President Donald Trump is ready to declare victory over the Founding Fathers.
During a lunch with Senate Republicans on Tuesday, Trump expressed a clear desire to win the title of America’s best president.
“The great George Washington, even… well, I think we have to value him above me,” Trump said while speaking in the White House Rose Garden. “So less than great. Less than George.”
But then it took a turn.
“Someone went there and said, ‘You’re the third best president of the United States’ (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 very angry with this man. It’s going to be hard to beat… it’s going to be very hard to beat Washington and Lincoln, but we’re going to try, right?”
Hours earlier, 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 their life’s goal of shaping a more peaceful world,” according to the foundation’s website.
It ranks him alongside people like former President George W. Bush, who won the recognition last year, as well as other honorees like former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and Mike Pompeo.
During his remarks, Trump went on to say that neither Washington nor Lincoln had ended “eight wars,” a debunked claim he has repeated, particularly before his efforts to win the Nobel Peace Prize, which was awarded to Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado earlier this month.
“We caused eight wars and then comes the ninth, believe it or not,” Trump said, referring to the war between Russia and Ukraine.
House Speaker Mike Johnson previously said he and Israeli Knesset Speaker Amir Ohana will bring together leaders from around the world to jointly nominate Trump for next year’s prestigious award. The announcement came as Israel and Hamas agreed to a ceasefire in Gaza, although some administration officials have privately expressed concern about the fragility of the agreement, CNN reported.
“No one has ever been more deserving of that award, and that is an objective fact,” Johnson said last week.
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