President Donald Trump once purportedly balked at the idea of cementing his legacy with a library, but according to his one-time biographer, he turned around on the idea when it was suggested he could turn it into something far more garish: a theme park.
Michael Wolff is a veteran reporter and author, best known for his books detailing the turmoil behind the scenes of Trump's first term in the White House, based on access to insider sources. He also revealed recently — "reasons that will always astound me and bewilder me" — that Trump invited him to Mar-a-Lago soon after he left office the first time around, where they discussed, among other things, his post-presidency plans.
Wolff went into the details during the most recent episode of his Daily Beast podcast, "Inside Trump's Head," explaining that "one of the few questions" he was able to ask the then-former president was about his ideas for a presidential library.
“Remember, he’s out of office. He’s no longer the president. He’s in this moment of post-presidency when former presidents turn to thinking about their legacy and their library,” Wolff said. “So I brought this up, and he looked at me with horror.”
Wolff made two conclusions based on that reaction. One, that Trump "was not at all finished with being president," and two, that he "might be taken aback" by the idea of cementing his presidential legacy with a library, given his notorious and well-documented disdain for reading. In response, Wolff made a suggestion that led him to later suspect that he might have played a part in inspiring Trump's recently unveiled plans for his "library" in Miami.
“I rushed in to kind of apologize or to cover my faux pas about the library and saying, ‘You know, a presidential library doesn’t have to be a library,'" Wolff explained. “I said, ‘A presidential library, it can be more like’ — and then out of nowhere it came to me, I said — ‘a theme park. It could be the Trump theme park.’”
To that suggestion, Trump's look of revulsion turned to "something close to wonder."
“And then we had certainly a five- or six-minute conversation about what a Trump theme park might be like — restaurants, hotels — it was a vision," Wolff added.
Trump this week unveiled the first concept images for his presidential library, which appears much less like a traditional library and more like the decadent skyscrapers that defined his career as a real estate developer. If completed as proposed, the building — naturally featuring the name "Trump" emblazoned on its facade — would be the tallest building in the Miami skyline. Trump told the press on Tuesday that the structure is "most likely going to be a hotel." Wolff suggested that any other "legacy" aspects of the library will be "attentive to the Trump family money-making opportunities."
