Trump: These are the presidents I like
But that was how President Trump remembered his predecessor during an impromptu lecture on American history.
Trump gave a runthrough of the achievements of past presidents at the end of a cabinet meeting on Tuesday, explaining why he had chosen certain portraits to decorate the White House.
'I actually spent time in the vaults,' he said. 'The vaults are where we have a lot of great pictures and artwork. And I picked it all myself.'
From Dwight Eisenhower to Abraham Lincoln, Trump hinted at comparisons between himself and the various presidents as he pointed out pictures around the cabinet room. Although he liked the art, he clarified that he was primarily a 'frame person … Sometimes I like frames more than I like the pictures.'
Franklin Delano Roosevelt 'was not a Republican, to put it mildly', Trump said, pointing to a painting of the 32nd president. 'But he was, you know, a four-termer.'
As architect of the New Deal, the policy of widespread public investment to rescue the US economy from the Great Depression in the 1930s, Roosevelt is widely regarded as one of the country's greatest leaders. He responded to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 by taking the US into the Second World War.
Trump said that Roosevelt, who was paralysed from the waist down after contracting polio, was responsible for 'a lot of ramps' outside the White House. 'People say, 'It's an unusual place for a ramp.' It was because of him. He was wheelchair-bound. But he was an amazing man,' he said.
• Netanyahu nominates Trump for Nobel peace prize
Trump said it was appropriate to hang a picture of 'Honest Abe Lincoln', who ended slavery and won the Civil War, in the cabinet room since 'this is where wars are ended' — an apparent reference to his desire to see himself as a peacemaker in Ukraine and the Middle East.
Trump also appeared to compare himself to Eisenhower, 'a very underrated president'. Alluding to his own recent softening of restrictions on migrant farmworkers, Trump said Eisenhower showed that some presidents can be 'too strong' on immigration.
'He was strong at the borders and, during a certain period of time … so strong that almost every farmer in California went bankrupt,' he said. 'And we have to remember that.'
Trump reserved his greatest praise for William McKinley, the 'tariff president'. Having repeatedly compared McKinley's protectionist economic agenda to his own, Trump ordered that Mount McKinley, the highest peak in the US, be returned to its original name earlier this year after Barack Obama renamed it Denali, its Alaskan name.
'McKinley was a great president who never got credit,' Trump said. 'He believed that other countries should pay for the privilege of coming into our country and taking our jobs and taking our treasure … and he built a tremendous fortune.'
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