Did Trump Notice Where His Presidential Library Will Be Built?

Presidential libraries often attempt to elevate accomplishments and whitewash failures. Donald Trump and his family think that Florida officials have given them a prime location to do just that with his library.

But by choosing this setting, they have instead found the perfect way to create a permanent reminder of how Trump’s presidency tested and upended every foundational value of freedom and democracy in America.

With zero discussion and no public comment, Governor Ron DeSantis and the three other Republican members of the Florida Cabinet voted unanimously on Tuesday to donate 2.63 acres of land owned by Miami-Dade College to the Donald J. Trump Presidential Library Foundation.

In addition to the fact that the library would be in Miami-Dade County and not near Trump’s adopted home of Palm Beach, the location is adjacent to Miami’s iconic Freedom Tower, a symbol of liberty and democracy in a city powered by Latin American immigrants. Every visitor to either the Freedom Tower or the Trump library is going to notice that the two buildings stand for a competing set of values.

Both DeSantis and Attorney General James Uthmeier, who are taking credit for arranging the secretive deal, should’ve spotted the irony here. For Miami, a city of immigrants, the juxtaposition is jarring.

The National Historic Landmark was called the “Freedom Tower” because it was home to the Cuban Refugee Center, where hundreds of thousands of Cubans sought refuge from communism and political persecution during the Cold War. But Trump’s presidency has been marked by the illegal detention of US citizens , the deportation of legal immigrants with court-protected orders —including Miami’s Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans — and the widespread harassment of people simply because of their ethnic background.

Florida Republican officials have endorsed these policies, and now the land that they’ve donated to Trump will serve as their memorial to being on the wrong side of history.

Visitors may also notice another irony. The tower was built in 1925 to house the headquarters of the Miami Daily News, the flagship of the Cox media chain. For a quarter century, it stood as a monument to independent journalism in the growing city. The newspaper moved in 1957, and five years later the 11-story pink tower became “El Refugio’’ — the name many Cubans gave the center that provided them with financial aid, food, medical care and crucial help in establishing a new life under the federal Cuban Assistance Program.

Now, Trump, who has labeled journalism “fake news” and called reporters “the enemy of the people,” will finance his library using settlement money he received from lawsuits against media chains. ABC and Paramount Global chose to settle with him rather than risk their business transactions. The former Daily News headquarters, which had stood as a testament to freedom of speech, will now be next to Trump’s monument to a presidency that weaponized government to attack speech it didn’t like and punish dissent.

But these conflicts are a problem for a presidential legacy only if you care about historical facts and constitutional rights — things Trump routinely disregards.What the president does pay attention to is profit. So it’s unsurprising that his presidential library search team, led by his son Eric Trump, is reportedly interested in attaching a hotel to the library site. This fits with what we know about the president, who has used his position to enrich himself and his family. It is only natural that his presidential library will be the first in history to feature a hospitality business. One can only imagine what his library’s commercial enterprise might include. A retail space on the one floor that features MAGA swag? A casino on another floor that accepts crypto currency? Perhaps a steakhouse on the ground level — where only well-done steaks will be served?There has already been speculation about what Trump will include in the “library” portion of the complex. He has said he wants it to house asection of the wall on the US-Mexico border, the $400 million luxury airliner the White House received from Qatar and a replica of his gold-plated Oval Office. But that’s only part of his story and any omission of his reckless and inhumane treatment of others will only reinforce his legacy of misinformation.The business possibilities certainly influenced his team’s decision, because while the Trump library may be a nightmare for historians, the location is a developer’s dream.

Adjacent to Miami’s city center on the edge of Biscayne Bay, the land is valued by the county property appraiser at about $67 million, but a local real estate developer told the Miami Herald it is worth between $200 million and $300 million on the open market.The Trumps reportedly toured other South Florida locations, including universities in Miami and Boca Raton, and they surprised many when they quietly settled on the Miami-Dade College site. The decision appears to have been driven by Eric and Steve Wickoff, Trump’s Middle East envoy and a developer who has a stake in a project in downtown Miami.

After the Cabinet vote, Eric announced that the building “will be visible for miles into the Atlantic, a bold landmark on Miami’s skyline.” But in the end, the choice was at best a miscalculation, at worst an insult to Miami’s cherished American history. Trump’s library may be “visible for miles,” but he and his family don’t seem to care about the hypocrisy right before their eyes.