Florida Atlantic University offers to be site of Trump presidential library

Florida Atlantic University has offered free land for Trump’s presidential library, promising a 100-year lease, according to news reports Thursday.

President Trump did not build a presidential library at the conclusion of his first term in 2021 but has been planning and collecting funds since his election to do so for his second term.

He has thus far established a non-profit for the library headed by son Eric Trump and son-in-law Michael Boulos. And the money set aside includes $37 million from settlements with META and ABC News.

The $400 million luxury jet that Qatar recently donated is set to be on display at the museum, after serving as Air Force One for the duration of Trump's presidency. Planners want the library to also be an educational space, following President Franklin Roosevelt’s idea when establishing presidential libraries in the late 1930s.

There are 16 presidential libraries in the U.S. across 14 locations.

Roosevelt established the Presidential Library System in 1939.  Previously, “Many Presidential papers and records had been lost, destroyed, sold for profit, or ruined by poor storage conditions,” according to the National Archives.

Eventually, the Presidential Records Act in 1978 changed this approach, making presidential documents government property at the conclusion of a presidency.

After the dedication of his library in 1941, Roosevelt spoke of the great wealth of knowledge contained in a president's documents and the need for their preservation.

A nation “must believe in the past. It must believe in the future. It must, above all, believe in the capacity of its own people so to learn from the past that they can gain in judgement in creating their own future,” he said.