The Trump ‘toddler’ metaphor insults children — it’s a dangerous lie

I write this as a father of two adolescent boys, wanting to defend my children, in fact all children, from the increasing number of news stories, commentaries and cartoons that use child metaphors (“childish” or “toddler”) to describe the actions of the orange sociopath currently occupying the White House.

A recent example is a cartoon by Ella Baron in the Guardian (a cartoonist who I admire greatly) depicting the British Prime Minister Keir Starmer sweating and saying “I am concerned about screen time for toddlers”, while the second panel depicts the tiny-handed Donald Trump sitting cross-legged on Air Force One wildly swiping his “Truth” tablet, knocking over his Coca-Cola and McDonald’s fries.

The comedian Jon Stewart has previously referred to Trump as a “man-baby”; while Daniel Drezner wrote an entire book entitled The Toddler in Chief: What Donald Trump Teaches Us about the Modern Presidency. In a Substack post, Drezner titled a piece Revenge of the Toddler in Chief. More recently, Fintan O’Toole, writing in the New York Review of Books, described how Donald Trump’s desire to name everything from the Kennedy Center to the Gulf of Mexico after himself “can seem almost comically childish”.

Machado’s Nobel Prize

I have always hated the child comparison when it comes to Trump. But there was a particular moment in early January that coalesced my thoughts on its use. It was the photograph of a beaming Trump standing next to Venezuelan opposition leader María Machado, while holding Machado’s Nobel Prize. She had arrived at the White House and presented her prize to Trump. The gothic ridiculousness of it, the naivety of his smile, the melancholic absurdity of the man certainly conjured up a child in my mind. I had to fight my own inclination to call him a toddler, a baby, a childish fool.

It was then that I began to think of my own sons again, who are 17 and 19 years old. They were both once babies, toddlers and young children. I thought back to when they were three- or four-year-olds.

I tried to imagine what they would have thought had a friend of theirs given them a school medal for something that their friend had won. If it was shiny, my sons might have liked the medal. My bet is that they would have played with it for a time and then probably misplaced it at the bottom of a cupboard.

If I were to have said to my sons, congratulations on winning that medal, the response would have been, “dad, you mean I should pretend I won the medal”? Had my reply been “no, your friend gave it to you so you now have actually won it”, they would have looked at me with gentle disdain and said “dad, don’t be silly, I know I did not win it”.

Now take a look at Trump’s face as he holds Machado’s Nobel Peace Prize. This is not the face of a man playing make-believe or understanding that he did not win it. And it is certainly not the face of a man who has any sense that millions of people are laughing at him. This is not the behaviour of a child. Children are exquisitely sensitive to earned ridicule.

How children differ from Trump

In 2017, the American child developmental psychologist Dr Alison Gopnik argued how different children are from Trump. She described how, unlike Trump, four-year-olds exhibit great curiosity about the world (particularly about new things they do not know); how empathic young children are; how even babies are able to attend for long periods of time and how they are also able to shift this attention; and how while they do lie, it is sporadic (rather chronic); and particularly importantly, how four-year-olds have something called “theory of mind” which means that they have come to understand that other people have minds that are different to theirs and that this might mean that they have different needs and desires.

Trump, on the other hand, is plausibly the greatest liar of the 21st century; appears to have absolutely no interest in any other human being unless they stroke his narcissism; is unable to stay on topic – even a prepared speech – for longer than about 90 seconds; is cruel in a way that only deeply troubled and abused children might be; and a man who seems incapable of understanding that the values and norms of others are worth holding in mind.

We also now know that children who play “make-believe games” and have imaginary friends, do in fact know that play is make-believe and that their friends are imaginary. The same cannot be said of Trump.

What is Trump?

If comparing Trump to children is an insult to children and betrays a lack of knowledge about how children understand and navigate the world, then what is Trump, and what language should we use to describe him?

Seconds after narrowly surviving an assassination attempt in 2024, Trump was able to ignore his bloodied ear, the Secret Service agents ushering him to safety, and raise his fist and shout “fight”. This was utterly remarkable.

Some deemed this brave, or a sign of how calm he can be under pressure. This may be true, and I will concede that it is possible that it was an act of defiance. But Masha Gessen, the New York Times opinion columnist, sees it somewhat differently. “There just seems to be this constant external observation of this character that he’s playing, which I think is, in some ways, his superpower. It’s what gives him the ability to shake his fist after literally dodging a bullet and saying, “fight, fight, fight”. And having that incredible photo op, because even at a moment when he really was, when he really did come face to face with death, what he’s thinking of is what it looks like from the outside.”

Any other person would have been in deep shock and terrified. But not Trump. He is a man who, for so long, has been so utterly focused on “what it [he] looks like from the outside”, on the televised image of himself, that he has to all intents and purposes become this external image. There is nothing going on inside. There is simply no internal world of any kind.

Comparing Trump to a child is fiercely dangerous, lending as it does a certain innocence to the man, and suggests that with caring adult supervision, he might be managed, be tamed and someday even grow up. There is nothing to manage or tame, as there is nothing inside.

And then, Trump shared a racist video of Barack and Michelle Obama. It is worth noting that, unlike Trump, young children are not despicable racists. They learn to be despicable racists from men like Trump.

Stop insulting our children by comparing this man to a child. DM

Professor Mark Tomlinson is co-director of the Institute for Life Course Health Research in the Department of Global Health at the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences at Stellenbosch University. These are his personal views.