I work at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library which was private from its founding in 1990 until 2007. Nixon had mandated that his library be private so that taxpayers would not have to pay for it. However, the presidential papers, by law, are held by the National Archives, and in order to get them, we had to join the Presidential Library system run by the National Archives.
This turned out to be a Faustian bargain, because once the government took over, we found ourselves saddled with a director who hated Nixon and did everything he could to trash his legacy. His antics brought him into conflict with the private Richard Nixon Foundation, which previously ran the library and still had a hand in doing so. While this director was in charge, the office area of the library resembled East and West Berlin, with Obama's portrait greeting visitors to the National Archives side and Nixon's welcoming visitors to the Foundation side. Foundation and National Archives employees never exchanged greetings and rarely spoke with one another.
However, now that all presidential documents are digital, Trump doesn't have to make such a Faustian bargain and is free to preserve and present his legacy as he chooses.
Thanks for some inside scoop. Can totally picture the East/West Berlin thing. We are up against some real jerks and unfortunately they have power.
Hats off to Nixon for walking the walk as a private sector guy and having his library be private.
Also will mention that Nixon nailed the commie jackass Hiss and for that deserves some real credit among conservatives, even if he wasn’t as pure of a president as we would have liked.
It was well worth taking the time to visit. Later that same day I visited the Reagan library.