Philip Kennicott, The Washington Post; The Trump presidential library would be a giant tower of grift
"But the unknown funding and revenue questions raised by this structure are deeply serious. By the time of the Obama administration, about 95 percent of the presidential records were digital, meaning they didn’t require huge amounts of storage space. So, what will fill those 50 floors of space?
Will they be monetized, as apartments or offices? And if so, who will profit from them?
Despite numerous efforts by Congress to establish ethics guidelines and bring transparency to the fundraising for presidential centers, these institutions are still allowed to seek unlimited private donations without disclosing their donors.
Will the Trump library be some kind of hybrid nonprofit foundation, built with gifts solicited from private donors including, perhaps, foreign governments — yet also a for-profit real estate development that enriches Trump personally?
The great modernist architect Le Corbusier once said that a house is a machine for living. Libraries and museums might be thought of as machines for learning. The Trump presidential center appears intended to be a machine for emoluments, with one of the biggest emoluments in the history of America sitting in a giant hall at its base."
