BREAKING:
The New York Times is sounding the alarm about the Barack Obama Presidential Center DISASTER.
This isn’t coming from a conservative outlet.
This is the paper that spent eight years protecting Obama’s image, now describing his presidential center as a “muscular stone tower” that looks more like a shrine to power than a library.
And it is costing a stunning amount of money.
The project was originally expected to cost around $300 million to $500 million.
Now the price tag is about $850 million.
According to the Obama Foundation’s own 2023 tax filings, it has already spent $615 million.
That is more than half a billion dollars gone, and the doors still are not open.
At the same time, the people running this project are cashing in.
Valerie Jarrett, Obama’s closest adviser and now CEO of the foundation, was paid about $750,000 in a single year.
Another executive, Robbin Cohen, took home around $650,000.
And while donors thought they were funding a presidential library, more than $2 million was quietly sent to the Tides Network, a left wing nonprofit clearinghouse that funnels money to political causes.
So money meant to build the library is being moved around while costs explode and the public is told everything is “privately funded.”
Meanwhile, this “privately funded” project sits on 19 acres of public land in Jackson Park.
Land that belongs to the people of Chicago has been leased to the foundation for 99 years.
Trees have been cut down.
Roads have been torn up.
It has been nicknamed the “Obamalisk” and has a cold Soviet-style ugliness to it.
Residents are watching property taxes and rent go up while a concrete tower rises where their park used to be.
And here is the thing almost nobody talks about.
It is not even a real presidential library.
There are no archives on site.
The National Archives confirmed they will not store Obama’s physical documents there.
So this is not a library.
It is a monument.
A $850 million monument on public land, funded by donors, championed by elites, and overseen by people paying themselves more in a year than most Americans make in a decade.
Residents are calling it a “monstrosity.”
One woman told reporters it feels like their neighborhood is being carved out to make room for tourists and political power.
And now even the New York Times is asking why this building exists at this size and this cost when it does not even hold the presidential records it claims to honor.
These are the facts.
$850 million total cost.
$615 million already spent.
More than $2 million sent to the Tides Network.
Valerie Jarrett making about $750,000 a year.
Robbin Cohen making about $650,000.
Public land under a 99 year lease.
No presidential archives inside the building.
And a legacy project that is now being questioned by the very media that once defended it.
Writers credit & source: Ken Blackwell
