Daniel W. Drezner writes: It started, as all 2017 stories about American politics start, with a garden-variety snarky tweet:

I'll believe that Trump is growing into the presidency when his staff stops talking about him like a toddler. https://t.co/yAZg1uZnpy pic.twitter.com/o8UltcVhda

— Daniel W. Drezner (@dandrezner) April 25, 2017

The point of the tweet was to push back on the occasional impulse by Very Serious People to claim that some speech or act by Donald Trump proved that he was “growing into the presidency.” The hard-working staff here at Spoiler Alerts has been examining Trump’s words and actions for the 2016 presidential campaign and thought this was nonsense. Hence the tweet.

The thing is, it quickly became clear that the evidence that Trump was not growing into the presidency was hiding in plain sight. Barely a week or even a day could pass without someone with access to Trump telling the news media in no uncertain terms the ways in which he was unfit for office. So I decided to keep adding to the thread. [Continue reading…]