President Donald Trump is desperate to be considered among the greatest men in history and among the U.S.'s top two presidents.
The Atlantic reported on Wednesday that two people in his orbit told reporters that Trump is viewing himself as not only great but among history's most preeminent authorities.
“He’s been talking recently about how he is the most powerful person to ever live,” the confidant told us. “He wants to be remembered as the one who did things that other people couldn’t do, because of his sheer power and force of will.”
In 2020, former White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci told then CNN anchor Chris Cuomo, Trump "wants to make money. He does not care about his legacy. He has told people privately, 'Why do I care about my legacy? I'll be dead.' So, he's looking at the next two, three weeks. How am I going to make money off this? How is this going to be good for me, post-presidency? Is there a chance I could still stay in the presidency? Ron Johnson and Rand Paul think there is a lot of unproven fraud. So, he's listening to those people, Chris. But trust me, this is all transactional from here until January 20."
That seems to have evolved in the second term as Trump approaches his 80th birthday on June 14. He's now focused on having his name on more structures and building more things he believes will exist long after he's gone. But The Atlantic adds that the legacy isn't his only focus anymore; it's flexing his power.
"The result, at least so far, has cost many lives and billions of dollars, damaged the world economy, strained already fragile alliances,and cratered the president’s standing with the public," said the report. "But those around him cast his new focus as a liberation."
“He is unburdened by political concerns and is able to do what is truly right rather than what is in his best political interests,” the administration official told reporters Ashley Parker and Michael Scherer. “Hence the decision to strike Iran.”
At home, it is about putting his name on buildings and tearing down the nearly 100-year-old White House East Wing to build a ballroom larger than the White House itself. He's also having his face minted on a massive gold coin.
“He is conscious, proud and hopeful that some of the things that he does are resetting long-standing orders of things,” a second senior official told The Atlantic. “Not in a Socrates sort of way, just: 'The stuff I’m doing is very different, and it will reset things to some level, and that includes not just this country but the world.'”
While the report focused on the philosophy of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, the White House official confirmed that Trump isn't exactly the type to read, much less ruminate on 18th-century German philosophy.
The second official told The Atlantic that Trump likely remembered a speech at a recent golf event in which the speaker "placed Trump in the frame of historical figures such as Alexander the Great and Genghis Khan."
A reveling moment came on Saturday evening after Trump was forced to cut his evening at the White House Correspondents' Association dinner short after a gunman rushed the magnetometers. From the White House, Trump said that he secretly “studied assassinations,” and argued that “the people that make the biggest impact — they’re the ones that they go after.”
He continued, musing, “they don’t go after the ones that don’t do much."
Trump concluded, “I hate to say I’m honored by that, but I’ve done a lot.”
"Trump’s heightened tendency to view himself as a world-historical figure — capable of brash, misunderstood greatness — has transformed his second term," the reporters said. They cited the problem, however, that it's not "necessarily in a good way."