There was a time when presidents wanted to surround themselves with people who were as smart as or smarter than they were, including iconic leaders such as George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan. They thought it was best for the country to recruit the best and the brightest, and they had the humility to acknowledge that they didn't have all the answers.

No more. President Donald Trump has made clear that he believes – and wants everyone else to accept – that he is always the smartest person in the room. This Trumpian hubris became evident, once again, at his Rose Garden news conference this week. It was, as usual, all about him as he trumpeted how well he is doing as president, how brilliantly he gets along with fellow Republicans in Congress, how his programs for tax reform and health care overhaul are masterstrokes. The problem was that his hyperbole sometimes went over the line into distortion and outright falsehood.

He actually has gotten along poorly with GOP leaders in Congress and has been attacking several of them, including Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. His tax-cut plans are being picked apart for being too generous to the rich and adding massively to the deficit. His health care ideas are being derided as unfair to the poor and the working class, and none of the Trump-backed bills overhauling the health care system has passed Congress. Trump won't take responsibility and blames the legislators. "I'm not going to blame myself, I'll be honest," he told reporters. "They are not getting the job done."

Leon Panetta, former White House chief of staff and defense secretary under Democratic presidents, told CNN, "He is never responsible for anything that goes wrong" and is always looking for "scapegoats."

Trump can't resist portraying himself as the best of presidents and finding fault in his predecessors. Asked by reporters this week why he hadn't talked about the four U.S. soldiers killed in an ambush in Niger recently, Trump said he had written the families personal letters and would at "some point" call them. But he didn't stop there. He went on to deride his predecessors. "The traditional way, if you look at President Obama and other presidents, most of them didn't make calls, a lot of them didn't make calls," he claimed. "I like to call when it's appropriate, when I think I'm able to do it." Asked to elaborate about Obama, Trump said, "I was told that he didn't often, and a lot of presidents don't. They write letters."

"That's a f---ing lie," wrote former Obama aide Alyssa Mastromonaco on Twitter. "To say President Obama (or past presidents) didn't call the family members of soldiers KIA – he's a deranged animal."

Obama frequently phoned, wrote and met with such families, but mostly he didn't allow media coverage. Yet the fact that this outreach occurred has been well documented.

Trump made matters worse for himself when he came across as cavalier and offended Myeshia Johnson, the widow of one of the four slain servicemen, and her family in a phone call that was supposed to console them.

The prominence of Trump's ego was again on display in his reaction to a recent news report that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson had called Trump a "moron" during a private meeting. Trump quipped that, if Tillerson said such a thing, the president could put him in his place by demonstrating a higher IQ. Trump aides say he was trying to make a joke, but his point was clear: He doesn't like it one bit when someone else claims to be better in some way than he is.

It was another example of how Trump defines his presidency as an exercise in self promotion, a reality show in which he tries to show that he is better in every way – smarter, better looking, more successful, more of a deal maker – than his opponents, his allies, his staff, his advisers, other world leaders and his predecessors in the Oval Office.

He has a habit of belittling people. In the 2016 campaign, he mocked "little" Marco Rubio, a Florida senator who was one of his primary opponents. He accused former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, another GOP opponent, of being "low energy" and lacking in vigor. He said Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton was too fragile to be commander in chief and was corrupt. Upon taking office, Trump said he drew the largest audience ever to witness an inauguration, which photos debunked when it became clear that Barack Obama's crowd was larger. He makes fun of Sen. Corker, with whom he has tangled, as "liddle" Bob. He calls North Korea leader Kim Jong Un as "Rocket Man." He has referred to "little" George Stephanopoulos of ABC, called MSNBC's Joe Scarborough "Psycho Joe," and dubbed MSNBC co-host Mika Brzezinski "Crazy Mika." Trump claimed that, at a meeting with him prior to his inauguration, Brzezinski "was bleeding badly from a face-lift."

In recent weeks, he has piled up even more dubious or erroneous claims, such as arguing that he has gotten more done than virtually any of his predecessors during their first months in office, and that he is fully responsible for the upswing in the stock market and a decline in the federal deficit.