Since his ignominious defeat in the 2020 election, up through and including the violent insurrection he incited on Jan. 6, Donald Trump has continued to be the subject of much political commentary, most of it negative. One of the subjects receiving scant attention is whether the twice-impeached occupant of the Oval Office from Jan. 2017 through Jan. 2021 would create a presidential library.
Trump’s disgraceful exit from the office alone does not present an impediment to this. As noted by Anthony Clark, writing for POLITICO, other comparably bad 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.”
Still, a closer analysis of this issue suggests that there will never be such a library for Trump. As Clark’s article notes, contrary to popular perception, such libraries are not funded by the American taxpayer. A former president must affirmatively create a non-profit corporation to raise what can amount to “hundreds of millions of dollars,” and if the library is to become federal property, he/she must also provide a hefty endowment to the National Archives for maintenance. Such libraries typically require months of advance planning, and generally demand a level of competence and interest that Trump has never displayed.
But if there were ever to be a Trump presidential library, it is perhaps more telling and instructive to list what it would not contain, as opposed to what it would. In what is only the most recent addition to that list, the Trump library would almost certainly not include a book by Edward-Isaac Dovere, staff writer for The Atlantic, whose latest work, Battle for the Soul: Inside the Democrats’ Campaigns to Defeat Trump, will be released next week. That book contains, among many other choice tidbits, the (allegedly) unfiltered thoughts of President Barack Obama towards his successor.
Up until 2020, former President Obama had followed the time-tested rule for all former presidents up to that time: Namely, to refrain if at all possible from directly criticizing the subsequent occupant of the Oval Office. After meeting with Trump shortly after the 2016 election, but before Trump’s inauguration, President Obama gamely declared to the country that “I think we’re going to be OK.” Whether he actually believed that or not will always be a matter of speculation, but according to Dovere’s book, reviewed by Martin Pengelly for The Guardian, it was not long before “reality swiftly set in.”
According to Pengelly, the book reveals that Obama’s first real impressions of Trump’s true nature were delivered in the context of being pressed on the issue by potential donors to his foundation. At that time, according to Dovere, he referred to Trump as a “madman.” His language soon became more acerbic as Trump’s antics worsened over time.
“More often: ‘I didn’t think it would be this bad.’ Sometimes: ‘I didn’t think we’d have a racist, sexist pig.’ Depending on the outrage of the day … a passing ‘that fucking lunatic’ with a shake of his head.”
To understand these remarks in context, it’s important to remember that as president, Obama was not particularly known for hyperbole. Although his private thoughts about his political opponents doubtlessly deviated from his seemingly unflappable public persona, it seems clear from Dovere’s book that Trump’s behavior shocked Obama.
Obama’s strongest remark, Dovere reports, was prompted by reports that Trump was speaking to foreign leaders – including Vladimir Putin, amid the investigation of Russian election interference and links between Trump and Moscow – without any aides on the call.
“‘That corrupt motherfucker,’ he remarked.”
Assuming Dovere’s sources are correct (and there is no reason to suspect otherwise), we can expect that Republicans will find various ways to express their shock and dismay at President Obama’s characterization of the man who now effectively controls the Republican Party.
But what they won’t be able to do is refute these statements. In fact, it appears that President Obama could have been even more pointed in his assessments. He could have noted, among other things, that Trump was a committed fraudster, a con man, a serial sexual assaulter and an accused rapist. Or an abusive, sociopathic liar. Or a seditious, un-American traitor. Or … well, you get the idea.
So, it’s all but certain Dovere’s book wouldn’t find its way into the Trump presidential library any faster than Michael Cohen’s memoir would, or any of the cascade of tell-all books by people formerly in Trump’s orbit—each simply confirm President Obama’s views on Trump’s character, or lack thereof.
But, as explained in Clark’s POLITICO article described above, that issue is really moot. Trump will never have a presidential library in any real sense of the word. It’s far more likely that he’ll create a cheap, gaudy shrine to himself as a way of continuing to grift his credulous followers the same way he has through his entire life.
As Clark describes it:
(I)n theory, use the same toolkit for a monument to himself, licensing the Donald Trump name to a for-profit enterprise—maybe a casino, or a golf course, or a ticketed museum with an attached hotel—to operate as a tourist attraction for the MAGAs and the (morbidly) curious.
Given the challenges of the other models, that would likely be the only way he could come close to having the kind of Trumpian shrine most observers have predicted. He could even brand it a “library,” to avoid falling out of the club of former presidents—but that wouldn’t make it one.
Ultimately, the Trump “library,” whatever form it takes, will be more than just a sad testament to his four years of abominable incompetence. It will also serve as a constant reminder to most Americans that everything President Obama privately said about him was spot-on.