President Donald Trump has published his own hierarchy of American presidents, placing himself alone in a category labeled "The Greatest" while assigning George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt to the lower designation of "Great" and leaving Ronald Reagan, John F. Kennedy and several other prominent presidents unranked.
Trump posted the chart on Truth Social, dividing presidents into six categories: "The Greatest," "Great," "Near Great," "Average," "Below Average" and "Failures." The ranking offered no explanation for the criteria Trump used or why 11 former presidents weren't assigned to any category.
Trump's top category contained only one name: his own. Washington, Lincoln, Roosevelt, Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson and Woodrow Wilson were placed in the "Great" tier, while Theodore Roosevelt was classified as "Near Great."
More recent presidents received sharply different treatment. Bill Clinton was rated "Average," while Calvin Coolidge was placed in "Below Average." Trump classified Joe Biden, Barack Obama and Jimmy Carter as "Failures," alongside Republican presidents Ulysses S. Grant and Warren G. Harding.
Trump just posted his own presidential ranking, putting himself in the “greatest” category above Lincoln, Washington, FDR, and every other president. pic.twitter.com/ZxcckuQVwL — Republicans against Trump (@RpsAgainstTrump) August 27, 2026
The chart isn't a straightforward partisan division. Some of the most consequential Republican presidents of the modern era don't appear at all, including Reagan, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush.
Trump also omitted Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Harry S. Truman, William Henry Harrison and James A. Garfield. He didn't say whether those omissions were intentional or explain how those presidents would fit into his six-tier system.
Reagan's absence is particularly conspicuous given his stature in modern Republican politics and Trump's own previous praise for him. Trump's Presidential Walk of Fame at the White House includes a Reagan plaque describing the former president as a Trump admirer before Trump's entry into presidential politics and noting Trump's admiration for Reagan.
Trump also called Reagan a "high-quality person" in July. Yet Reagan received no position in the Truth Social ranking.
Eisenhower presents a similar discrepancy. Trump recently described him as a "much better president" than he was generally given credit for, but the former president and World War II commander received no category on Trump's chart.
Kennedy was likewise omitted despite recent praise from Trump. In July, Trump called Kennedy a "great guy" and "handsome," and said he was considered the "second-most good-looking president." Trump has also circulated AI-generated imagery depicting himself alongside Kennedy and other former presidents.
Trump's personal ranking differs substantially from surveys of historians and presidential scholars. Siena College Research Institute's 2022 expert survey placed Franklin D. Roosevelt first, Lincoln second, Washington third and Theodore Roosevelt fourth.
Trump, by contrast, placed himself above all four. The Siena survey ranked Trump 43rd, putting him among its five lowest-rated presidents.
A separate 2021 C-SPAN survey of historians and professional observers placed Trump 41st among 44 presidents included in that survey. Such academic rankings rely on their own criteria and subjective judgments and aren't directly comparable with Trump's unexplained classification system, but the gap between his self-assessment and those surveys is substantial.
Trump's Truth Social post also resembles the personalized version of presidential history displayed in his White House Presidential Walk of Fame. While the display includes every president, its plaques contain assessments reflecting Trump's own political perspective.
The Obama plaque describes the former president as one of the most divisive political figures in U.S. history, while Biden's calls him "by far, the worst president in American history." The plaque for George W. Bush criticizes the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, saying both "should not have happened," while Clinton's entry references controversies surrounding his presidency and Hillary Clinton's loss to Trump in the 2016 election.
