Trump Defiles New Theodore Roosevelt Library

Trump flew to Medora, North Dakota, in his Qatari 747 bribe-jet to desecrate the memory of America’s most populist President, Theodore Roosevelt.

TR used presidential power to confront concentrated wealth, protect public lands, and defend consumers.

Trump has used his power to do the opposite: dismantle consumer safeguards, weaken independent watchdogs, unleash polluters, undercut federal unions and turn public resources into private investments.

Roosevelt fought the trusts. Trump governs like they won. Trump’s speech about restricting voting rights on July 1 at the Roosevelt Library was sickening.

Roosevelt Took On Corporate Power. Trump Is Disarming the Referees.

Roosevelt earned the title “trust buster” from 1901 to 1909 because he knew that unchecked corporate power was not just an economic problem. It was a democratic threat.

He used the Sherman Antitrust Act to target monopolies, pushed for federal oversight of powerful corporations, and advanced the idea that government had a duty to protect ordinary Americans from abusive concentrations of wealth.

Trump’s second term has moved in the opposite direction.

On January 31, 2025, Trump signed a sweeping deregulation order requiring agencies to identify at least 10 existing regulations for repeal for every new regulation they issue. That is not trust busting. That is a clearance sale for corporate lobbyists.

Then, on February 18, 2025, Trump issued an order bringing independent regulatory agencies under “Presidential supervision and control.” That means agencies created to police powerful industries — including consumer, communications and financial regulators are under direct White House political control.

The Federal Trade Commission exists because America learned, in Roosevelt’s era, that monopolies and corporate predators do not regulate themselves. Trump’s 2025 attempt to fire Democratic FTC commissioners, strikes at the independence of the very kind of watchdog Roosevelt believed government needed.

Roosevelt built public power to restrain private power. Trump is centralizing political power to weaken the agencies that restrain private power.

Roosevelt Protected Public Lands. Trump Ruined National Parks.

Trump’s second term has taken a radically different path.

Roosevelt is remembered as one of America’s greatest conservation presidents because he did not see public lands as a commodity waiting to be sold. He saw them as a national inheritance.

The National Park Service credits Roosevelt with helping to establish 230 million acres of public lands during his presidency, including national forests, parks, and national monuments such as Grand Canyon National Park.

In 2025, Trump’s Interior Department approved 6,027 new oil and gas drilling permits and approved 63.7% more federal and Indian drilling permits than the prior administration had at the same point.

That is the contrast in one sentence: Roosevelt preserved millions of acres for future generations; Trump issued thousands of drilling permits.

Roosevelt treated public lands as a sacred trust. Trump treats them like inventory.

Roosevelt Advanced Conservation. Trump’s EPA Went to War With It.

Roosevelt believed conservation was patriotic. Trump’s EPA has treated environmental protection as an enemy to be defeated.

On March 12, 2025, the Trump administration unwound more than two dozen air, water and climate protections, including limits on emissions from power plants and cars, as well as protections for waterways.

Later in 2025, Trump’s EPA targeted the 2009 greenhouse gas “endangerment finding,” the legal foundation for federal climate rules on vehicles, power plants and other major pollution sources.

Roosevelt’s question was: What must America save? Trump’s question is: What can industry get away with?

Roosevelt Intervened for the Public—Trump Sides Against Workers.

Roosevelt was no socialist labor radical. When the 1902 coal strike threatened the country, he refused to behave like a servant of mine owners.

He brought labor and management to the table and helped force arbitration, establishing a landmark principle: the president could intervene in a labor dispute to protect the public interest.

Trump’s second term has gone in the opposite direction. On March 27, 2025, Trump issued an executive order excluding major federal agencies from federal labor-management relations programs.

Reuters reported in 2026 that the order exempted more than a dozen agencies from obligations to bargain with unions, including the Departments of Justice, State, Defense, Treasury, and Health and Human Services.

That is not Roosevelt’s Square Deal. Roosevelt used the presidency to force the powerful to negotiate. Trump used power to fire 55,000 federal workers.

Roosevelt Built Consumer Protection. Trump Is Weakening Watchdogs.

Roosevelt’s was practical. He saw that there was no inspection of meatpacking plants, testing of medicines, auditing of railroads or policing of monopolies. That is why the government had to act.

In 1906, Roosevelt signed the Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act, landmark laws that expanded federal authority to protect consumers and public health.

Trump has imposed weaker agencies, less independence and more presidential control over regulators.

The Roosevelt model says government should be strong enough to protect people from fraud, pollution, exploitation and monopoly. The Trump model says government should be strong enough to punish enemies — but too weak to inconvenience corporate allies.

The Roosevelt Costume Does Not Fit

Modern Republicans love the Roosevelt image because it is muscular, patriotic and dramatic. But they do not want Roosevelt’s actual politics.

They do not want the trust buster. They do not want the conservation president. They do not want the president who forced mine owners to bargain. They do not want the president who expanded consumer protection.

They want the hat, the horse, the mustache and the myth — but not the values.

If Theodore Roosevelt walked into today’s Republican Party, he would be disgusted by it siding with monopolists, polluters, union busters and deregulators.

That is the difference between a president who uses power to protect the public and one who uses it to protect himself.