In a very funny speech given outside the White House, President Donald Trump joked about how he had been compared to George Washington and Abraham Lincoln and ranked as the third greatest, after those two, a ranking that he claimed annoyed him until he realized how hard it would be to overtake those two.
For reference, the president’s remarks on his relative ranking against the Founding Fathers and others came as he had a lunch with most of the Senate Republicans on Tuesday, October 21, the day marking the third week of the government shutdown that has been sparked by Senate Democrats demanding ridiculous spending as part of any deal.
In his intentionally bombastic and entertaining speech on the subject, the president said he was “extremely angry” over having to compete with Washington and Lincoln to be the best president in American history, but that he is going to give it a try regardless, and thinks his peace agenda could help put him there.
Beginning his comments, the president described how the comparison came up, saying that he had been told on the television that he was the third best, and then told who the two better ones were. He said, “Somebody went up there they said, you’re the third best president in the United States. This was on television. Third best. And they said, ‘Who are the first two?’ ‘George Washington and Abraham Lincoln.'”
Continuing, he humorously joked about how annoyed he was at that ranking, as it means now he will have to try to outcompete the titanic legacy of George Washington to be the best president in American history, saying, “And I got extremely angry at this man. It’s going to be very tough to beat Washington and Lincoln. But we’re going to give it a try, right?”
Then, joking about how his peace agenda and success with it, only having the Russo-Ukraine War left to end, puts him toward the top and separates him from even Washington and Lincoln, the president said, “Hey, they didn’t put out eight wars, nine coming. All right. We put out eight wars, and the ninth is coming, believe it or not.”
Watch him here:
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It was Newt Gingrich who appears to have gotten President Trump talking about his relative rankings, as he told Jesse Watters about a week beforehand that President Trump has a real opportunity to enter the Pantheon of American greats, and in fact might even be the third best president of all time.
Gingrich, during that interview with Jesse Watters on Fox News Channel’s “Jesse Watters Primetime,” explained, “I think he has a real shot at becoming number three in the pantheon of American presidents.” He added that doing much better than that will be difficult, as “Nobody’s going to replace Washington… Lincoln… They’re just out of reach.”
Watch Newt here:
In any case, Trump’s peace agenda is continuing apace, with most of the wars that had begun when his presidency started having come to an end in large part thanks to his hard work in stamping them out and encouraging both parties to adopt peace as their policy rather than war.
Featured image credit: screengrab from the embedded video