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Though Obama left office in January 2017, the Presidential Center’s 19-acre campus on the South Side of Chicago — with a near-windowless, 225-foot towering museum at its center — took years to build as costs ballooned from $500 million to more than $830 million.
Obama also thanked his wife and daughters, joking that Michelle “did me wrong” by not letting him review her own remarks beforehand, which had caused him to become visibly emotional.
“She knew she was going to mess me up, and she did it anyway. But she’s always made me better. And I could not be more grateful,” he admitted.
Michelle Obama praised her husband’s achievements in and out of office, needling Trump — without naming him — for having propagated “lies” about her husband’s “birthright.”
“When fact and fiction run together, when folks seek to stifle speech, limit access to education, devalue diversity, erase the inconvenient parts of our history, when our phones constantly buzz with the latest outrage,” she continued in veiled attacks at the Trump administration and Republicans, “I hope that this place can offer a respite from all that — at least for a little while.”
Michelle Obama praised her husband for “ending a war, ordering the bin Laden raid, saving an auto industry, winning a peace prize,” the final of which feat earned loud applause from his ex-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton seated behind him.
Trump has fumed for years about Obama winning the coveted prize, while he has not yet.