https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/sep/03/greatest-president-trump-historians-disagree
Donald Trump posted his own presidential rankings to Truth Social last week, separating past US presidents into six categories from ‘greatest’ to ‘failures’
Donald Trump has declared himself to be the “greatest” US president ever, sharing a post on social media last week which graded him above the likes of Abraham Lincoln, Franklin D Roosevelt and George Washington. Experts take a different view.
Few presidential historians have previously suggested Trump holds such a place in the history books. After all, neither Lincoln, nor Roosevelt, nor Washington – the three leaders typically seen as America’s best – orchestrated an insurrection. None were impeached. And none of them were convicted of felonies over hush-money payments to a pornstar-turned-ghost hunter.
Trump has made clear how he feels about his performance. Does the president’s self-assessment match reality?
“It’s not consistent with the findings of the surveys we’ve conducted,” said Justin Vaughn, a political science professor at Coastal Carolina University and the co-creator of the Presidential Greatness Project, which polls experts to rank US presidents. “It’s also not consistent with other surveys that have been conducted over the last several years.”
Trump posted his presidential rankings last Thursday. It separated US presidents into six categories, from “greatest” to “failures”: he stands alone in the “greatest” grouping. The image in his post appears to have been adapted from a 1948 article in Life magazine, in which the historian Arthur M Schlesinger Jr muses about “what makes a president great or a failure” – that publication date would explain why certain presidents, including Ronald Reagan, Richard Nixon and both Bushes, are missing.
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https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/sep/03/greatest-president-trump-historians-disagree
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