Trump thinks he's the most powerful person to ever live' (May 1, 2026)
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... Donald Trump has not been coy about his desire to be remembered as the most powerful person to ever live. The 79-year-old president has been privately and publicly musing about his place in history as he serves his final term in the world's most powerful office, a longtime confidant and senior administration officials told The Atlantic.

"He's been talking recently about how he is the most powerful person to ever live," the Trump confidant told The Atlantic. "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." The Atlantics in-depth investigation drew on multiple White House insiders who spoke anonymously to candidly detail their private conversations with the president.
No longer competing with Lincoln or Washington

This internal rhetoric marks a shift in the president's self-perception as he seeks to leave a permanent mark on the global order. Trump no longer views himself as a peer to American icons like George Washington or Abraham Lincoln. Instead, he has allegedly set his sights on the world-historical status occupied by figures such as Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar and Napoleon Bonaparte.

The philosophical framework the president's allies invoke is rooted in the 19th-century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, who argued that history is shaped by rare "world-historical individuals" -- men like Caesar, Alexander and Napoleon -- who redirected the course of civilization through force of will, often in ways that were condemned as norm-breaking in their own time. ...