The Toddler in Chief, Daniel W. Drezner
The Toddler in Chief, Daniel W. Drezner
List: $19.99 | Sale: $13.99
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The Toddler in Chief
What Donald Trump Teaches Us about the Modern Presidency

Author: Daniel W. Drezner

Narrator: Peter Berkrot

Unabridged: 7 hr 4 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 07/28/2020


Synopsis

Every president faces criticism and caricature. Donald Trump, however, is unique in that he is routinely characterized in ways more suitable for a toddler. What's more, it is not just Democrats, pundits, or protestors who compare the president to a child; Trump's staffers, subordinates, and allies on Capitol Hill also describe Trump like a small, badly behaved preschooler.

In April 2017, Daniel W. Drezner began curating every example he could find of a Trump ally describing the president like a toddler. So far, he's collected more than one thousand tweets—a rate of more than one a day. In The Toddler-in-Chief, Drezner draws on these examples to take listeners through the different dimensions of Trump's infantile behavior, from temper tantrums to poor impulse control to the possibility that the President has had too much screen time. How much damage can really be done by a giant man-baby? Quite a lot, Drezner argues, due to the winnowing away of presidential checks and balances over the past fifty years. In this book, Drezner follows his theme—the specific ways in which sharing some of the traits of a toddler makes a person ill-suited to the presidency—to show the lasting, deleterious impact the Trump administration will have on American foreign policy and democracy.

About Daniel W. Drezner

Daniel W. Drezner is a professor of international politics at Tufts University and a regular contributor to the Washington Post. In addition to having one of the most heavily trafficked blogs in the world of academia, he is the author of The System Worked, Theories of International Relations and Zombies, All Politics Is Global, and The Sanctions Paradox.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Oktay on April 02, 2020

Picked up a copy believing it to be satirical. It turned out to be alarmingly biographical.......more

Goodreads review by Joel on May 10, 2020

Pretty much what the title says. The hook here is that the author takes openings from chapters in a how to book written by doctors for taking care of infants and toddlers. The advice is about what a toddler can tolerate or can do and can't do. He then applies the advice to descriptiions of the 45th......more

Goodreads review by Jennifer on March 08, 2021

When I picked up this book, I expected to understand what happened, why, and how Trump's presidency was all over the place. I don't feel I came away satisfied. To break this down, there is comparing Trump to a toddler, which is an insult to toddlers the world over as I've raised better-behaved child......more

Goodreads review by Thomas (Tom) on May 13, 2020

This was an amazing read. Perhaps of all the books I've read on Donald Trump, "The Toddler-in-Chief" best describes his dysfunctional personality and insecurities. The concept of pairing child development with the daily antics with Trump's character is a creative, and quite frankly, authentic way of......more

Goodreads review by Sandy on March 19, 2021

Ironically, a book that highlights the short attention span of Trump is perfectly formatted for readers with short attention spans, with brief vignettes and news story quotes reflecting the child-like characteristics of our former president. The book is funny and enlightening, though in the end his......more