U.S. President Donald Trump is pushing to build a "Trump Presidential Library" in downtown Miami, fueling controversy over the site selection process, funding methods, and potential conflicts of interest.
According to the Washington Post (WP) on the 14th, Trump's second son, Eric Trump, has been rolling out detailed plans for the presidential library in recent days. He appeared on conservative commentator Glenn Beck's podcast and said he had "secured the finest site in Florida," and later, in another interview, agreed in effect with a suggestion to "use settlement money from lawsuits against media outlets to build a fake news wing."
WP noted that the Trump Presidential Library could become a memorial of a very different character from existing presidential libraries. Previously, political outlet Politico reported that the library is slated for Miami and is being pushed as a 47-story building with a hotel, rooftop restaurant, and observation deck, a commercially oriented concept far removed from a typical presidential memorial.
Establishing presidential libraries has long been a tradition in the United States. Starting with the Roosevelt Presidential Library in 1940, 13 presidential memorial libraries have been built, and a memorial library for former President Barack Obama, who left office in 2017, is also under construction on the South Side of Chicago. Once completed, the libraries are managed under the Presidential Libraries division of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), in accordance with relevant law.
But the Trump library has already stirred controversy over the site selection. According to Politico, the Miami site for the library is near the National Basketball Association (NBA) home arena, where zoning is less restrictive and prices have run five times higher than the assessed value. The land originally belonged to Miami Dade College, but the college's trustees voted in September to transfer it free of charge to the state government, leading to its final selection as the library site.
Questions have also been raised about the funding sources. Under the Presidential Libraries Act, if a presidential library exceeds a certain size, 20% of the total construction expense must come from donations, but the foundation is not disclosing its donor list. According to tax filings recently submitted by the Donald J. Trump Library Foundation, which is overseeing the project, the foundation raised a total of $50 million this year but did not disclose its donors, and although it recorded $6 million in expenditure under "program services," it did not specify how the money was used.
Questions are also mounting over how the library would be operated. Presidential libraries function as research and exhibition facilities for presidential records under NARA oversight, but if Trump's side opts for a private foundation model, exhibits would not have to undergo government review. In that case, even if Trump's side were to display slanted materials on contentious issues such as his refusal to accept the 2020 election results, the government would have little recourse.
Conflict-of-interest concerns are also growing. Trump said he plans to accept a Boeing 747-8 aircraft worth $400 million as a gift from the Qatari royal family and transfer it to the library, and he has hinted that settlement money from lawsuits with media and platform corporations — ▲Meta ($22 million) ▲CBS ($16 million) ▲ABC ($15 million) ▲X (formerly Twitter) — would be used for the library fund.
In response, Democrats have introduced the Presidential Library Anti-Corruption Act, which would limit fundraising for libraries during a presidency and ban donations from foreign governments, lobbyists, and federal contractors for a set period.
Experts worry the Trump Presidential Library could undermine the purpose of a presidential memorial. Tim Naftali, a senior research scholar at the Columbia School of International and Public Affairs, said, "A museum without oversight risks portraying a presidency in a distorted way," adding, "In particular, concepts like a 'fake news wing' would be difficult for nonpartisan experts to accept."