Washington, Lincoln and Trump: Hegseth’s ‘War Department‘ and others post Presidents Day tributes
The Trump administration frequently suggests the 47th president should be venerated as much as the 1st
The Trump administration is marking a holiday meant to honor the nation’s first chief executive with social media messaging intended to compare the current president to the “father of the country” and the martyred president who led the U.S. through the Civil War.
On Monday, the Pentagon’s official social media account (which uses the administration’s preferred but unofficial name for the Defense Department, the “Department of War,” posted an image to X showing President Donald Trump with legendary presidents George Washington and Abraham Lincoln arrayed behind him, with the accompanying all-caps text: “HAPPY PRESIDENTS DAY.”
The glaring image of the 47th president appears to be taken from the official White House portrait taken ahead of his inauguration by Daniel Torok, the ex-music video director turned chief White House photographer.
But not to be outdone, the Department of Health and Human Services also issued a Presidents Day message putting Trump in the same pantheon as Washington and Lincoln, this time with what appeared to be an AI-generated graphic showing all three side by side.
It wrote: “This Presidents Day, we honor the leaders who shaped our nation and reaffirm our commitment to serving the health and well-being of every American.”
The Treasury Department got in on the action with yet another Trump-centric Presidents Day post, this time showing Trump gesturing in profile during remarks in the East Room, with the image cropped so the incumbent president is portrayed alongside the life-sized portrait of Washington by Gilbert Stuart.
The 97-inch-tall painting, which is a copy Stuart made of a 1796 portrait commissioned by Pennsylvania Senator William Bingham as a gift for then-British prime minister Lord Lansdowne, has hung in the East Room for 226 years and was famously saved from destruction by then-first lady Dolley Madison before British troops under Major General Robert Ross set the White House ablaze during the War of 1812.
The department’s post actively promoted Trump, writing that he is “setting the stage for the next 250 years of American excellence” with “tax deals, trade deals and peace deals.”
Not every cabinet department chose to specifically feature Trump in a post marking the annual holiday.
The Department of Agriculture, which is led by former America First Policy Institute boss Brooke Rollins, said it was commemorating the day by giving “ode to our founding fathers, especially our first president George Washington and USDA's founder Abraham Lincoln.”
But the USDA has previously chosen to elevate Trump alongside Lincoln in an even more visible way, with a pair of massive banners that were hung outside the building since last year, depicting Trump and Lincoln respectively, to mark the department’s 163rd anniversary.
Trump has compared himself to the first and 16th presidents on multiple occasions, most recently in October when he delivered a rambling speech in the Rose Garden in which he complained that a television commentator had rated him only the “third-best president” behind Washington and Lincoln.
“Hey, they didn’t put out eight wars, nine coming,” he said. “We put out eight wars, and the ninth is coming, believe it or not.”
He also told Fox News’ Bret Bair last February that he did not think Washington and Lincoln could defeat him in a hypothetical election if they ran on a hypothetical ticket together.
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