In a freewheeling Rose Garden speech, President Donald Trump compared his record to that of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, while boasting about his “Walk of Fame” addition outside the White House.
“Hey, they didn’t put out eight wars, nine coming,” he said. “We put out eight wars, and the ninth is coming, believe it or not.”
Trump, gesturing proudly toward the lineup of presidential portraits stretching from Washington to himself, admitted that even he would have to yield first place to the nation’s founding father. Still, the self-congratulation didn’t stop there.
The president then told the audience about a TV commentator who had once ranked him third behind Washington and Lincoln.
“I got extremely angry at this man,” Trump, 79, admitted.
He didn’t clarify who the commentator was, though Trump made a similar claim earlier this year in a Fox interview with Bret Baier, where he said someone told him that even a Washington-Lincoln ticket couldn’t defeat him.
Looking out over the audience, Trump called to Sen. John Thune, joking about his place in presidential history.
“It’s gonna be, it’s gonna be tough to beat—Mr. Senator—it’s gonna be—John—it’s gonna be tough to beat Washington and Lincoln, but we’re gonna give it a try.“
Trump then returned to one of his favorite boasts — claiming credit for having “ended eight wars,” a point he raised to bolster his self-comparison with America’s most revered leaders.
Despite his claims, historians continue to rate Trump near the bottom of presidential rankings. In C-SPAN’s 2021 survey, he placed fourth from last, while Lincoln and Washington took the top two spots. And in 2024, members of the American Political Science Association ranked Trump dead last.
His assertion of “ending eight wars” has also been widely debunked. Analysts note that many of the conflicts he cites, like those in the Congo or between Israel and Hamas, have continued, while others he names — including Serbia and Kosovo or Egypt and Ethiopia — weren’t wars to begin with.
The Rose Garden event had been billed as a celebration of the East Wing’s demolition to make way for Trump’s new $200 million White House ballroom. But the ceremony quickly turned into a mix of grandstanding and score-settling.
At one point, Trump took aim at Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, mocking him for being criticized by “AOC plus 3,” his mocking label for the progressive members of “The Squad.” He then veered into a familiar anecdote about asking Sudan’s president to “take Rep. Ilhan Omar back.”
{Matzav.com}
