The 2024 Presidential Greatness Project Expert Survey has been released. Compiled from input by 154 historians and presidential experts, the results are making conservatives everywhere feel not so great. The biggest issue for Republicans is that Donald Trump ranked number 45 … out of 45 presidents. That’s so far into last place it’s almost like Trump just won a dreaded participation trophy.
Fox News’ “Outnumbered” host, and former Trump spokesperson, Kayleigh McEnany gave her opinion on the survey, saying it was “infuriating in so many ways.” McEnany magnanimously described the ranking of Abraham Lincoln (she calls him “Abe”) number one on the list as “[o]kay, fair,” but unfortunately, the survey’s participants are “ivory tower elites who in no way represent the view of the American people.”
Another panelist called the list “bogus” while arguing the proof was President Barack Obama shouldn’t be ranked highly. He was ranked seventh in the survey.
It’s a bit interesting that neither of them argued that Trump wasn’t the worst president—just that Joe Biden and Obama shouldn’t be highly thought of as they are. Biden ranked 14, while Ronald Reagan ranked 16 on the list. Reagan’s lower position relative to Biden is possibly due to his administration’s disastrous reliance on supply side economic theory, and the criminality of the Iran-Contra scandal, which was pretty bad.
On Trump’s side we have the fact that he was impeached twice, is facing 91 criminal counts, has already been hit with punitive damages exceeding half a billion dollars for fraud and defamation, he bungled the country’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, and his biggest legislative achievement was one of the largest transfers of wealth to the richest Americans in the form of a legendarily unpopular tax break to the rich. He is also believed to have tried to overthrow our democracy, and at the very least did nothing to prevent the dissolution of our democracy when he was trounced by Biden in the 2020 election.
As NPR noted about the presidential survey, it is hard to call out partisanism here:
Experts responding to the survey who self-identified as conservatives rated Biden No. 30, while liberals put him 13th and moderates ranked him 20th. All three of those same groups ranked Trump, whose presidency was marked by his flouting of historical norms, in the bottom five.
The good news is that by most accounts Trump’s first lady, Melania, is also the worst. That’s romantic, right?
