Author Michael Wolff says he might have planted the idea for Donald Trump’s latest legacy-driven vanity project during a revealing private dinner with the president.
On Monday, Trump, 79, unveiled the first AI renderings of his book-free presidential library, a mammoth skyscraper in Miami packed with gilded escalators, a tacky golden statue of himself, and an Air Force One—presumably the $400 million jumbo jet gifted to him by the Qatari government.
Wolff suggested on the Inside Trump’s Head podcast that he may have sparked the idea for the gaudy tower after befuddling Trump with a question about his legacy during a dinner in 2021.
“I think what is happening now, what they are building, I might have played a significant part in this,” Wolff told co-host Joanna Coles.
The author, who wrote several tell-all books about the chaos within the first Trump administration, said Trump invited him to Mar-a-Lago in the spring of 2021—shortly after he left office after losing the 2020 election to Joe Biden—for “reasons that will always astound me and bewilder me.”
Wolff said he and Trump talked for three hours, during which “one of the few questions” he managed to ask was about his plans for a presidential library.
“Remember, he’s out of office. He’s no longer the president. He’s in this moment of post-presidency when former presidents turn to thinking about their legacy and their library,” Wolff said. “So I brought this up, and he looked at me with horror.”
The author said he immediately realized that in Trump’s mind, “he was not at all finished with being president,” as the former president went “silent” in his horror at the question.
It also struck Wolff that Trump, who is notoriously averse to reading, might be taken aback by the idea of shaping his legacy through a library filled with books.
He recounted, “I rushed in to kind of apologize or to cover my faux pas about the library and saying, ‘You know, a presidential library doesn’t have to be a library.’”
“I said, ‘A presidential library, it can be more like’—and then out of nowhere it came to me, I said—‘a theme park. It could be the Trump theme park.’”
The look of horror on Trump’s face gave way to “something close to wonder,” Wolff said.
“And then we had certainly a five- or six-minute conversation about what a Trump theme park might be like—restaurants, hotels—it was a vision.”
“So you might be responsible for this,” Coles remarked.
Trump told reporters on Tuesday that the building, which is backed by funds from the nonprofit Donald J. Trump Presidential Library Foundation, Inc., is “most likely going to be a hotel.”
Wolff suggested that whatever the “legacy proportions” of the Donald J. Trump Presidential Library, they will be “attentive to the Trump family money-making opportunities.”
There is no information on when the building will be built, with the project’s website simply stating it is “coming soon.” However, the site is taking donations, including a button for those who wish to “donate more than $10,000.”
Trump has previously earmarked the many millions he has been paid in media lawsuits to go toward his presidential library fund, including $22 million from his legal settlement with Meta, as well as his $16 million settlement with Paramount/CBS and $15 million from ABC News.
Trump’s 42-year-old son, Eric, announced the project in an X post Monday, writing that he had poured his “heart and soul” into it over the past six months.
“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,” Eric wrote.
When reached for comment, White House Communications Director Steven Cheung told the Daily Beast in a statement, “Michael Wolff is a lying sack of s--t and has been proven to be a fraud. He routinely fabricates stories originating from his sick and warped imagination, only possible because he has a severe and debilitating case of Trump Derangement Syndrome that has rotted his peanut-sized brain.”
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