President Donald Trump isn’t a fan of former president Barack Obama’s presidential library.
Asked by a reporter during a Tuesday press conference about the Obama Presidential Center, Trump said, “He needs help. It’s not too pretty. It’s closed, it’s stopped, they ran out of money, he’s building a library-slash-museum and they’re stuck.”
The Obama Presidential Center is currently being built on 19 acres in Chicago’s Jackson Park, and will consist of a museum, a branch of the Chicago Public Library, an auditorium, an athletic facility and a fruit and vegetable garden.
“He wanted only women and DEI to build it, that’s what they got. I built a great building in Chicago, we got it built very quickly, very well, we used the construction workers of Chicago and they’re great workers,” Trump said, referencing the Trump International Hotel and Tower built in 2009.
“I suggest that he get them involved, but they’re hundreds of millions of dollars over budget and I think it’s stopped,” he rambled in response.
“I’ve been reading these terrible stories, but that’s the way our country was run under President Obama, too,” Trump added. The Daily Beast has contacted the White House for comment.
Former President Barack Obama posted a video to social media over the weekend showing the center’s construction, which, contrary to Trump’s claims, is currently underway, having broken ground in August 2021.
When the Obama Presidential Center opens next year, it will be a hub for change — a place for people from all over the world to come together, get inspired, and take what they learn back to their own communities. https://t.co/gW6UCYBCAJ pic.twitter.com/U92thHbAUL
— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) October 18, 2025
The Obamas hope to finish construction on the center by spring 2026. While the center is privately funded, costs are now more than double the initial $300 million estimate floated in 2018, and by its completion, is projected to have cost some $850 million to build.
Meanwhile, Trump has been on a mission to renovate Washington D.C. in his image during his second term, a plan which has included installing a $250 million ballroom in the White House’s East Wing, paving over the Rose Garden, and announcing plans for an ‘Arc de Trump’ in the capital.
He has made similar claims about Obama’s presidential center before, telling reporters in May that the project had gone over budget and that the former president “only want[ed] DEI and woke” people to build the center.
“It’s a disaster, and I don’t like that happening,” Trump said at the time.
“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,” he continued.
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