The Toddler in Chief

What Donald Trump Teaches Us about the Modern Presidency

By: Daniel W. Drezner

Narrated by: Peter Berkrot

Length: 7 hrs and 4 mins

Publisher's summary

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 protesters 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 50 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.

©2020 The University of Chicago (P)2020 Tantor

On point

This is the best analysis of trump, best on what the presidents job is, amazing!

Love it

This book reminds us what a terrible President Donald Trump was. How he humiliated the USA

superbly contextualized and supported hypothethesi

This book is fantastically well structured making, supporting, and validating constructs and hypothesis throughout. All the behavioral traits of people in and around the TIC that one questions are contextualized around origination, self preservation, or frustrated upward management of leadership. The narration is excellent and well emphasized. Highly recommended.

Points Well Made, Thesis is Proven and Proven and...

I think that for such a narrow scope, while meticulously documented and cited, is not a thrilling page turner. I'd absolutely recommend this to anyone who even marginally agrees with the title and tone of the title and the person being profiled. It's a fun read and there are some legitimate gems that come in multiple ways, and I was surprised and a little impressed with the style of presentation. But this is a one-off read. [I re-read almost every Audible title I have, at minimum 3 times, so I might be a different listener than most]. And I prefer *long* books, so I listened to this in a single day - so again, I might be an outlier. But, for an entertainment, easily digestible prose, and short nature really hits those criteria well. It's a nice schadenfreude break from the day to day news. Short, simple, well cited, and narrated well. A perfect one and done audio book.

GREAT READ

A sequel to capture the COVID-19 experience is in order, presaged in the Acknowledgement. Thanks.

how scary Trump is.

how scary Trump really is. beyond belief and God help our country. we must make sure he is defeated and 2024

Very entertaining!

I enjoyed this book very much! I would highly recommend! I normally listen to audio books in my car, so particularly like books that don't require too much delving into details. This book was very easy to follow.

thought it would be a lot funnier

The introduction is more than 1 hour. If you listen to the introduction, you've heard it all.
The funny-level is 2 out of 5 stars, but nothing special and in total it resumes a very sad period of US history.
Not worthy to listen.