Trump releases his vision of a skyscraper presidential library complete with gold escalator and no books in sight
President Donald Trump on Monday unveiled plans for his proposed presidential library in Miami, sharing a video showing a towering waterfront skyscraper that closely resembles existing commercial Trump real estate projects.
“Over the past six months, I have poured my heart and soul into this project with my incredible team at [The Trump Organization],” the president’s son Eric Trump wrote on X. “This landmark on the water in Miami, Florida will stand as a lasting testament to an amazing man, an amazing developer, and the greatest President our Nation has ever known.”
The plans, credited to Florida-based firm Bermello Ajamil & Partners, show a sleek skyscraper with a red, white and blue spire and the word “Trump,” in large illuminated letters.
The library plans, reminiscent of New York’s One World Trade Center, also appear to feature a display of the presidential 747 jet gifted to Trump by Qatar, as well as references to key moments in the president’s rise to power.
These touches include a gold escalator like the one in Trump Tower in New York City where the Republican announced his 2016 presidential campaign, and a gold statue of the president raising his arm, in what appears to model the president’s defiant pose after surviving a 2024 assassination attempt.
The plans also appear to include replicas of the Oval Office and the president’s not-yet-built White House ballroom project.
Critics mocked the design for not appearing to feature any books, while adopting grandiose gold statues akin to those in authoritarian regimes.
“The gold statue in Trump’s new library (of himself) looks awfully familiar to a few others from around the world,” California Governor Gavin Newsom wrote on X, sharing examples of such statues in China and North Korea.
The Independent has contacted the president’s library foundation and Bermello Ajamil for comment.
The library, set to be located downtown next to Miami historic Freedom Tower, may reportedly climb as high as 47 stories, to mark President Trump’s election as the 47th president.
Congressional Democrats are probing how the library project is being funded, after media companies that settled lawsuits with Trump around the time of the 2024 election transferred at least $63 million into a library-related fund that dissolved last year.
“Now it is unclear where this money has gone, exacerbating concerns about corruption that were apparent at the time of the settlement,” the lawmakers wrote in a letter to companies that settled with Trump, including ABC, Meta, Paramount and X.
Presidential library nonprofits do not have to disclose their donors.
Trump shared the video of his library project the same day the state of Florida renamed Palm Beach International Airport after the Republican, the latest in a string of efforts to add Trump’s name to institutions including the Kennedy Center and the U.S. Institute of Peace.
