President Donald Trump hasn’t been coy about his desire to be remembered as the most powerful person to ever live, insiders have revealed.
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 confidant said. “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 insiders said it’s this mindset, coupled with the knowledge that he no longer has to worry about wooing voters for another election, that pushed him toward waging war on Iran—a drastic move that his predecessors held back on.
“He is unburdened by political concerns and is able to do what is truly right rather than what is in his best political interests,” an administration official told the outlet. “Hence the decision to strike Iran.”
Trump’s quest to remake the world has so far included bombing several countries, toppling Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro and Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, threatening to cut ties with NATO and seize Greenland, and even ominously warning to wipe out an entire civilization, “never to be brought back again.”
He’s been preoccupied back home, too. The president has slapped his face onto the U.S. passport, a national parks pass, and a commemorative 24-karat gold coin under the guise of celebrating America’s 250th anniversary. The builder-in-chief has also been busy demolishing the East Wing to make way for his massive ballroom and dipping the Oval Office in gold.
“He is conscious, proud, and hopeful that some of the things that he does are resetting long-standing orders of things,” a 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.’”
Another Trump confidant put it more bluntly: “He’s clearly in his ‘I don’t give a f—’ mood.”
But don’t use the word “legacy”—he doesn’t like the word, advisers and allies told the outlet.
When Trump was advised to pick a running mate in 2024 who could continue the MAGA movement, a confidant recalled him saying, “What the hell do I care? I’ll be dead.”
That may have changed now that he’s back in the White House. Several sources told The Atlantic that Trump has been worried about being perceived as a lame-duck president. Another ally said he isn’t particularly concerned about losing the House, and only cares slightly more about keeping control of the Senate because it would mean “a six-month impeachment trial versus three hours.”
The same ally said Trump cares more about his successor, hoping his actions won’t be reversed as they were in 2021 under Joe Biden.
“President Trump is fighting every day to deliver the strong, safe, and prosperous country that we all deserve. The only legacy President Trump is concerned with is making America greater than ever before,” White House spokesperson Olivia Wales said in a statement.
On Saturday, after a shooter once again attempted to take his life at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, Trump pondered why he has repeatedly found himself the target of assassination attempts.
“The people that do the most, the people that make the biggest impact, they’re the ones that they go after. They don’t go after the ones that don’t do much because they like it that way,” he told reporters. “I hate to say I’m honored by that, but I’ve done a lot.”
