Trump rates his presidency ‘A+’: ‘Is that enough? Can I go higher than that?’
President Trump rated his performance in the White House an “A+” on Sunday.
He offered this assessment during a wide-ranging interview on “Fox News Sunday.” Chris Wallace had asked Trump where he ranks himself among great U.S. presidents.
“Where do you rank yourself in the pantheon of great presidents? There’s Lincoln and Washington. There’s FDR and Reagan. Do you make the top 10?” Wallace asked.
“I think I’m doing a great job. We have the best economy we’ve ever had. We’re doing really well. We would’ve been in a war with North Korea if, let’s say, that administration continued forward,” Trump said referring to his predecessor, Barack Obama.
“So where do you rank yourself?” Wallace asked.
“I would give myself, I would — look, I hate to do it, but I will do it — I would give myself an A+. Is that enough? Can I go higher than that?” Trump replied.
Trump said that had he been “more modified, more moderate,” he wouldn’t have been able to accomplish half of what he has in the past two years. He added it’s important for the president to have “a certain ability to fight back.”
He expressed pride in the Republican Party’s ability to keep the Senate in the midterm elections, and suggested that losing the GOP majority in the House of Representatives doesn’t reflect on his presidency.
“I have people that won’t vote unless I’m on the ballot, OK? And I wasn’t on the ballot,” Trump said.
The current economic boom is overshadowed at times by Trump’s endless controversies. Although the health of the economy relies on far more than a president’s actions, Trump and Obama have both claimed credit for the strong economic recovery, and both contributed to its success.
Whether the topic is politics, business or entertainment, it is not uncommon for Trump to give himself superlative marks or exaggerate his accomplishments. The president told the Washington Post’s Bob Woodward last September that no other president in U.S. history has done as well as he has.
“Well, accurate is that nobody’s ever done a better job than I’m doing as president. That I can tell you,” he said. “So that’s … and that’s the way a lot of people feel that know what’s going on, and you’ll see that over the years.”
Based on polling, the American public does not appear to agree with Trump’s rating of his job performance. Gallup reports that his most recent job approval rating is just 38 percent, while the historical average for U.S. presidents from 1938 to 2018 is 53 percent.
In his 1987 memoir “The Art of the Deal,” co-written by Tony Schwartz, Trump attributed a large part of his success to playing to people’s fantasies, and said that “a little hyperbole never hurts.”
“People want to believe that something is the biggest and the greatest and the most spectacular. I call it truthful hyperbole,” Trump wrote. “It’s an innocent form of exaggeration — and a very effective form of promotion.”
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