# Greatest living American elimination game (setup thread)

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/greatest-living-american-elimination-game-setup-thread/1019408>\
**Category:** Thread Games\
**Created:** [June 10, 2025, 2:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/greatest-living-american-elimination-game-setup-thread/1019408 "2025-06-10T02:55:07Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 27

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\
**Post date:** [June 13, 2025, 2:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/greatest-living-american-elimination-game-setup-thread/1019408/27 "2025-06-13T02:09:48Z")

</div>

In my ‘most influential people ever’ game from 2010, I used the following as my criteria:

> [@The 100 Most Influential People - Try the Third](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-100-most-influential-people-try-the-third/536080/704):
>
> … When I went through the rounds, I had three different criteria I used to make my selections:
> 
> 1. Originality of idea
> 2. Number of people affected
> 3. Turning points

I don’t see any reason to differentiate between ‘great’ and ‘influential’, tbh. I also do not ascribe any moral value to the word ‘great’, not in this context anyway.

Bill Gates has already been nominated, so… using the criteria above… I’ll nominate:

Donald Trump.  
[Jennifer Doudna](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jennifer_Doudna).  
[Robert Langer](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_S._Langer).  
[Drew Weissman](https://www.niaid.nih.gov/news-events/nobel-prize-awarded-research-leading-mrna-covid-19-vaccines).

---

_[View the full topic](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/greatest-living-american-elimination-game-setup-thread/1019408)._