The Obama Presidential Center opens on Juneteenth, five days after Trump turns 80. George W. Bush will attend the dedication ceremony, while Trump will not.
Even so, Trump was still given an opportunity to see the project for himself. Through the press, the Obama Foundation publicly offered him a chance to visit the same campus he has spent months attacking and turning into AI-generated trash can posts. So far, there has been no response.
Obama Foundation CEO Valerie Jarrett extended the offer during a June 3 preview of the completed campus.
“Judge for yourself,” she said. “When our visitors come, they will see a spectacular campus. If he would like to come and visit it himself, we would welcome him and give him a tour.”
The invitation arrived while Trump was still taking shots at the project. Around the same period, he posted an AI image showing the center as an abandoned wasteland, called it a product of “woke people” in the Oval Office and wrote on Truth Social that the neighborhood was “ANGRY AS HELL.”
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The building itself tells a different story.
The 19.3-acre campus in Jackson Park includes a 225-foot museum tower featuring a phrase from Obama’s 2015 Selma speech carved into the exterior façade, designed so that light passes through the lettering into interior spaces. The campus also includes a Chicago Public Library branch, a basketball court, a playground, a sledding hill, an auditorium, a restaurant and a cafe.
Obama announced the opening in a video message recorded on the anniversary of the Selma to Montgomery marches. “This is not a monument to the past,” he said. “It is a living destination for people who refuse to accept the status quo.”
As the opening date drew closer, Trump’s attacks also became more frequent.
The AI image he shared over the weekend depicted the center as deteriorated and surrounded by trash and encampments years into the future. Earlier he had posted another image portraying the project as a garbage can. In May he described it in the Oval Office as a total disaster being built by “woke people.”
The response from the Obama Foundation has stayed fairly consistent, shifting the focus back to the building itself.
The comparison with Trump’s own planned presidential library also sits nearby throughout all of this. Released renderings include a gold escalator, gilded accents, a large gold statue of Trump with a raised fist and a replica of his White House ballroom.
Trump has said it will “most likely” be a hotel. Miami residents have filed suit to stop the project, while watchdog groups have raised ethical concerns.
The Obama Center took a decade and $850 million to reach opening day on Juneteenth. Trump’s gold escalator library, by comparison, still has no confirmed budget, no confirmed timeline and an ongoing lawsuit attached to it.
Featured image via Political Tribune Gallery
