President Donald Trump on Tuesday offered to help develop the Obama Presidential Center. The Obama Presidential Center is suffering from massive cost overruns and delays, and has recently attracted considerable attention as the project embraces diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies.
Throughout his business career, Trump, who reshaped his city skyline with towering skyscrapers, has linked Day to problems with the massive Chicago project.
“President Obama, if he wants help, I’m a really good builder and I’m built on time on budget, so I’m going to give him help. He’s building a library in Chicago. That’s a disaster,” Trump told the White House along with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Kearney.
President Donald Trump on Tuesday offered to help develop the Obama Presidential Center. This suffers from huge cost overruns and delays. The project embraces diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI). (Victor J. Blue/Bloomberg, left, Fox News Digital, Center, Francis Chung/Politico/Bloomberg via Getty Images.
The Obama Library, which started with the lofty DEI goal, is currently plagued by a racially charged $40 million lawsuit, and has swelled costs.
Trump spoke about the Biden administration’s Chips Act (passed to boost domestic semiconductor research and manufacturing) and the DEI provisions when he pivoted to the Obama Presidential Center.
“[Obama] “I only want Day, I just want to wake up.” Trump said. Well, he wakes up and they have a massive cost overrun. Work will be stopped. I don’t know, that’s a disaster. And I don’t like it to happen because it’s bad for the president that something like that should happen. He has a library that is a disaster. ”
Construction is underway on a 19.3-acre site consisting of a 225-foot-high museum, digital library, conference facilities, gymnasiums and a regulated size NBA court.
From the beginning, the project had to promote “ambitious goals” for specific construction diversity allocations, and the contracts were assigned to “diverse suppliers”, with 35% of which had to be minority-based companies (MBEs).
Watch: Brian Killmeadshow: President Obama Center shakes up in a $40 million racial bias lawsuit
A racially charged lawsuit filed earlier this year by a minority contractor against the project’s structural engineers has highlighted the DEI-driven side of the project. Structural engineers claimed that minority contractors lacked sufficient qualifications and experience to perform the work, resulting in delays.
Trump on Tuesday said Obama is paying to prioritize Day over meritocracy.
“And he wanted to be so politically right, he didn’t use hard, tough, mean workers who liked I loved Marco,” Trump said.
Aerial shot of the Obama Presidential Center in March. (Fox News Digital)
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“I love those construction workers, but he didn’t want construction workers. He wanted people who had never done it before, and he had a disaster in his hands. It’s millions of dollars above budget, or I want to help him or someone else, but it wasn’t built in a professional way.”
Emily Bitner, vice president of communications for the non-profit Obama Foundation, said Trump’s comments were not factual and the center itself was not involved in the lawsuit, delaying the timeline for the facility, which will open in 2026.
“Everyone who sees the Obama Presidential Center is blown away by its beauty, size and the way it becomes a beacon of Chicago’s economic engine and the world’s hope,” Bitner told Fox News Digital in a statement. “We look forward to seeing all visitors to our 19.3-acre campus next spring, celebrating Obama’s legacy, as well as experiencing the Presidential Center, which will lift the next generation of leaders.”
The Obama Presidential Center is set to open in 2026, which is expected to open in 2021 (Fox News Digital)
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Bittner added that hundreds of workers on the site each day are evidence of the centre’s progress and that the project is funded personally, not taxpayers.
The center’s libraries are digital libraries, not physical as other presidential libraries, federally funded and with limited size.
Obama’s current presidential library is located at Hoffman Estate in northwest Chicago and is scheduled to move to College Park in Maryland later this year.
Michael Dorgan is a writer for Fox News Digital and Fox Business.
You can submit tips to Michael.dorgan@fox.com and follow him on Twitter @M_Dorgan.
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