Trump 'extremely angry' at being referred to as 'third best' US president of all time

The president gave a rambling speech at the White House Rose Garden on Tuesday, telling reporters how upset he became when an unknown man told him he was only the third-best president after Washington and Lincoln.

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President Donald Trump told reporters on Tuesday that he got “extremely angry” after someone on television told him he was only the third-best president of the United States. In the same breath, he claimed he would try to “beat Washington and Lincoln”.

Trump made the interesting comments during a rambling speech to GOP senators in the White House Rose Garden. He said he was angry that the unknown man said he was the third-best president behind Washington and Lincoln.

He said, “So we did the presidential walk of fame from the great George Washington all the way to, well, I think we have to raise him above me, so I, less than great, less than George. Somebody went up the other… they say, ‘You’re the third-best president in the United’.

“This was on television, ‘Third best,’ And they said, ‘Who were the first two?’ ‘George Washington and Abraham Lincoln.’ And I got extremely angry at this man.” In the same speech, Trump spoke 'gobbledygook on steroids' in a bizarre rant about 'women inside'.

He continued, “You know? You can’t. It’s going to be, it’s going to be tough to beat, Mr. Senator, it’s going to be, John, it’s going to be very tough to beat Washington and Lincoln, but we’re going to give it a try, right? Hey, they didn’t put out eight wars, nine coming. Alright? We put out eight wars, and the ninth is coming, believe it or not.”

The purpose of the speech was to celebrate the demolition of The White House East Wing to make room for the addition of his huge, $200 million ballroom.

Critics on social media poked fun at the President’s comments regarding his ranking while fact-checking Trump’s boast about solving “eight wars.”

“Every day he solves another imaginary war in his head,” replied one person on X.

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Another said, “Isn’t a sign of cognitive issues repeating the same delusion over and over and over again?”

It is not clear precisely who Trump is talking about when he refers to somebody on television who is making him angry. Earlier this year, during an interview with Fox’s Bret Baier, he remarked that someone told him neither Washington nor Lincoln could beat him in an election.

Making the comments in February, he recounted, “And they said, sir, if George Washington and Abraham Lincoln got together and ran as president and vice president, they couldn't beat you.”

Many polls have ranked Trump very low in the presidential rankings. C-SPAN’s 2021 poll of historians showed that Trump ranked fourth-worst, beating out Franklin Pierce, Andrew Johnson, and James Buchanan. In the same survey, Lincoln and Washington ranked first and second. Additionally, a 2024 poll of American Political Science Association executives ranked Trump as the worst.

Later in the day, Trump went on a bizarre autism rant during a White House Diwali celebration.