Does his head fit here? Donald Trump at Mount Rushmore in July 2020.Image: keystone
analysis
At his second inauguration, Donald Trump announced that he wanted to end wars. Now he has attacked Iran. Behind this lies his desire for historical greatness.
Mar 11, 2026, 6:22 p.mMar 11, 2026, 6:22 p.m
Mount Rushmore is a strange place. Between 1927 and 1941, the Danish-born sculptor Gutzon Borglum carved the heads of four US presidents into the granite in the Black Hills of South Dakota, which are considered “sacred” by the Lakota Sioux: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln.
At the time, they were considered perhaps the most important presidents in US history. Despite being quite remote, Mount Rushmore attracts numerous tourists. Donald Trump is also a fan. He is said to have told his recently fired Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem that it was his “dream” to be immortalized there.
Despite being quite remote, Mount Rushmore attracts numerous tourists.Image: AP/AP
A Republican representative from Florida submitted a proposal to Congress. There would probably even be room for it. Donald Trump’s dream is not just an expression of his narcissism. Since his re-election victory in 2024, he has been obsessed with the belief that God destined him to become the greatest US president in history.
Fight a big war
But what defines presidential greatness? It is hardly enough to have created the “best economy of all time,” as he did in his State of the Union address claimed (many Americans see it differently given their declining purchasing power). Or closing the border and deporting migrants to the detriment of this economy.
Apparently Trump has come to the conclusion that as a great president you have to fight a big war and win. His tone was completely different at his second swearing-in on January 20, 2025. Its success will be measured by the wars “that we end – and perhaps more importantly, by the wars that we avoid getting into.”
Ending and starting wars
Trump claimed that he had settled eight wars in his first year and claimed the Nobel Peace Prize. This “balance sheet” is controversialbut at least the ceasefire in the Gaza war can be considered a success, even if there has been little progress on the peace plan since then and the ceasefire is frequently broken.
War President I: George Washington (r.) accepts the surrender of the British after the victory in the Battle of Yorktown in 1781.Image: imago stock&people
During the same period, however, the President ordered military interventions several times, and since the beginning of the year we have seen a “new” Trump. First he had the Venezuelan ruler Nicolas Maduro kidnapped to the USA. The total break came on February 28th with the attacks on Iran by the USA and Israel, which violated international law.
The three greatest presidents
The founding the so-called “Peace Council” also seems like an alibi exercise. But how did the supposed peace president Trump unleash a war in which… no clear goal can be identified (is it about regime change or the atomic bomb?) and which has spread to the entire region through Iranian counterattacks?
The answer can be found at Mount Rushmore and beyond. It’s about the three US presidents who are by far at the top of historians’ rankings: George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, or FDR for short. The practicing egomaniac Trump not only wants to catch up with them, he wants to surpass them.
Formative wars
In addition to an outstanding personality, there is one thing in common in this “holy trinity” of the US presidency: The Big 3 fought wars that shaped the history of the country: George Washington, as commander in chief of the Continental Army, defeated the British colonial power in the Revolutionary War from 1776 to 1781.
Wartime President II: One of the last photos before his assassination in 1865 shows Abraham Lincoln, marked by the burden of the Civil War.Image: AP Library of Congress
Abraham Lincoln led the country through its darkest era of the civil war between northern and southern states from 1861 to 1865. And for FDR, the Second World War was formative, which was also a fight between democratic states and fascist-militarist systems. Donald Trump cannot keep up with this “performance record”.
Not a convincing strategy
So he needed a “real” war. Venezuela was too small a fish. Iran, on the other hand, is a much bigger caliber, and that’s where the problem begins. A decisive victory requires a sophisticated strategy and, in addition to air strikes, also ground troops. And that is a huge challenge in this huge country.
Washington, Lincoln and Roosevelt accepted the enormous losses this entailed. Donald Trump is unlikely to have much desire for this. In any case, there is no sign of a convincing strategy, even if his “secretary of war” Pete Hegseth (renamed According to the New York Times, this is no coincidence) spits big sounds.
Confused messages
Donald Trump himself mediated confusing and contradictory messages. At one point he calls for Tehran’s “unconditional surrender” (the Big 3 wars ended this way), then he speaks of the end being near. He described the rising oil and gasoline prices as a necessary sacrifice, but now he is trying to keep the Strait of Hormuz open.
War President III: Franklin D. Roosevelt had to deal with the Great Depression and World War II.Image: keystone
In addition, the mullahs’ regime has not only proven itself to be resilient. Even US government representatives attested to him in the “New York Times” tactical skillnot least in attacks on “vulnerable” US facilities in the region. However, if the regime remains in power, one may ask what the war was about.
It wasn’t just wars
Donald Trump can still shift responsibility for failure onto the Israelis. The suspicion is anyway that Benjamin Netanyahu led him into this war and that he got involved in it out of his narcissism. Something like this would never have happened to the three great presidents, even if they were by no means flawless.
In any case, they did not only gain their outstanding position through wars. Washington was the first president to hold together the 13 founding states, which were divided on some issues – especially slavery. Lincoln ended slavery, and Roosevelt had to deal with a second epochal crisis with the New Deal, the Great Depression.
His head would probably also be found on Mount Rushmore (perhaps in place of his distant relative “Teddy” Roosevelt) if the work had not been completed in 1941 during his administration, a few weeks before the US entered World War II. Donald Trump, on the other hand, can give up his “dream”.
He is in a historian ranking from 2024 at the very end, by far. And today the verdict would be even more devastating given its corruption, abuse of power and its subversion of democracy. As a war president, he is more likely to be compared to George W. Bush, who was responsible for the disasters in Afghanistan and Iraq.