I love a tacky theme park, so I’ll be first in line for Trump’s presidential ‘library’

Is anyone else rather looking forward to the theme park that promises to be Donald Trump’s presidential library? Ever since it was released this week, I’ve been glued to the AI video created by his architects – hand-drawn artists’ impressions are for losers, just FYI – showing off plans for a lavish building that, in tribute to its namesake, looks set to be both vastly oversized and yet also empty inside.

Trump’s megalith to his two terms in office will be a giant skyscraper in downtown Miami. Inside, visitors will be greeted by the $400m plane that Qatar promised to the US last year to use as a new Air Force One, and which Trump promised to display; get to ride on tacky gilt escalators, and get the chance to salute not one but two giant gold statues of the commander in chief.

Not even midway through his second term – and before Barack Obama’s presidential library has opened its doors in Chicago’s south side, or a suitable site in Delaware chosen for his immediate predecessor, Joe Biden – Trump is busy thinking about memorials to himself.

I do speak as a genuine theme park enthusiast. My November birthday ties in beautifully with the autumn foliage, and there’s no better way to see it than hanging upside down from a rollercoaster in Surrey. My husband and I went to Disneyland when on honeymoon, and to Disneyland Paris 10 years later, en route to the south of France.

Should Trump’s fantasy library be built, and should I ever be able to visit the country without fear that my comments about the man won’t land me in an ICE facility, I might line it up for my next big birthday.

A good theme park is as much about rebranding as it is pleasure. Rides will be reskinned depending on who’s sponsoring it, or what’s trending, as Disneyland Paris’ extremely sketchy rebrand of Space Mountain to Star Wars can attest.

Trump and his AI prompt minions have got this nailed with his presidential library, which looks to be part theme park and part “atmosphere while queuing for a vaguely space-themed ride”, although, as ever with this president, it’s not entirely clear whether he thinks he’s on the side of the Jedi or just plain old Emperor Palpatrump.

As to the absence of books or reading matter of any kind, I did briefly wonder if Donald Trump could actually read. It took him a whole two days after revealing the plans to sniffily tell reporters at the Oval Office that “I don’t believe in building libraries or museums”. If anything, I’m surprised that he’s following in the fully digital footsteps of Barack Obama, a man whom Trump so utterly despises and yet who possesses the respect that Trump can only claim to have by saying so himself, endlessly, and hoping that his press corps will repeat it.

What need have we of documents! This is a president who appears to operate entirely off vibes, who tangents like a spaniel catching scent of an old sock, and who says enough unbelievable things before breakfast that he could satisfy Lewis Carroll’s White Queen, if not harried fact-checkers.

In fact, why bother storing intel at all? Can you even archive small-hours Truth Social posts without context? And what is the etiquette around displaying the Epstein Files…?

Given the number of White House documents Trump kept from his first term in random bathrooms at Mar-a-Lago, it is entirely possible that he plans to take the real Air Force One when he leaves office to have as a museum piece.

As with the new – and now disputed – White House ballroom, the Trump Presidential Library is to be built through “personal donations”, which, without transparency, are at risk of being perceived to be bribes.

Even his own charitable foundation (which closed in 2018, a full decade after Trump stopped contributing to it, but accepted donations) was subject to a civil lawsuit alleging “persistently illegal conduct” and saw Trump ordered to pay $2 million for misusing it for business and political purposes. Who knows if he ever paid it? His lawyers managed to wipe out a half-billion-dollar court penalty against him in 2025 – the fraud findings still stand, but Trump has never had any trouble in shrugging off any stigma of criminal convictions.

He’s already busy pressing the flesh on the Washington circuit. Last night, he and the First Lady went to the renamed Trump-Kennedy Center and watched a production of Chicago, the 1975 musical about glamorous criminals getting away with murder. Kander and Ebb wrote the book on style over substance: “Long as you keep ’em way off balance / How can they spot you got no talents?”

Back then, Trump was settling a racial discrimination lawsuit against Trump Management Inc. Now, he’s the president, and we’re all riding his rollercoaster while screaming. Razzle dazzle ‘em / And they’ll make you a star!