President Trump has shared a chart ranking the best U.S. presidents, and the Republican predictably put himself in the top spot, above such heavyweights as George Washington and Abraham Lincoln.
The president’s Thursday post was in response to a clip from CNN, whose recent poll found that 53 percent of GOPers named Trump as the Republican president they admire the most, beating out Lincoln and Ronald Reagan.
Commentators noted a variety of oddities with Trump’s self-created ranking, such as leaving out his recent Republican predecessors entirely.
“Trump apparently has no opinion on where Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush rank as presidents,” historian Christopher W. Jones wrote on X.
“Trump’s stupid chart of ‘greatest’ presidents is a chart from Life Magazine in 1948, with his name added at the top and the Democrats he doesn’t like at the bottom,” conspiracy theory expert Mike Rothschild wrote on X. “Exactly the kind of thing a healthy, high-functioning person shares.”
open image in galleryThe president may rank himself highly, but historians and experts tend not to agree.
Michael Bailey, a political scientist at Georgetown, recently told The New York Times that Trump is “easily the worst president in U.S. history.”
“The corruption and damage to long-term U.S. institutions and reputation are far beyond anything we’ve seen before,” Bailey said.
In 2024, a survey of historians and political scientists also put Trump at the bottom spot, while listing Joe Biden at number 14.
The American public also has a dim view of Trump at the moment, with the Republican’s approval rating hitting rock bottom last week with the support of just one-third of Americans.
President Trump has long taken an interest in history, albeit a highly partisan one.
open image in galleryDuring his second term, he installed a presidential “Walk of Fame” at the White House featuring portraits of his predecessors and descriptions of their achievements.
Historians say the information on the plaques was highly partisan and often inaccurate.
One historian said that the level of scholarship that went into the plaques, which the White House claims Trump partially wrote himself, is about as high as “drawing mustaches on other people’s portraits.”
In addition to spreading historical materials, President Trump has also taken a keen interest in removing materials he finds offensive.
Plaques and other materials detailing sensitive subjects — often involving America’s history of racism — have been removed at national historical sites, and the president ordered a wide-ranging audit against the Smithsonian aimed at eliminating information that didn’t fit with his conception of history.