23 December—We read that ABC’s settlement with Donald Trump after George Stephanopoulos defying the corporate lawyers (and, it must be said, arrogantly and stupidly) insisted on and persisted in calling Trump’s jury-confirmed sexual abuse of Jean Carroll rape is 15 million smackers to go to the Trump presidential library. (Plus another million for Trump’s never idle shysters, of course.) Chicken feed, to be sure. But you have to savor the monumentally hysterical irony of it.

You can’t not laugh when you see or hear “Trump” and “library” in the same sentence, let alone together. Okay, in this case they’re separated by “presidential.” (Obiter dictum I: presidential is something Trump isn’t now and never has been.) You wonder, will the trump library—any Trump library—actually have books in it? (Obiter dictum II: “book” is a four-letter word.)

Problem is, the ABC settlement doesn’t mention a library at all. All it says is that a Trump presidential foundation will establish something similar to what’s been done for previous presidents.

Presidential libraries these days are essentially public-private partnerships—funded and administered by government and non-government entities—established by the Presidential Records Act and are also known as presidential centers because they’re really museums and contain lots more than books. The Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, for instance, showcases his Air Force One (a Boeing Stratoliner) and a full-size replica of the Oval Office. The presidential library centers have customarily—but not statutorily—been established in the specific president’s home state of record.

Herbert Hoover was the first president to have a presidential library established after he left office, through the Office of Presidential Libraries, which is part of the National Archives and Records Administration. Suffice to say, earlier presidents also have libraries, but they’re generally private undertakings.

The Presidential Records Act of 1978, amended in 2014, governs official records of presidents and vice presidents that were created or received after 20 January 1981 (the records, not the people), the end of the Carter Administration and start of the Reagan Administration. It changed legal ownership of the covered records from private to public and did too many other things to mention here, a number of which don’t mean bupkes to Donald Trump.

There is in fact a Trump library website, www.trumplibrary.gov. It’s run by the National Archives and Records Administration. Trump probably has never visited it.

The bottom line is that Donald Trump and his confederates can do anything they damn well please with the Stephanopoulos settlement. And, sad to say, the chances are that wherever a Trump presidential library is built, Trump himself will make a killing on the real estate . . .