Will There Be a Trump Presidential Library? Don’t Count On It – By Anthony Clark (Politico) / January 22 2021
If you understand how presidential libraries are created, it’s hard to see how Trump ever gets it done.
For months, as the end of Donald Trump’s term approached, historians and journalists have been playing a speculation game: What will Donald Trump’s presidential library be like?
“A shrine to his ego,” predicted a historian in the Washington Post. Others imagine a theme park, or a “full MAGA” exercise in rebranding his presidency. One report said he’s trying to raise an astonishing $2 billion to build it.
Here’s another, more likely possibility: There won’t be one.
It’s not because he doesn’t read books (presidential libraries aren’t that kind of library), and not because his presidency ended in a shocking insurrection at the U.S. Capitol fanned by Trump himself, resulting in a second impeachment. Other presidents have stepped down in borderline disgrace—Richard Nixon resigned; Herbert Hoover lost in a landslide, blamed for the Great Depression—and still got their libraries.
President Donald Trump in the Diplomatic Reception Room of the White House in Sept. 2020. | Doug Mills-Pool/Getty Images
Trump likely won’t even manage to build a private library, such as the one Nixon finally created for himself. Or the “center” for which Barack Obama has had great difficulty even breaking ground, which will lack a government presence, a research facility, or archives.
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