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Trump Places Himself Above Lincoln in Ranking of US Presidents

Anyone who has not yet realised how narcissistic Donald Trump is cannot fail to notice it now, given this unequivocal classification

Trump himself shared the ranking on social media, where it quickly attracted media attention as well as ironic comments and criticism.

According to some observers, the list appears to be based on a ranking originally published by Life magazine in 1948 and subsequently modified to place Trump first in the category of the “greatest.” Washington, Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson and Franklin D. Roosevelt are instead listed among the “great.”

At the other end of the ranking, the category of “failures” includes several Democratic presidents Trump has strongly opposed, including Barack Obama and Joe Biden.

The ranking was published after a CNN poll examining which Republican presidents are most admired by Republican voters. According to the survey, 53% of Republican voters identified Trump as the most admired Republican president, ahead of Ronald Reagan and Abraham Lincoln.

That figure provides political context for Trump’s post, but it is not consistent with assessments by historians and scholars of the American presidency.

In 2024, the Presidential Greatness Project ranked Trump last among U.S. presidents. Abraham Lincoln was placed first, while Joe Biden, appearing in the ranking for the first time, came in 14th.

The result prompted debate in part because the survey was conducted among scholars of the presidency and political science, using criteria fundamentally different from those voters apply when expressing their political preferences.

Other academic rankings have also delivered highly negative assessments of Trump’s presidency.

Among his most outspoken critics is Michael Bailey, a political scientist at Georgetown University, who described Trump as “without a doubt the worst president in the history of the United States.”

According to Bailey, “the corruption and the damage to institutions and the long-term reputation of the United States go well beyond anything we have seen before.”

The contrast is clear: Trump has placed himself at the top of the history of the American presidency, while rankings produced by scholars have so far placed him at the bottom.

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