President of the United States The President of the United States of America was the political leader of that North America n nation , elected — according to American Peri Brown — by ordinary citizens once every four years . ( AUDIO : " The Eye of the Scorpion " ) The president ' s traditional residence was the White House in Washington , DC . Arguably the most famous room in the White House was the Oval Office , the president ' s symbolic seat of power . By at least 1969 , the president was regarded as one of the most powerful people on Earth . ( TV : " Day of the Moon " ) Indeed , it was plausible to infer the long - lasting impact of the office from the fact that the White House was the official residence from the President of Earth from the 26th century ( AUDIO : " Scorpius " ) until at least 4041 , ( COMIC : " Return of the Klytode " ) long after the United States had become part of a world government . In 2011 , Dr Samantha Madigan told Clyde Langer that the famous Native American curse , the Curse of Tippecanoe , was supposedly placed on the US Presidents . ( TV : " The Curse of Clyde Langer " ) List of presidents . Several American presidents were known to the Doctor and his friends . However , information on most of these figures — even basic details such as their terms of office — was sketchy , as direct contact with American presidents was unusual . Because of the paucity of data , it was possible to list the presidents accurately only in simple alphabetic order . Timing . The Doctor had " some " rough idea as to the dates certain presidents served . He could place Abraham Lincoln in the early - to - mid 1860s , as the Fifth Doctor prevented his assassination just days before he was shot by John Wilkes Booth in 1865 . He likely would have been able to place James Buchanan as Lincoln ' s predecessor , since Buchanan was widely seen as a contrast to Lincoln , and was a topic of conversation for people whom the Fifth Doctor knew . ( PROSE : " Blood and Hope " ) The Sixth Doctor had detailed historical knowledge of that assassination when he and Evelyn Smythe travelled to Washington DC just before Lincoln lost his life . ( AUDIO : " Assassin in the Limelight " ) Similarly , the Ninth Doctor was in Dallas when Kennedy was killed ; clearly he knew the time of the Kennedy assassination . ( TV : " Rose " ) The Eighth Doctor once gave a time - ordered list of presidents , saying that if one started in the 1970s with Jimmy Carter , the list would continue : Ronald Reagan , George H . W . Bush , Bill Clinton , Tom Dering , Bruce Springsteen and Norris . ( PROSE : " Interference " ) Certainly , the Eighth Doctor would ' ve been able to place Tom Dering at the end of the 1990s , since he and Samantha Jones spent a lot of time with that president investigating the Station Nine incident and other related events . ( PROSE : " Option Lock " ) The Tenth Doctor spouted textbook knowledge of Herbert Hoover , accurately giving Hoover ' s number in the order of presidents , as well as his inaugural year . ( TV : " Daleks in Manhattan " ) In 1958 , he referenced Eisenhower ' s name when asking if Colonel Stark knew about the Dreamland base , also known as Area 51 , showing the Doctor knew he was President at that time . ( TV : " Dreamland " ) By contrast , the Eleventh Doctor seemed fuzzier than River Song on who had been president in 1969 . ( TV : " The Impossible Astronaut " / " Day of the Moon " ) The Tenth Doctor also witnessed Arthur Coleman Winters ' death on board the " Valiant " , ( TV : " The Sound of Drums " ) as well as Barack Obama ' s transformation into the Master . ( TV : " The End of Time " ) Following the successful deterrence of a Quark invasion , the Second Doctor was advanced as a possible candidate for president , in what would have been the 1972 elections . ( COMIC : " Martha the Mechanical Housemaid " ) Captain Lundvik stated that a woman was President in 2049 . The Twelfth Doctor later said Courtney Woods would be President sometime in her future . ( TV : " Kill the Moon " ) After discovering that fragmentary historical records available in the year 4000 erroneously stated that the television presenter Bruce Forsyth was the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom in 1977 , Charlotte Willis jokingly asked the Fourth Doctor if they thought that Gene Kelly was the U . S . President . ( AUDIO : " The Foe from the Future " ) Alternate histories . There were a few people who were presidents in alternate timeline s , such as Benjamin Franklin . ( AUDIO : " Seasons of Fear " , " Neverland " ) On a Shadow Earth in 2017 , created by the Monks , the American president was sent a translation of the Veritas document . Upon reading the document and learning that he was part of a fake Earth , the President committed suicide in the Oval Office . ( TV : " Extremis " ) Behind the scenes . Limiting term length . Exact term length of individual presidents is pretty fuzzy , perhaps because it is irrelevant to most narratives where presidents appear . However , Peri does nail down the " generic " term to four years when Erimem asks her how the Americans ' leaders are chosen in " The Eye of the Scorpion " . The wilderness years . One major problem area for presidential terms is in the novels which appeared during the 1990s and early 2000s . Here , a variety of not - particularly - reconcilable problems ensue . Not only did some of these " prose presidents " never serve in real life , but they do pretty massively conflict with each other . Most novels seem to agree that presidential order conforms to real history through Bill Clinton ' s first term , but thereafter , there are a variety of other people — and rather too many of them to all be serving four year terms . It is completely impossible to fit all the presidents from Clinton to Obama posited by RTD and " Wilderness Years " authors into any kind of sensible timeline . The Winters problem . One of the more famous presidential conundrums is that caused by Russell T Davies calling Arthur Coleman Winters the " President - elect " during " The Sound of Drums " . While there are many differences between the real world and the DWU , such a statement is particularly difficult to understand , just within the context of DWU narratives alone . It ' s hard to see how he could , in the spring / summer in which " Drums " appears to occur , be the President - elect , when " Day of the Moon " give a very clear indication that Richard Nixon ' s presidency began about six months prior to the Moon landing , which is positively dated to July 1969 . He also seems to have been elected after another president mentioned in " The Christmas Invasion " , but before Barack Obama , who is actually seen and heard in " The End of Time " . The timing of all this is simply impossible to figure out — not to mention the fact that Trinity Wells says in " Drums " that Winters arrived in the UK on Air Force One — which wouldn ' t be the case if he were merely the President - " Elect " . Eventually , in a commentary , Davies admitted that he had simply been wrong to call Winters the " President - elect " — which makes that an ignorable production error . Donald Trump . In the real world , Donald Trump won the 2016 presidential election , and was inaugurated in 2017 . Prior to the election , he was established as a DWU politician in the year 2016 in the novel " What She Does Next Will Astound You " . However , in the Shadow World 2017 , made by the Monks to resemble the real world almost perfectly , an unnamed president was a dark haired individual who did not have much physical resemblance to Trump . According to Moffat , " Extremis " was written before but filmed after the 2016 election . However , Trump is implied — though not explicitly stated in dialogue — to be the current sitting US President in the following episode , " The Pyramid at the End of the World " . Bill notes that the recently elected President is " orange " , and says that she wouldn ' t have voted for him . The final episode of the trilogy , " The Lie of the Land " , features an image of Trump clearly visible on one of the screens inside the room that houses their propaganda machine , but not explicitly shown as the president . Invalid sources . An unnamed President appeared in the invalid story " Death Comes to Time " , based upon then - current President .