President Donald Trump has a list. On it are some of the most powerful and feared men in human history: Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, William the Conqueror, Adolph Hitler, Mao Zedong, Joseph Stalin. It is a list that the president is happy to brandish, as New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan reminded us this week when talking about their book “Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump.”
The person who made the list — someone Trump wrongly describes as a historian — told the president that based on his power and his capacity to change the world, he’s above all those other historical giants. And Trump has reportedly taken that assessment to heart. After all, as Haberman and Swan say he told them, his reach is global in a way that would have been inconceivable to those ancient leaders. (“They didn’t have airplanes, right?” they reported Trump saying. “You couldn’t travel around.”) In their book, Haberman and Swan describe the “the untroubled ease with which he accepted a place among men who had reshaped the world through conquest and fear.” Trump, they write, “drew no distinction between those who built and those who destroyed.”
Trump appears to be dreaming of reshaping the world in his image and imagining he can do so without paying a heavy price.
Their account of the president’s megalomania isn’t surprising given his public statements celebrating himself, his well-documented love of strongmen and his preference for autocratic rule. Trump placing himself above those philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel called “world-historical individuals” helps explain some of the wildly reckless decisions of Trump’s second term and his seeming indifference on domestic issues. Though previous presidents have turned abroad in their second terms to exercise authority that is waning at home, Trump appears to be dreaming of reshaping the world in his image and imagining he can do so without paying a heavy price.
When Haberman and Swan talked about Trump’s list this week in an interview on “The Daily Show,” host John Stewart was incredulous that Trump sees himself, as Swan described it, as a “Napoleonic figure.” And, referring to the French emperor’s rise and humiliating fall, Stewart asked, “Has he read the whole book though?” He had a point: Trump doesn’t appear to have considered the losses of the historical figures on his list. Bonaparte may have conquered most of Europe, but ended his days in exile on the island of Saint Helena as a result of his overreach.
At the beginning of January, the U.S. military surreptitiously invaded Venezuela and spirited its leader, Nicolás Maduro, to New York City to stand trial for “Narco-Terrorism Conspiracy” and other alleged charges. When Trump was asked days later what limits there are to his power, Trump said: “There is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.” When the two Times reporters interviewed Trump in March, he had just launched a war against Iran he promised the U.S. would win within weeks. He’d also already bulldozed the East Wing of the White House as part of his plan to build a lavish ballroom. That’s just one of the ways he’s tried to give Washington a facelift to better fit his garish tastes.
Small wonder, then, that he has reportedly managed to convince himself that he is a unique figure in world history. “He’s been talking recently about how he is the most powerful person to ever live,” a confidant told The Atlantic’s Ashley Parker and Michael Scherer in April. “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 best leaders have people around them to bring them back to Earth, but Trump has surrounded himself with “yes men” and sycophants. (Case in point: The list of historic figures Trump credited to a historian was compiled by David King, a businessman, so-called history buff and former caddie to one of Trump’s friends.) The seeming absence of people in his circle who might check him is dangerous. Journalist Michael Kruse tellingly wrote of Trump in 2016: “In the mercurial life of Donald John Trump, here is one great truth: When he’s riding his highest, he is also at his most frenzied, his most volatile — his most self-destructive.”
The war with Iran, launched so cavalierly when Trump was at a peak, has helped temper the aura of invincibility he’d cultivated. Almost six months later, the technological leaps that prompted Trump to view himself as above the other historical figures on his cherished list have done little to bring about the “unconditional surrender” he promised to extract from Tehran. The still ongoing conflict, the shutdown of trade through the Strait of Hormuz and Trump’s refusal to focus on affordability at home has helped Trump’s already weak poll numbers reach a new nadir. While he’s tried to slough off any blame for a potential shellacking in the midterms for Republicans, his unpopularity and looming lame duck status portend a second half of his term lacking the same unfettered use of his power.
I’d argue then that Trump’s list is missing a name that would better contextualize the central flaw in Trump’s self-aggrandizement: Ramses II.
I’d argue then that Trump’s list is missing a name that would better contextualize the central flaw in Trump’s self-aggrandizement: Ramses II. The pharaoh was the most powerful ruler of the most powerful epoch of ancient Egypt. Today, though, he may be better remembered as the subject of Lord Byron’s poem “Ozymandias.” The poet described a ruined, broken monument, surrounded by empty desert, atop a pedestal inscribed with the words “My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Because if there is a common thread that unites Trump with many of the most powerful leaders throughout history, it’s hubris. The unbounded pride and willingness to place themselves above all others, even the gods, has been the downfall of enough mortals that the ancient Greeks framed it as a king’s greatest sin. Trump apparently sees himself as mightier than any man who’s ever walked the globe. His belief based on flattery and self-deception, a combination that has felled more would-be tyrants and despots than any one list can hold.
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