President Donald Trump is ready to claim victory over the Founding Fathers.
During a lunch with Senate Republicans on Tuesday, Trump expressed a clear desire to win the title as the best U.S. president.
“The great George Washington, all the way to — well, I think we have to rate him above me,“ Trump said while speaking at the White House Rose Garden. ”So less than great. Less than George.”
But he then pivoted.
“Somebody went up there, they say, ‘You’re the third best president in the United’ — this was on television — ‘third best,’” Trump said. “And they said, who are the first two? ‘George Washington and Abraham Lincoln.’”
He continued: “And I got extremely angry at this man. It’s going to be tough to beat… it’s going to very tough to beat Washington and Lincoln, but we’re going to give it a try, right?”
Earlier in the day, Trump accepted the Architect of Peace Award from the Richard Nixon Foundation during a private ceremony in the Oval Office. The honor, established in 1995, is awarded to “individuals who embody his lifelong goal of shaping a more peaceful world,” according to the foundation’s website.
It puts him with the likes of former President George W. Bush, who won the recognition last year, as well as other recipients such as former Secretary of States Henry Kissinger and Mike Pompeo.
During his remarks, Trump went on to say that neither Washington or Lincoln had ended “eight wars” — a debunked claim that he has repeated, particularly ahead of his efforts to win the Nobel Peace Prize, which was awarded to Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado earlier this month.
“We put out eight wars, and then ninth is coming, believe it or not,” Trump said, referring to the war between Russia and Ukraine.
House Speaker Mike Johnson previously said that he and Israeli Knesset Speaker Amir Ohana will rally leaders across the world to jointly nominate Trump for next year’s prestigious prize. The announcement came as Israel and Hamas agreed to a ceasefire in Gaza — though some administration officials have privately expressed worry about the fragility of the agreement, CNN reported.
“No one has ever deserved that prize more, and that is an objective fact,” Johnson said last week.
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