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The shutters are down, the curtains are open and Donald Trump’s lavish waterfront palace of intrigue is open for business again. A succession of ambitious, ultra-loyal subjects have paraded through, vying for attention and seeking favors from the throne. Servants fall over themselves to satisfy their master’s every whim. And then there are the jesters…
Given the extraordinary developments this week at the president-elect’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, as he builds the Cabinet he will rule with in January, it’s hard to escape the idea that the operation is being run something like this like a royal court.
Trump certainly gives the appearance of acting as America’s first monarch since the official end of the Revolutionary War in 1783, scheming, scheming and playing favorites, pitting individuals against each other as his courtiers gather.
His unexpected appointment as attorney general of Mar-a-Lago regular Matt Gaetz, the controversial Florida congressman under investigation for sexual misconduct, was a power move that wrong-footed even his closest advisers and threw down a gauntlet. Republicans in the US Senate. who must confirm the appointment.
It followed Trump’s equally astonishing choice a day earlier for a weekend host from the right-wing TV channel Fox News as US Secretary of Defense in charge of the largest and most powerful military in the world: Pete Hegseth, the ultimate entertainer which caught the king’s attention. .
Public health experts are slamming vaccine denier Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s choice. as Minister of Health. And perhaps the most bizarre sight of all is the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, a billionaire elected for exactly nothing, wandering the immaculately manicured lawns of the sprawling resort and showing off his newfound friendship with the next presumed leader of the free world.
Reports say Musk has accompanied Trump almost every day since the election, holding calls with multiple world leaders, advising on policy and personnel decisions, playing golf with Trump family members and dining with them on the open-air terrace.
Musk received a standing ovation from the assembled guests on the other side of the red velvet rope, according to the New York Times, and joined Trump and classical singer Chris Macchio in an eerie rendition of God Bless America at a gala on Thursday evening.
On Tuesday, five days into his tenure as Trump’s favorite house guest, Musk was named co-head of the newly created Department of Government Efficiency (Doge), where he will generate plans to slash and burn government spending. It remains to be seen whether the proposed cuts will extend to the billions of dollars in lucrative government contracts and subsidies that his own companies, SpaceX and Tesla, benefit from.
“He loves Mar-a-Lago. Elon isn’t going home. I can’t get rid of him,” Trump joked to Republicans on Wednesday during his first return to Washington DC since the election, before adding ominously: “Until I don’t like him anymore.”
Observers say it’s no surprise that these machinations are playing out at Mar-a-Lago, the $1 million private members’ club that Trump cavalierly called his “winter White House” during his first term, where he handed out ambassadorships to rich people. friends and donors, and where he took policy advice from regulars, written on cocktail napkins.
“There will be a lot of action during Trump’s second term, as we are seeing now with the transition,” said political historian Matt Dallek, a professor of political management at George Washington University.
“It really is a hub. People come in and out all the time, he spends a lot of time there, and as he likes to do, he has several people telling him different things and he talks to a lot of people.
“He will talk to his wealthy friends and people who come from all over the world to the resort to honor him. He likes it partly because it’s a kind of shrine to him, and it’s his best version of himself, his best vision of himself and the kind of power he wants to cultivate. He likes the attention. He loves the people who come into and around him.”
Dallek noted that Trump also thrived on the atmosphere of unpredictability his presence at Mar-a-Lago creates. This was evident this week with the hiring of his unorthodox Cabinet and the procession of hopefuls desperate for an interview in a hastily assembled war room in what CNN called the “chaotic epicenter” of his transition.
“There’s a level of chaos that has long surrounded Trump, that Trump really cultivates, and that’s a core part of his political identity. And Mar-a-Lago has been a center of that chaos,” Dallek said.
‘It is a kind of hotbed of fringe figures who have come there. He dined there with Ye, the anti-Semitic rapper, and Nick Fuentes, the white supremacist. There have been foreign spies trying to enter the resort. Here he kept some of the most secret documents in the world in his bathroom.
“We don’t have to look far back in time to get a sense of the goings-on, how freewheeling and how crazy it is. He’s dealing with these incredibly important matters of life and death, of national security, and he’s doing it in this unsecured, chaotic atmosphere where people come and go all the time, and where some of his most memorable and memorably unhinged moments have occurred . .”
Dallek and others expect Trump to spend a lot of time at Mar-a-Lago during his second term. During his first four years as president, the Washington Post calculated in 2021, he was there for all or part of 142 days and played an estimated 87 rounds at his Trump International golf club in West Palm Beach. Mar-a-Lago’s 128 guest suites are always full when he is in residence.
“It’s possible that some people just want to hang out with the president and the people around the president, but I think people were explicit about that and the first presidency was an opportunity to tell him what your thoughts were. also to seek favor,” Robert Weissman, president of the Washington DC-based pro-transparency group Public Citizen, told the Guardian in August.
“There are deep and systemic issues about ethics, and big money, and access for the wealthy, but Trump is in a category of his own.”
In addition to operating Mar-a-Lago as his command center ahead of his second administration, Trump is also benefiting from a significant financial windfall.
Mar-a-Lago is expected to be fully occupied until January’s inauguration, and CNN reported that members had received money from outsiders eager to accompany them to the grounds to engage in discussions.
Even after he takes power, the return trips to Mar-a-Lago will keep Trump’s coffers swollen. In October, it was revealed that Trump properties had overcharged the Secret Service by 300% for rooms occupied by agents providing security for Trump and his family.
“Of course it will be an opportunity for him to make money,” Dallek said. “What he will never pass up.”
