NEW YORK — A New York City lawmaker wants President Donald Trump to open his official library in his hometown — but not his home borough.
City Council Member Joe Borelli urged the Queens-born Republican this month to build his presidential library on Staten Island instead of Manhattan, where Trump has lived and done business for much of his adult life.
Trump likely would have an easier time siting his library in a place where he has plenty of political support than in a deep-blue borough where “progressive” residents would fight it “tooth and nail,” Borelli wrote in a Sept. 20 letter to the White House.
“There are a fair amount of people that appreciate what he is doing as president, and I think that would probably make the transition easier to locate the library here versus somewhere else,” Borelli, a Republican representing Staten Island’s South Shore, said in a phone interview.
Staten Island was the only borough Trump won in his 2016 victory over Hillary Clinton. The president also spent some time on The Rock as a child — he did odd jobs at the Grymes Hill and Tysens Park apartment complexes then owned by his father, Fred Trump, according to the Staten Island Advance. The Trump family reportedly sold their outer-borough developments in 2004.
“I believe you have a certain affection for our borough and its residents, and I believe that in many ways, it is shared,” Borelli wrote in his letter, which noted Trump’s childhood visits to his father’s Staten Island buildings. The New York Post first reported on the lawmaker’s letter.
Trump could develop his future library on some of the vacant waterfront land along the island’s north and west shores, Borelli argued, noting the city recently rezoned a stretch of Bay Street near the Staten Island Ferry terminal.
Like many presidential libraries, he said, it could be opened in partnership with an academic institution such as St. John’s University, Wagner College or the College of Staten Island, where Borelli has taught as an adjunct professor since 2008.
Borelli noted that Barack Obama’s presidential library is expected to create some 2,500 jobs on Chicago’s South Side. The Trump library could potentially generate even more jobs and bring a top-notch research institution to the city, he said.
“There really isn’t a deeper rational argument against it beyond, ‘Orange man bad,'” Borelli said.
Trump’s library would be the second to open in New York State. Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s library and museum at his family home in upstate Hyde Park became the nation’s first presidential library in 1941. Borelli said he did research there when he studied at Marist College in nearby Poughkeepsie.
Trump has yet to pick a location for his library. Asked for comment on Borelli’s letter, the White House referred to a June television interview in which Trump suggested he might store his presidential papers in the Sunshine State.
“I’ve been treated so great in Florida,” Trump said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “You know, the win in Florida. I’ve been treated so great in so many states.”
Borelli wrote to the White House before last week’s revelations that Trump asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on a phone call to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, and that administration officials tried to cover up the request. The scandal led House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to open a formal impeachment inquiry into the president’s activities.
Borelli, a steadfast Trump ally, noted Bill Clinton has a presidential library even though the House impeached him in 1998. (The Senate acquitted Clinton in a trial in 1999.) Asked whether he was concerned about the transcript of the call or the whistleblower’s complaint regarding Trump’s request, Borelli said, “It concerns me where it’s housed after 2025.”
“Regardless of how you feel about what he does any given day or any give time, it almost makes it more necessary that we preserve the entirety of his documents, especially those that are declassified over time,” he said.
Correction: An earlier version of this story misstated when the House impeached Bill Clinton. It was 1998, not 1999.
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