Donald Trump presidential ranking put him alone in the “greatest” category on Truth Social last Thursday, a self-assessment that collided with academic surveys placing him near the bottom of the all-time list. The graphic divided US presidents into six categories, and the gap between Trump’s view of himself and the survey results is stark.
Truth Social And The Six Categories
The post split past US presidents from “greatest” down to “failures,” and Trump placed himself by himself at the top. In the adapted image, Joe Biden, Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama were moved into the “failures” category, while Bill Clinton landed in “average.”
The layout appears to have been adapted from a 1948 Life magazine article by Arthur M Schlesinger Jr, who wrote about “what makes a president great or a failure.” Trump did not just rate himself above other presidents; he set up a ranking that left no one else beside him in the top tier.
Presidential Greatness Project Scores
The Presidential Greatness Project tells a very different story. Its most recent survey asked 154 academics to rank 45 presidents on a 0 to 100 scale, and Trump finished dead last, below James Buchanan.
Abraham Lincoln led that survey with an average rating of 93.87. Trump received 10.92. The numbers place him at the bottom of one academic ranking while he placed himself at the top of his own list.
Justin Vaughn On Trump
Justin Vaughn, a political science professor at Coastal Carolina University and co-creator of the Presidential Greatness Project, said Trump’s post did not match the survey results. “It’s not consistent with the findings of the surveys we’ve conducted.”
He added, “It’s also not consistent with other surveys that have been conducted over the last several years.” The Siena University poll of 141 presidential scholars in 2022 also put Trump third-to-last, ahead of James Buchanan and Andrew Johnson, while ranking him 45th out of 45 in both the “integrity” and “intelligence” categories.
The White House response in the source cuts off after Davis Ingle began, “President Trump i”. For readers comparing the ranking to the surveys, the split is already clear: Trump put himself alone in the “greatest” category, while two academic surveys put him at or near the bottom of the field.
