Banners, one of President George Washington that reads “America’s First,” left, and another of President Donald Trump that reads, “America First” hang above the entrance of the US Department of the Interior Thursday, June 25, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster) President Trump declared on “The Axios Show” the other day that he has discovered “no limits” to his power since losing the war with Iran. And face it; we lost the war not achieving any of our stated objectives and paying a tremendous price in blood and treasure.
In “Regime Change,” New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan reveal that Trump is possessed of an even grander delusion, that he may be the most powerful man in history. Interviewed by the reporters, he unveiled a document arguing he is more powerful than mass murderers Attila the Hun, Genghis Khan, Napoleon Bonaparte, Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong and Adolf Hitler.
Are you still standing?
Trump “began reading from the document,” the authors write, reciting the names of some of the most bloodthirsty figures in history and explaining how each “fell short of his own power as U.S. president.” Does anyone have any idea of what James Madison would have thought about this?
Is our president mad? You may draw your own conclusion.
Trump posted the “Great Men” document on Truth Social last week, calling its author a “presidential historian.” Haberman and Swan report the author was the longtime caddy and personal confidant to golfer Gary Player. Doris Kearns Goodwin, he’s not.
But why would anyone want to be compared with Attila the Hun who killed more than 160,000 people, Genghis Khan 40-60 million, Napoleon over six million, Joseph Stalin 20 million, Mao at least 1.5 million or Hitler 17 million, including 6 million Jews murdered in the death camps.
“They did not have airplanes, right? You could not travel around,” Trump said of Alexander the Great, the Caesars and William the Conqueror, according to Haberman and Swan’s book. “Napoleon,” he added “with relish,” I guess he can because he is more powerful.
Haberman and Swan write that the revealing part was “the evident pleasure he took in the company of Mao, Hitler and Stalin” — and “the untroubled ease with which he accepted a place among men who had reshaped the world through conquest and fear.”
Trump is through testing the unitary limits of the presidency. He is describing power in world-historical terms — placing himself in the annals of conquerors, dictators and war criminals who worked nations to their wicked will.
In a wide-ranging, 45-minute interview with Axios’ Marc Caputo, Trump repeatedly measured power by who yields to whom: G7 leaders believed him when he joked “I’m the boss,” he said, while Israel has “a lot of respect for me” and will “do as I say.” He declined to name the leaders he considers the weakest — then swiveled to Vladimir Putin’s absence from the G7, formerly the G8 prior to Russia’s expulsion after its 2014 annexation of Crimea.
Trump dwelt on French President Emmanuel Macron’s decision to honor him with a dinner at Versailles, the kind of imperial stage Trump called “my weakness.” Allies, in Trump’s telling, are only relevant when they recognize who holds the real power.
“If it weren’t for me, Israel would not exist today,” Trump told Axios, adding that his relationship with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is “good, but we have to keep him a little bit sane.”
Trump called Republican hawks such as Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), John Cornyn (R-Texas), Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) or Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) who criticized his Iran deal: “Some guys that I used to respect, I don’t respect anymore. They are hardliners,” he said. That is the next worst thing to being woke, I guess.
Pressed on why the deal “falls short” of his original demands, a defiant Trump opted for his own reality — insisting the outcome does, in fact, amount to “unconditional surrender” by Iran as well as “regime change.”
For all of Trump’s bombast about limitless power, he acknowledged one force still constrains him — the economy. He argued that extending the war to satisfy hawks could have triggered a “worldwide depression.” He pointed to falling oil prices and a surging stock market as proof he made the right decision to back a deal that could end the Iran war.
“I have one primary wish as president, in terms of people: I never want to be the late, great Herbert Hoover,” Trump said, referring to the 31st president, whom some historians erroneously blame for the Great Depression.
The “Great Men” document’s bottom line from the caddy shack: Trump’s willingness to use his power on a global scale “makes him by far the most powerful person that has EVER walked this planet.”
Not so fast. The Senate on a bipartisan resolution voted last week 50-48 to block Trump from resuming the war with Iran. Trump of course rubbished the Republicans who supported the measure, accusing them of providing the enemy “aid and comfort,” the classic definition of treason. The next day, after a Trump hissy fit, defecting Republicans reversed course, and the Senate voted 50-47 allowing him carte blanche to proceed. Despite the switcheroo, Democrats insisted that the war is now illegal.
Despite his delusions of grandeur, Trump is not all-powerful. As King Charles III recently reminded Congress, Magna Carta in 1215 gave America the “foundation of the principle that executive power is subject to checks and balances.” His words brought lawmakers of both parties to their feet.
James D. Zirin is a former federal prosecutor in the Southern District of New York and a published legal analyst.
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