He hesitates to say it, but author and speaker Eric Metaxas believes the Lord led him to write a children’s book about Donald Trump called Donald Drains the Swamp. You may know Eric best for his historical biographies of Martin Luther and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, but he has also written many children’s books.
When I found out about Donald Drains the Swamp, I invited Eric to talk about it on my Strang Report podcast. (Be sure to listen to the podcast at the end of this article. I think you’ll enjoy Eric’s political wit and engaging humor!)
The book is about a kingdom of cavemen whose king ignores their suffering because he’s distracted by a large swamp made of money. So a caveman named Donald seeks to help by draining the swamp at the request of his fellow cave-dwellers. Donald Drains the Swamp is simple and full of vivid illustrations, and yet it contains a hefty amount of underlying political commentary.
“It’s like an early-reader book that a 5-year-old can read, a 6-year-old can read,” Eric says. “But there’s a lot of adult humor in it, which isn’t going to bother the kids, but the parents are going to get it.”
I enjoyed Eric’s previous books on Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Martin Luther. Both were serious historical looks into the lives of men who changed the world. So I never guessed Eric had such a funny personality, which certainly comes out in Donald Drains the Swamp.
Yet what I didn’t realize is that Eric has a history of writing comedy and is the author of 30 children’s books. One thing many people don’t know about him is that he wrote for VeggieTales. He even played the voice of the narrator on Esther: The Girl Who Became Queen.
Interestingly, Trump wasn’t even on Eric’s radar until a year before the 2016 election, when his close friend, children’s book illustrator Tim Raglin, told him he needed to look into Trump’s platform. But Eric wasn’t too sure.
“Being a New Yorker, I was kind of jaundiced about Trump,” Eric says. “He could be vulgar, and there were things about him that I didn’t like. But I started watching him on the stump out there at these rallies. And I saw what my friend saw. I said, ‘This guy is like an American folk hero. I’ve never seen anything like it.'”
So when Trump was elected, Eric says he told Raglin they needed to do a children’s book together. Eric convinced Raglin to illustrate the book, and the results were, as he puts it, “magical.”
“When we wrote it, I said, ‘This is like a fable that makes sense on every level,'” Eric says. “It’s about draining the swamp, it’s about self-government, it’s about taking your government back from those who are out of touch, or the bloated federal government.”
Eric says this book speaks to the middle-class Americans who are ignored by the political elite.
“[The king] represents the out-of-touch federal government, the deep-state bureaucrat,” Eric says. “It is somebody who is so out of touch with America, so out of touch with the people, that they don’t have time for anybody outside the swamp. … They don’t care about the deplorables. … To me, that’s a real problem in America, and that’s why Trump won.”
I appreciate Eric’s sentiments. In fact, that’s why I wrote my latest book, Trump Aftershock. In that book, I unpack Trump’s many accomplishments since taking office—accomplishments the media would rather ignore. But I believe that if Trump’s election was an earthquake, then the good things he’s done for the U.S. since then are the aftershocks no one saw coming. You can buy the book at trumpaftershock.com.
Click on the podcast below to hear my energizing interview with Eric. I think you’ll enjoy his insights into why Trump won the hearts of middle Americans and how he is truly making a difference!
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