President Trump is leaning into the idea that he is the mightiest figure in history. In a Truth Social post on Thursday, Trump posted a document he said was from a presidential historian that compares him to the likes of Attila the Hun, Genghis Khan, Napoleon, Stalin, Mao, and Hitler, and concludes that Trump is, "without question, the most powerful man that the planet has ever known." The author of the document turns out to be Dave King, who is not a historian but the longtime caddy and confidante of pro golfer and Trump friend Gary Player. CNN suspects Trump posted the document to get out in front of a snippet about it in the forthcoming book Regime Change.
In a March sit-down with the book's authors, New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, Trump produced the document from King and began reading from it. "They didn't have airplanes, right? You couldn't travel around," Trump told the authors of the long-ago figures, per Axios. King's argument is that, unlike the figures from history, Trump is able to wield "power on a global scale" and thus is "by far the most powerful person that has EVER walked this planet."
In his social media post, Trump embraced the sentiment, writing, "Sounds good to me!" In their book, Haberman and Swan write of "the evident pleasure he took in the company of Mao, Hitler, and Stalin," along with "the untroubled ease with which he accepted a place among men who had reshaped the world through conquest and fear."
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