California Gov. Gavin Newsom tore into Donald Trump and his family after he let slip that his “presidential library” is likely to be a huge hotel making money for a foundation controlled by one of his sons.
“All this family does is grift off the government,” Newsom wrote on X late Tuesday night. “Has any family relied more on the government than the Trumps?” he added, in a barb seemingly directed at MAGA’s habit of railing against alleged welfare fraud among migrants and the poor.
His comments come after the president admitted earlier in the day that the Donald J. Trump Presidential Library was likely to be a hotel built on public land in Miami rather than a typical presidential museum and research center.
“It’s going to be most likely a hotel, with a beautiful building underneath and a 747 Air Force One in the lobby,” the president told reporters at an Oval Office briefing. He has previously suggested the specific aircraft used could be the $400 million plane gifted to him by the Qatari government.
Those plans would see the library—nominally a public institution, built on a plot handed over by the state of Florida at no cost—incorporate a built-in revenue stream benefitting the Donald J. Trump Presidential Library Fund, a foundation controlled by the president’s second son Eric, along with other Trump family members and associates.
Trump himself has insisted construction will not begin on the project until after he has left office, even as he remains coy about the possibility of a Constitution-busting third stint in the White House.
But an apparently AI-generated video of the forthcoming building, released earlier this week, suggests plans for the mammoth skyscraper, emblazoned with the word “TRUMP” across the top of its exterior, are already well and truly underway.
The clip indicates the project will feature multiple aircraft actually inside the building, along with replicas of the Oval Office and Trump’s equally controversial forthcoming White House ball room, as well as a large auditorium housing a gold statue of the president, reminiscent of tributes to political leaders in Central Asian dictatorships.
Conspicuously absent from the renderings were some of the more conventional trappings of a library—namely, books, or rooms to read them in.
Critics have raised alarm that the project appears to be tied to millions of dollars from settlements to Trump’s various lawsuits against media organizations over the years, even as the foundation continues to solicit donations of up to $10,000 from adoring members of the MAGA base.
The Daily Beast has contacted the White House for comment on this story.
