Trump Considered Worst US President By Political Experts; Biden Ranked 14th Greatest

Donald Trump was once again named the worst president in U.S. history by historians, ranking 45th out of all the former American presidents in a new poll.

Current president and Trump's probable 2024 opponent, Joe Biden, placed 14th in the 2024 survey conducted by political scientists Justin Vaughn of the University of Houston and Brandon Rottinghaus of Coastal Carolina University.

For the poll, 154 presidential specialists who are current and recent members of the American Political Science Association were asked to grade current and former presidents on 10 characteristics, including administrative skills, moral authority and economic management.

The ranking, based on scores from 0 to 100, placed Trump at the bottom after scoring just under 11 points. He also came in last in the same survey released in 2018.

Biden's average score for the 2024 poll was 62.66, placing him two spots above Ronald Reagan.

Vaughn and Rottinghaus, who also conducted the same survey in 2015, noted in the Los Angeles Times that Biden's "most important achievements may be that he rescued the presidency from Trump, resumed a more traditional style of presidential leadership and is gearing up to keep the office out of his predecessor's hands this fall."

Abraham Lincoln, renowned for winning the Civil War and ending slavery, claimed the top spot with an average score of 95.

The top five presidents in the new survey included Franklin D. Roosevelt, George Washington, Teddy Roosevelt and Thomas Jefferson.

Barack Obama was ranked seventh.

Rounding up the top 10 were Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, Lyndon B. Johnson and John F. Kennedy.

In the survey, Trump not only ranked below Biden but also past presidents with controversial legacies, such as Franklin Pierce, Warren Harding and William Henry Harrison, who died just 31 days after taking office.

"What these results suggest is not just an added emphasis on a president's political affiliation, but also the emergence of a president's fealty to political and institutional norms as a criterion for what makes a president 'great,'" the survey authors wrote.

This comes amid Trump's ongoing legal woes, including a recent order to pay nearly $355 million in a civil fraud trial in New York for fraudulently inflating the values of his properties.

The current GOP frontrunner has also been barred from serving as an officer or director of a New York corporation for three years.

Trump said he plans to appeal the decision.

Last month, Trump was also ordered to pay E. Jean Carroll $83 million for defaming her in the years since she accused him of sexual assault.

CNN reported that he also faces a criminal trial in his hush-money case on March 25, while his federal trial in Washington, D.C., on election subversion charges is currently on hold.