The purpose of the Presidential Library system is to preserve the documents and artifacts of a president’s tenure and present them to the public “for study and discussion without regard for political considerations or affiliations.” When it comes to Trump, most of his communications with the public have come in the form of tweets, and there’s been actual discussion over whether or not these count as official presidential documents. The appropriately named “Covfefe Act” is a very real proposal to add Trump’s tweets to the National Archives.
The folks at The Daily Show, though, decided not to wait for the official library that usually comes at the end of a president’s term, since, as Trevor Noah puts it, “we do not know when his term will end. It could be next week, it could be never. So we decided to do it now.” This past weekend, The Daily Show hosted a pop-up museum installation of their Donald J. Trump Presidential Twitter Library.
It was a thing of beauty. Scathing, embarrassing (for us and him) beauty.
The installation pays homage to all the people, places, and things Trump has attacked on Twitter, of which there are a lot.
It’s also got some interactive, educational installations.
The museum is a dedicated study of Trump’s Twitter habits (complete with a live feed which sounds an alarm when a new tweet is posted), the absurdity of which is no clearer than in the “Trump v. Trump” exhibit. There, a screen rotates through tweets that directly contradict each other. Remember when Trump criticized the Electoral College as a “disaster for democracy” right up until he *won the election? Or his love/hate relationship with James Comey? According to the Library, this is because while “most politicians base their decisions on strongly held beliefs, Trump’s brain is so uniquely good (or great) that it can hold many different beliefs on the same subject.”
It also has an interactive section where you can try your hand thumbs at crafting a Trump-like tweet while posing on a golden toilet in the Oval Office.
The brilliance in this undertaking is in the attention to details. They nailed the look and feel of an actual Presidential Library, which is as impressive as it is depressing. What will a Trump Presidential Library look like? It can’t be much different than this, can it?
The Library, which was installed literally around the corner from Trump Tower, is now closed, though there’s talk of taking it on tour.
(via The Guardian, featured image: screengrab, Comedy Central)
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