic, Republicans, and much of the nation, appeared ready to move on from his presidency. Three years later, Trump returned to the White House with a decisive victory.
But his return wasn’t predestined. In “2024: How Trump Retook the White House and the Democrats Lost America,” Post senior White House reporter Isaac Arnsdorf and former Post reporters Josh Dawsey and Tyler Pager reveal how Trump used his public criminal trials to dominate headlines and amass support. Meanwhile, critical missteps by President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaigns hampered their ability to counter a Trump comeback.
Host Colby Itkowitz speaks with Arnsdorf about the book and discusses exclusive reporting about the Biden, Harris and Trump campaigns.
Today’s show was produced by Arjun Singh. It was edited by Laura Benshoff and mixed by Sean Carter. Thanks to Katy Burnell Evans.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | So, Isaac, I did not cover the campaign the way you did in 2024, but I was part of our general coverage. |
| 0:09.2 | Absolutely. |
| 0:09.8 | And I did not think that I would want to relive 2024. |
| 0:15.1 | Nor did I. |
| 0:16.1 | It turns out, I did. |
| 0:18.2 | Like, I couldn't put your book down. |
| 0:23.6 | I mean, what was it like for you having like |
| 0:37.9 | been out there so much and then yeah, to have to relive it? Writing it was sort of an exercise and trying to make sense of it for myself, right? And writing it as we went along and reporting it as we went along before we knew the ending, before we really knew what mattered. |
| 0:39.3 | It helped me kind of sort out my thoughts about it and kind of answer the really fundamental |
| 0:44.8 | questions. |
| 0:45.9 | You know, I think our real-time reporting was really good, but we were all left with some |
| 0:49.5 | questions of why. |
| 0:51.3 | And I think we got to the bottom of those in the book. |
| 1:01.8 | From the newsroom of the Washington Post, this is Post Reports. |
| 1:07.3 | I'm Colby Eckowitz, politics reporter and host of Post Reports Weekly Politics Roundtables. |
| 1:09.5 | It's Friday, July 11th. |
| 1:11.9 | So we're doing something a little different this week. |
| 1:16.8 | I'm joined by just one guest, and that is senior White House reporter here at the post, |
| 1:20.8 | Isaac. Isaac. Hi, Colby. So good to be here. |
| 1:34.0 | We're going to go deep on a new book called 2024, how Trump Retook the White House and the Democrats Lost America, which you wrote with two other former post-journalists. |
| 1:44.7 | And it describes in cinematic detail, the 2024 presidential election. I mean, Isaac, you're an expert on Trump and MAGA. You wrote another book about them. |
| 1:51.0 | And you're going to bring us into how Trump kind of clawed his way back to victory after losing the 2020 election. |
... |
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