The 45 library will be sited at the former Robin’s Nest mansion featured in the American television show Magnum P.I., produced and broadcast by CBS from 1980–88. Located in Kailua on the island of Oʻahu, Hawaii, and rebranded 45’s Nest, the library will focus primarily on 1980s film and television cultural products that perpetuated ideas about American manhood (as embodied by the mustachioed Magnum P. I. star Tom Selleck), the romance of whiteness in exotic locales, casual sexism, and hedonistic materialism that has shaped so much of Boomer-dominated politics. Guided by the voice of Robin Masters (for whom Robin’s Nest was named, and who was originally voiced by Orson Welles in the original series), visitors will experience various rotating exhibits. The first exhibition scheduled will be Made in Hawaii, about the use of Hawaii in American cinema as a stand-in for exotic locales such as a Peruvian jungle in the original Raiders of the Lost Ark (for which Selleck was the original choice to portray Indiana Jones), and Vietnam during the US war with that country in the 1980s CBS television series Tour of Duty and, later, the satirical 2008 film Tropic Thunder. A smaller and concurrent exhibition, called Who Biff?, will investigate the invention of Biff Tannen, the fictional villain from the Back to the Future franchise portrayed by Thomas F. Wilson, who was rumored to be modeled on and in turn served as inspiration for the president the 45 library monumentalizes. Future programmatic ambitions include examining the rise of reality television in the 1990s and television and film stars who go on to launch political careers. Visitors can purchase Hawaiian shirts and tiki torches, Pacific Island artefacts newly relevant on the mainland as political symbols, as well as stay overnight on-site at a four-star, 45’s Nest-branded hotel.
Producers of the 2018 CBS reboot of Magnum P.I., (directed by Chinese American director Justin Lin of Fast and Furious fame and starring Mexican American actor Jay Hernandez as a mustacheless Magnum), have proposed a collaboration with the library to explore changing American demographics through the lens of popular culture, but so far the administration has not responded to inquiries.
Hawaii is a unique location for a presidential library as it bid for and lost the library for the one president the state has birthed. It is the only state not located in North America, the only state with an Asian plurality, and home to the only US site of invasion from another sovereign nation. Hawaii was the last state admitted to the union in 1959, and statehood was pushed by local labor activists who wanted sugar plantation owners and other men of industry from the US mainland to abide by US labor laws and regulations. More recently in 2017, Hawaii challenged and temporarily blocked, 5000 miles away from Washington D.C., Executive Order 13769 (also known as the Muslim travel ban). The block was effectively overturned by the Supreme Court in 2018.
Prior to establishing 45’s Nest, the current administration will need to negotiate tenancy with the current de facto landowners of the site, Michelle and Barack Obama.