{"id":906115,"date":"2026-07-01T19:44:18","date_gmt":"2026-07-01T19:44:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/906115\/"},"modified":"2026-07-01T19:44:18","modified_gmt":"2026-07-01T19:44:18","slug":"trump-visits-theodore-roosevelt-presidential-library-in-north-dakota","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/906115\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump visits Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library in North Dakota"},"content":{"rendered":"

MEDORA, N.D. (AP) \u2014 President Donald Trump is visiting North Dakota on Wednesday to see the newly built Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library<\/a>, a massive facility exploring the life of America\u2019s 26th president. The 96,000-square-foot library<\/a> is in the rugged, lonely landscape where the young Easterner built his conservation values while ranching and hunting in the 1880s.<\/p>\n

Saturday\u2019s official opening coincides with July Fourth celebrations honoring the 250th anniversary<\/a> of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. <\/p>\n

Trump is coming early to see the $450 million project, a boost for Interior Secretary Doug Burgum<\/a>, a former governor of North Dakota<\/a>, while also bringing the nation\u2019s birthday festivities to a region synonymous with its westward expansion.<\/p>\n

The Republican president made the trip aboard his new Air Force One<\/a>, a Boeing 747 given to the United States by Qatar. Trump said he asked Boeing, which is set to deliver new planes for the president\u2019s service in 2028, if there were any countries that had potential substitutes in the interim.<\/p>\n

\u201cI said, \u2018Who has the best one?\u2019 They said, \u2018Qatar,\u201d Trump said, adding that he was assured, \u201c\u2018There\u2019s never been a plane like it.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

After arriving in North Dakota, Trump traveled by train to Medora, an Old West tourist town where onlookers cheered his arrival. Trump greeted the crowd, which included a reenactment regiment of Roosevelt\u2019s Rough Riders, before heading to the library in his motorcade.<\/p>\n

All living presidents were invited to the grand opening of the library, which joins more than a dozen throughout the country<\/a> examining the lives and legacies of U.S. presidents from Ronald Reagan in California to Franklin D. Roosevelt in New York and Herbert Hoover in Iowa. The Obama Presidential Center recently opened<\/a> in Chicago, bringing together four former presidents for the occasion.<\/p>\n

Trump will be the library\u2019s first official visitor, according to the library\u2019s executive director, Robbie Lauf. Trump will speak at a nearby Western-themed amphitheater at an event run by Freedom 250, the Trump-created group billed as nonpartisan that he has tapped to organize the festivities he will participate in this week.<\/p>\n

On Friday, the president plans to visit South Dakota\u2019s Mount Rushmore for Independence Day fireworks, as he did in 2020<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Trump has often praised Roosevelt and has compared himself favorably to the late president. Trump began his second term last year by trumpeting construction of the Panama Canal during the Roosevelt administration. <\/p>\n

Trump even said the U.S. might seek to take back<\/a> the waterway from Panama to curb influence from China. That is a goal overshadowed by his suggestions that Washington might seize control of Greenland<\/a> or that Canada could become America\u2019s 51st state<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In the run-up to staging a UFC fight on the White House lawn<\/a> for his 80th birthday, Trump said he was aware of Roosevelt holding far lower-key boxing matches<\/a> in the White House. Trump made no mention of Roosevelt having detached the retina of his left eye during one such sparring session. <\/p>\n

The trip also underscores the president\u2019s esteem for Burgum, who has become a key face of and cheerleader for the president\u2019s expansive renovation projects around Washington<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Roosevelt was a New York native with a strong North Dakota connection<\/p>\n

Roosevelt visited Dakota Territory in 1883 to hunt bison. On Valentine\u2019s Day the next year, his mother and wife died hours apart in the same house in New York.<\/p>\n

Devastated, Roosevelt came to Dakota where he ranched cattle and hunted big game in the West during visits mostly from 1884 to 1887.<\/p>\n

He underwent deep personal growth from his experiences, including chasing boat thieves down a river, standing up to a bully in a bar and working alongside cowboys who ridiculed him for wearing eyeglasses.<\/p>\n

Roosevelt, who served as president<\/a> from 1901 to 1909, later said he never would have been president were it not for his experiences in North Dakota.<\/p>\n

Near the library is Theodore Roosevelt National Park<\/a>. Visitors can hike trails and drive a scenic route through the colorful, rugged Badlands where bison and wild horses roam<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In 2019, Burgum championed the library<\/a> to North Dakota\u2019s Republican-led legislature when he was governor, touting its tourism potential. The legislature approved a $50 million operations endowment, requiring library planners to raise $100 million in private donations, a goal met in 2020. Donations total about $354 million as of early 2026.<\/p>\n

Donors include oil executive Harold Hamm<\/a>, the Waltons of Walmart fame<\/a>, Kenneth Griffin, founder and CEO of Citadel, a hedge fund, and Burgum himself.<\/p>\n

Burgum also has lobbied for Roosevelt\u2019s induction into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Roosevelt became alarmed at the number of injuries and deaths of college football players and convened a 1905 White House meeting featuring the presidents of Harvard, Yale and Princeton to urge safety improvements. That helped sparked the founding of the NCAA, college\u2019s sports governing body.<\/p>\n

The library will showcase Roosevelt\u2019s ideas and artifacts<\/p>\n

Visitors will learn about Roosevelt\u2019s conservation ideas and his Rough Riders regiment of the Spanish-American War, but also his \u201chorrific comments\u201d about Native Americans and other issues \u201cthat have obviously aged poorly,\u201d Lauf said.<\/p>\n

Artifacts, many of them out of public view for decades, will tell Roosevelt\u2019s story. Visitors will see his Rough Riders uniform; the 1884 diary grieving his terrible loss; and the eyeglasses case, speech and shirt from the 1912 assassination attempt against him.<\/p>\n

Organizers hope the library draws families and thousands of school children from the region, as well as some of the millions of motorists who travel to Yellowstone National Park and the Black Hills.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a feature, not a bug, that we are in a county of 1,000 people and a town of 120,\u201d Lauf said. \u201cTR came here for that purpose.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Dakota Resource Council on Tuesday hosted several conservation leaders who criticized Burgum and Trump for policies they say contradict Roosevelt\u2019s conservation principles, such as cutting staff<\/a> and budgets and prioritizing energy development<\/a> on public lands.<\/p>\n

Last year Burgum signed an order prioritizing the openness and accessibility of parks to the public amid the workforce cuts. He has compared America\u2019s public lands and natural resources to \u201cassets\u201d that should be responsibly developed to exert \u201cenergy dominance.\u201d<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

Associated Press writers Will Weissert and Josh Boak in Washington contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MEDORA, N.D. (AP) \u2014 President Donald Trump is visiting North Dakota on Wednesday to see the newly built…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":906116,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[4,3],"tags":[350432,238093,69,98171,71051,57,366707,366323,366705,29480,3879,50,3880,80,6673,116725,366706,15119,167660,61,67,132,68,93],"class_list":["post-906115","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","category-us","tag-250th-anniversary-of-american-independence","tag-america-at-250","tag-donald-trump","tag-doug-burgum","tag-franklin-d-roosevelt","tag-general-news","tag-harold-hamm","tag-herbert-hoover","tag-kenneth-griffin","tag-national-parks","tag-nd-state-wire","tag-news","tag-north-dakota","tag-politics","tag-qatar","tag-qatar-government","tag-robbie-lauf","tag-ronald-reagan","tag-theodore-roosevelt","tag-u-s-news","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us","tag-washington-news"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116846439437552623","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/906115","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=906115"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/906115\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/906116"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=906115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=906115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=906115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}