Donald Trump went on a wild rant about the Obama Presidential Center during his sit down with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney.
His lengthy ramble started while the pair were taking questions from reporters in the Oval Office as part of their high-stakes meeting on Tuesday.
Trump was blasting bipartisan legislation passed under President Joe Biden and complaining about DEI requirements and companies having to go “woke” when he launched into the diatribe about his Democratic predecessor.
“He’s building his library in Chicago. It’s a disaster,” Trump said.
“He said something to the effect ‘I only want DEI. I only want woke,’” the president claimed of Obama. “He wants woke people to build it. Well, he got woke.”
Trump declared that the project is over budget, and the job has “stopped.”
“It’s a disaster, and I don’t like that happening,” the president went on.
“I don’t like that happening, because it’s – I think – it’s bad for the presidency that a thing like that should happen. He’s got a library that’s a disaster, and he wants to be very politically correct and he didn’t use good, hard, tough, mean construction workers that I love love, Marco,” Trump said, directing the last part of the rant toward Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who was sitting nearby.
“I love construction workers, but he didn’t want construction workers. He wanted people that, like, never did it before, and he got a disaster on his hands, like millions of dollars, many, many, I mean really, many millions of dollars over budget,’ he kept going.
The president said he would “love” to help him with it and recommend professionals, but the Obama Foundation has pushed back.
“Everyone who sees the Obama Presidential Center is blown away by its beauty, scale and the way it will be an economic engine for Chicago and a beacon of hope for the world,” the Obama Foundation’s Emily Bittner pushed back in a statement.
“We look forward to welcoming all visitors to the 19.3-acre campus next spring, to experience a presidential center that not only honors the Obamas’ legacy but also lifts up the next generation of leaders,” she continued.
In September 2018, the Obama Foundation estimated it would cost $350 million, but the price tag to build and operate the center has since ballooned to more than $800 million, relying on private funding.
The center includes not just a library but also a museum, auditorium and other components. The main building will not open to the public until spring 2026 at the earliest after the project broke ground in Chicago back in September 2021.
Construction on the center faced multiple delays due to multiple legal battles including over its location in Jackson Park.
More recently in January, a subcontractor working on the project, II in One, accused one of the project’s engineering firms, Thornton Tomasetti, of racial discrimination in a lawsuit.
The Obama Foundation is not a party to that dispute and it is is not expected to impact the timeline for the center opening.
The center was once scheduled for a 2021 opening, but the project will set the modern record for the time between a presidency and the completion of a presidential center, according to the Wall Street Journal.
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