President Trump shared a ranking of U.S. presidents, dividing numerous past commanders in chiefs into six categories: “The Greatest,” “Great,” “Near Great,” “Average,” “Below Average,” and “Failures.”
Trump listed himself as “The Greatest.”
“Great” included: Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Thomas Jefferson, and Andrew Jackson.
“Near Great” included: Theodore Roosevelt, Grover Cleveland, John Adams, James K. Polk.
“Average” included: Bill Clinton, John Quincy Adams, James Monroe, Rutherford B. Hayes, James Madison, Martin Van Buren, William Howard Taft, Chester A. Arthur, William McKinley, Andrew Johnson, Herbert Hoover, and Benjamin Harrison.
“Below Average” included: John Tyler, Calvin Coolidge, Millard Fillmore, Zachary Taylor, James Buchanan, and Franklin Pierce.
“Failures” included: Joe Biden, Barack Obama, Ulysses S. Grant, Warren G. Harding, and Jimmy Carter.
President Trump shares his presidential rankings: pic.twitter.com/1NJ3EoreoB
— Daily Wire (@realDailyWire) August 27, 2026
A closer look:
Newsweek shared further:
The post offers a glimpse into how Trump views America’s past commanders in chief and comes as his standing among Republican voters continues to surpass that of previous GOP presidents. A recent poll found Republican respondents were significantly more likely to name Trump as the president they most admired than either Ronald Reagan or Lincoln.
The chart shared by Trump closely resembles a famous presidential ranking published by LIFE magazine in November 1948.
The rankings were compiled by historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Sr., who surveyed 55 historians and grouped presidents into categories including “Great,” “Near Great,” “Average,” “Below Average” and “Failures.”
Trump’s version appears to retain most of Schlesinger’s original rankings while adding himself in a standalone category labeled “The Greatest” and placing former Presidents Joe Biden, Barack Obama and Jimmy Carter among the “Failures.”
Schlesinger’s original survey ranked Lincoln, Washington, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson as America’s six “great” presidents. Harry Truman was not included because he was still serving as president when the survey was conducted.
The outlet noted that a recent CNN poll found that 53 percent of Republicans named Trump as the president they admire most.
18 percent admired Ronald Reagan the most, while 8 percent admired Abraham Lincoln the most.
A separate poll conducted by Elon University found that nearly 30 percent of Republicans said Trump was the best U.S. president.
In the poll, 25 percent chose Lincoln, and 14 percent chose Washington.
PEOPLE has more:
Trump’s rankings of U.S. presidents come as no surprise, as he has shared several comments criticizing both Obama and Biden in the past. In a January interview with The New York Times, he slammed his predecessor Biden calling him “the worst thing that ever happened to old people,” aside from other various digs at Biden.
The president also installed a photo of a piece of paper being signed instead of using a picture of Biden among the portraits of past presidents. “Autopen” is written underneath, along with the years of Biden’s presidential term.
Trump has also thrown several jabs at Obama, including in June when he posted an edited photo on Truth Social depicting the Obama Presidential Center as a trash can.
