Years before he ran, the throughline that would define Donald Trump’s presidency was set: his racist, unhinged obsession with Barack Obama. Trump could have gone down in history with a minor but positive reputation, remembered vaguely but fondly by most Americans as the goofy New York character who hosted “The Apprentice.” Instead, he fell into a spiral of outrage that a Black man who was smarter, more handsome and more beloved than he could ever be had been elected president.
Trump famously spent much of 2011 pushing the racist conspiracy theory that Obama could not be a native-born citizen. This resulted in Obama mocking him while Trump seethed at the White House Correspondents Dinner, a narcissistic injury that clearly stings Trump to this day. Trump spent the next decade-plus trying to destroy Obama’s legacy, which he hasn’t been able to do, despite two presidential wins. If anything, Trump’s malevolence and clownishness have only served to heighten the nation’s nostalgia for the Obama years.
On Thursday, the contrast grew starker with the opening of the Obama Presidential Center in Chicago, which Trump was pointedly not invited to, though George W. Bush was. It was a star-studded affair, featuring blockbuster performances from megastars like Bruce Springsteen, Jennifer Hudson, Christina Aguilera, John Legend, and the Roots. This adds insult to Trump’s recent injury, in which a series of far less dazzling musical acts canceled their appearances at Trump’s Freedom 250 event, which is ostensibly to celebrate the nation’s semiquincentennial, but is dominated by Trump’s ever-present desire to suck up all available attention.
More importantly, this celebration of Obama’s legacy landed on the same day that Trump’s reputation as the worst president in history was cemented, when the current president signed a “deal” with Iran that looks to any honest observer like a surrender in a war that Trump himself started alongside Israel. As usual when he loses, Trump is declaring he won anyway, but the details of the agreement — including an apparent $300 billion reparations fund for Iran — are making it harder than usual for him to lie his way out of this one.
Seemingly unaware of the symbolism of surrendering at Versailles, Trump held a 70-minute long press conference in France on Wednesday, in which the 80-year-old president wheezed and rambled hoarsely. Trump sounded defeated and exhausted, as he was flanked by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, both looking like they were sucking lemons. Trump offered his usual whining excuses and claims that everyone else but him is an idiot, but for once, he couldn’t summon the bombast to make it sound like he means it. He was scheduled to be at the White House Thursday morning for press questions, but didn’t show, instead sending Vice President JD Vance out to act aggrieved that reporters would not play along with efforts to spin this humiliating loss as a glorious victory.
Trump’s jealousy of Obama is almost certainly a major, perhaps primary, reason he decided to attack Iran in the first place. During his presidency, Obama had negotiated a deal with the country to stop their nuclear development program. Trump almost certainly didn’t understand the details or the work that went into that effort, but seized on Republican criticisms of it as evidence for his ongoing crusade to “prove” that the first Black president was unqualified. One reason the Iran war dragged on for as long as it did was Trump’s unwillingness to accept a worse deal than what Obama got through diplomacy. Trump only caved because, as he admitted to reporters, he’s trying not to be remembered as another Herbert Hoover. (He shouldn’t worry. He’ll be remembered as far worse.)
For months, Trump has not hidden his resentment of the Obama Presidential Center, a 19-acre, $850 million installation that features a library, a basketball court, a community garden and a 225-foot tower containing a museum. Trump insisted it’s “not too pretty” and a “total disaster,” and claimed it would never be finished. These efforts at self-soothing are so obvious that even Fox News declined to amplify them beyond, at most, passing mention. Trump kept trying anyway, repeatedly posting an AI-generated meme on Truth Social depicting the Obama tower as a trash can and calling it “Mecca,” a nod to his long-ago racist conspiracy theory that Obama was secretly a Muslim born in Africa.
This is all the more pathetic because it’s happening as Trump is failing to remake Washington D.C. over in his image. He stacked the board of the Kennedy Center with lackeys, who promptly put his name on the building, in an ineffectual effort to sully and steal the legacy of the assassinated former president. After some legal wrangling, however, plaintiffs in a public interest lawsuit were able to force Trump to take his name off the building. Trump also had the Reflecting Pool at the Lincoln Memorial repainted for $14 million to be a more garish blue, promising the job would lead to “clean, beautiful water.” It immediately filled up with algae and visitors have been posting videos of the 12-day-old paint already peeling off.
Trump’s other odes to himself — a ballroom on the White House and an arch that would obscure the view of the eternal flame on JFK’s Arlington grave — are theoretically still in motion, with new reports about Trump pillaging the Treasury for funds to build the former, despite promising he wouldn’t tap taxpayer funds. Still, Trump’s track record of failure should instill hope that these efforts will also fall apart. Congressional Democrats sent a letter to National Park Services this week, warning officials that it’s illegal to build the arch and threatening criminal prosecution if they proceed. Officials would be smart to heed this warning, as Democrats are expected to take the House in November’s election and will have the power to prosecute if a Democrat wins the presidency in 2028.
Even if Trump manages to build these illegal self-monuments, the effect will not be as majestic as he hopes. Instead, as Sen. Jon Ossoff, D-Ga., recently pointed out, “He’s doing these things now because no one will honor him when he’s gone.” Hopefully, any damage Trump does to D.C. can be undone, but what he does build will be understood in this context: as monuments to failure, built by a man who is trying to hide the bitter truth from himself.
There are criticisms, both fair and unfair, of the Obama center, which are standard any time there’s a dramatic change to the infrastructure of a big city. But after Thursday’s ceremony, there is little doubt that the Obama Presidential Center will be a popular attraction in Jackson Park on the South Side of Chicago. That will be true for the next two years, as visitors will seek refuge from our current hell in the memory of a president that, despite his flaws, made them feel proud to be Americans. But, as a bitter Trump no doubt knows in his heart, it will likely be true after he’s gone, and most Americans look at his era as a regretful disaster best left to the dustbin of history. Bruce Springsteen spoke to this at the Obama Presidential Center ceremony, performing “Land of Hope.”
“Tomorrow there’ll be sunshine/And all this darkness past,” the Boss sang. The massive crowd was touched. It was beautiful, but still, I’m petty enough to hope Trump was watching and seething.
