Donald Trump likes to throw shade at other presidents. Here's why

Nov 04, 2024

WASHINGTON - Way back in 2016, volatile businessman and television celebrity Donald Trump built a political career by attacking recent U.S. presidents, Republicans as well as Democrats.

Eight years later, former President Donald Trump is trying to retake the White House by doing the same thing - and expanding his target list by throwing shade at luminaries like Abraham Lincoln and George Washington.

During an issues forum in Pennsylvania last week, Trump repeated a frequent story claiming that unnamed border union officials said they endorsed him for a second term because he was "the greatest president overall that we’ve ever had."

"I said, 'does that include Abe Lincoln?,'" Trump told supporters. "'Does that include George Washington?' ... yes! ... I said, 'that’s good.'"

Political analysts and historians - none of whom rank Trump anywhere near the top of presidential rankings - said he is driven to criticize and second-guess others via a combination of ego, arrogance, and self-esteem issues.

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"He thinks he's better than any of them," said Jack Pitney, a professor of government at Claremont McKenna College and a former Republican who has studied conservative politics for decades. "That's the short answer. He doesn't know a lot of history and he doesn't care. His arrogance is only exceeded by his ignorance."

It used to be rare for presidents to talk bad about each other, at least in public. Trump, never a member of the so-called "President's Club," has changed the rules in his campaign against Vice President Kamala Harris (and, before her, incumbent President Joe Biden).

Some past presidents do pass muster with Trump.

Over the years, he has complimented and praised Republican predecessors Ronald Reagan and Dwight Eisenhower, with a recent emphasis on the Eisenhower administration's immigration policies. "He was a very big deporter," Trump said during the forum in Drexel Hill, Pa.

As for Reagan, Trump named his political movement after a Gipper slogan: Let's Make America Great Again. At MAGA rallies in recent days, Trump begins with a question that Reagan made famous during his successful 1980 presidential campaign: Are you better off now than you were four years ago?

Even so, Trump has criticized Reagan over immigration and free trade policies, as well as crowd sizes.

In an interview last week with conservative commentator Tucker Carlson, Trump said: "If Ronald Reagan came back from the dead ... if he went to California to have a rally, he would have 250, 300 people in a ballroom some place."

During a rally Saturday in Salem, Virginia., Trump added a Republican president to his shade list: Herbert Hoover, the White House occupant at the dawn of the Great Depression.

"I don't want to be Herbert Hoover," Trump said. "I refuse to be Herbert Hoover."

To be sure, Trump has also praised Lincoln, even as he makes occasional unflattering comments about the revered 16th president, regarding the Civil War.

During a "Fox & Friends" interview this month, Trump repeated that he doesn't understand why Lincoln didn't "settle" the dispute with the Confederate states before the war broke out. A Fox host pointed out that the southern states seceded before Lincoln's inauguration in March of 1861.

“Lincoln was probably a great president - although I’ve always said, why wasn’t that settled, you know?" Trump said. "It doesn’t make sense we had a Civil War.”

On the Joe Rogan podcast last week, Trump contrasted Lincoln with a historic figure he has often praised, Confederate military leader Robert E. Lee, citing Lee's success on the battlefield.

"Lincoln had the yips ... as the golfers would say," Trump said. "He had a phobia about Robert E. Lee."

Trump has also praised George Washington, but lumped him in with Lincoln in an interview with the authors of the 2021 book "I Alone Can Fix It: Donald J. Trump's Catastrophic Final Year."

“I think it would be hard if George Washington came back from the dead and he chose Abraham Lincoln as his vice president," Trump said regarding the pre-COVID phase of his presidency. "I think it would have been very hard for them to beat me."

Historian Sidney Blumenthal, who is writing a five-volume biography of Lincoln, said "Trump's malignant narcissism compels him" to act like he is better than everybody.

"Good luck competing with Lincoln," said Blumenthal, a former senior White House aide to President Bill Clinton.

Trump does tend to praise his predecessors to promote his own agenda.

For example, the nation's former 45th chief executive has praised President William McKinley over the high tariffs he instituted during his presidency that started near the end of the 19th century and ended with his assassination at the start of the 20th.

President Andrew Jackson, the nation's seventh president from 1829 to 1837, has won Trump's admiration for his populist style of politics.

Trump, who is the only president to be impeached twice and also criminally indicted, in four separate cases, has also lauded Jackson for being the nation's most politically attacked chief executive - with one exception. "Nobody’s been treated like Trump in terms of badly,” Trump told Newsmax in March.

Of course, the less popular past presidents - like Republican Richard Nixon - get no boost from Trump.

During a recent rally in Duluth, Ga., Trump said he sometimes wants to tape every conversation he has, but "the problem is then I start thinking about: Richard Nixon did that . . . Let's do without the tape."

President Jimmy Carter is also frequently a target for Trump, who backhands the Georgia Democrat who recently turned 100 years old as a way to attack Biden and Harris.

"Their administration makes Jimmy Carter’s administration look absolutely brilliant," Trump said Wednesday in Green Bay, Wis.

One president Trump has rarely if ever mentioned: Grover Cleveland, the only president in U.S. history who lost his re-election bid and then came back four years later in 1892 to win the White House again.

Trump's attacks on more recent presidents have to do with current politics.

When he sought the Republican presidential nomination in 2016, Trump criticized Republican President George W. Bush over the Iraq war and the financial crisis of 2007-08. That was also a way to get at one of his Republican primary opponents: former Florida governor Jeb Bush, the brother of George W. Bush and son of former President George H.W. Bush.

In the general election of 2016, Trump went after President Barack Obama as a way to challenge heir apparent and Democratic nominee Hillary Rodham Clinton. Trump still attacks Obama - "a real jerk" - as his predecessor campaigns for Harris across the country.

Of course, Trump has hammered Biden because he was running against him before the incumbent withdrew in July; he still attacks Biden as a way to get at Harris.

While George W. Bush has not publicly responded to Trump's gibes, other living presidents have, with relish.

Biden routinely describes Trump as a threat to democracy, citing his role in the insurrection attempt of Jan. 6, 2021, and efforts to undermine the election system in general.

"He's become unhinged," Biden said during an October campaign event for Harris.

Obama mocks Trump at every campaign stop, from his obsession with crowd sizes to his tweeting.

"Here’s a man, a 78-year-old billionaire. who has not stopped whining about his problems since he rode down that golden escalator nine years ago," Obama told Democratic supporters Monday in Philadelphia.

Former President Bill Clinton, married to Hillary Clinton, also mocked Trump at an a recent rally in Durham, N.C., over his threats to go after political opponents. Clinton joked that he would prefer to be locked up at Guantánamo Bay in balmy Cuba rather than the Super Max facility in frigid Colorado.

“Because when you’re 78, you’re a lot more worried about it being too cold than being too hot," Clinton said.

Political scientist Lara Brown, author of "Amateur Hour: Presidential Character and the Question of Leadership," said most scholars view Trump as perhaps the worst president in history.

His attempt to elevate himself over the Lincolns and Washingtons of the world are partly efforts to change public perceptions of him. They are also very much in character for Trump, who proclaims himself an expert in fields ranging from business deals to foreign diplomacy, and has often said, "I've been right about everything.

"He never stops talking about his purported abilities and past successes," Brown said. "It should not surprise us that he attempts to do this with historical figures whose reputations as great leaders and brilliant statesmen far exceed his."