Next Door to Mar-a-Lago
Paul Levy
For the third year in a row, I am spending a good chunk of the winter in Palm Beach, Florida, as a guest of a friend who rents an extravagant two-storey, marble-floored gaff four doors down from Mar-a-Lago. When our preposterous president is in residence, the Secret Service and local sheriffs are stationed in our drive.
From one of my bedroom windows, through which I can also see gorgeous waving palm trees and the Atlantic Ocean, it is about ten yards to the Jersey barriers: giant concrete slabs arranged in a V-formation, with the opening blocked by a sheriff’s car, whose engine is always left running, and which reverses into our drive on the rare occasions a car is authorised to pass through.
From the other window I can see the security tent, with its sniffer dogs, giant dentist’s mirrors for surveying the undercarriages of car, and ever-changing personnel, most of whom seem to be sweet-natured, downy-cheeked youths from the Midwest. When we leave the house, one of the nice young men always promises to remember our faces, our car, and the fact that we live here. But the duty rota changes at whirlwind speed, and when we return, the good-looking boy from Iowa has invariably been replaced by a lookalike from Illinois.
We used to hang out at the ‘winter White House’ quite a lot, as it was a popular venue for chamber music concerts and recitals. But since last year, these are no more: the chamber music society and other similar groups have abandoned Mar-a-Lago, I was told by a local, because the artists are boycotting its gilded halls and ceilings for political reasons. I used to enjoy the concerts: we could walk there; the calibre of the performances was high; and it was always a thrill to see the mansion and park, built in the 1920s for the cereal heiress and socialite Marjorie Merriweather Post (1887-1973). Her only lapse of taste, I’d say, was an obsession with gold leaf.
Post left the estate to the US government, in the hope it would be used for cultural activities, but in 1981 the government returned it to the Post Foundation, which put it on the market for $20 million. After seeing it in 1985, Trump offered (he claims) $15 million, which the family rejected. He then put in a $2 million offer for the land between the estate and the ocean, and threatened to build a house on it that would block Mar-a-Lago’s ocean view. They sold him the estate for the knock-down price of $7 million. Trump restored the house and grounds, doing little damage – since it’s a listed building, he was limited to restoring the original décor – and adding the ballroom. In the 1990s, beset by the financial woes that have been the hallmark of his business career, he negotiated with the banks to subdivide Mar-a-Lago, to the alarm of the citizens of Palm Beach; the city council vetoed it.
Instead, Trump turned the place into a private members’ club: joining fee $200,000, annual subscription $14,000, overnight hotel charges up to $2000. If it seems weird that the official winter residence of an American president should be a private club, the neighbours appear to agree. The old-money crowd made the exodus to Jupiter and Hobe Sound, while new builds are going up in Palm Beach that can cost as much as $30 million.
On Thursday, 31 January, news reached us that the panto president would be at Mar-a-Lago from 1 to 3 February, for the first time since Thanksgiving. The installation of the Jersey barriers, which normally begins at 4 a.m., may have been responsible for my unusually disturbed night. By 8 a.m. the barricade was visible despite the vigorous rainstorm, and I could see the security tent in place, too.
Leaving at 11.30 a.m. for the gym in Lake Worth, we negotiated the wooden sawhorse slalom course. Coming home about 3 p.m. we showed our neighbour’s pass to the young sheriff’s deputy when we made the turn from County Road into Ocean Boulevard. He recognised us from last year and said: ‘Welcome home.’ But we still had to pass the sniffer test. The Alsatian-cross scrunched up its nose at the pong of our engine, but allowed the handler and two other young men to wave us through with a smile. The sheriff’s car occupying our drive reversed out so that we could get through our garage door.
Trump’s possession of Mar-a-Lago has brought one golden benefit to his neighbours. In 1995 he filed a lawsuit against Palm Beach County, complaining about aircraft flying overhead. Palm Beach International Airport is a ten-minute drive away. I remember one Friday lunchtime when it felt and sounded as though a plane was taking off or landing every two minutes. The airport, astonishingly, agreed to change flight patterns to spread the noise over a wider area.
In January 2015, Trump sued again, asking for damages of $100 million, accusing the county of ‘creating an unreasonable amount of noise, emissions and pollutants at Mar-a-Lago’, and alleging that the air traffic to PBI was being made to fly over the estate in a ‘deliberate and malicious’ act. That November a Florida court disallowed four of Trump’s six claims. Having won the election, however, he dropped the action, since a no-fly zone is imposed anyway when the president is in residence.
Will he run again in 2020? Will he even manage to serve out his first term? Or will the saga end with the kleptocrat-in-chief following his former attorney Michael Cohen to prison?
Comments
-
2 March 2019
at
7:31am
autismvox
says:
One can only hope (springing eternal in the human breast, despite).
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5 March 2019
at
6:47pm
Rod Miller
says:
Yet another Trump-as-Troglodyte piece. Ho-hum. (Has any pres since JFK had less massive security?)
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17 March 2019
at
1:46am
HBART
says:
@
Rod Miller
Even if Trump were impeached by the house and convicted by the Senate, he would not go to jail. If he is convicted in a court of law he could go to jail. That is more likely. Whatever their failings, Clinton and Obama appointed competent people to run government departments. Trump has appointed a raft of ideologues, incompetents, charlatans and convicted felons. As for blood on his hands: note how many shooters of children, blacks, jews, etc. and would be shooters claim to be inspired by Trump.
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5 March 2019
at
8:53pm
Mary Ross
says:
President George H W Bush also had a private club as his Texas residence while in office. But he didn’t own The Houstonian. Not that being a transient sounds better.
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5 March 2019
at
10:30pm
Simon Glynn
says:
Actually the initial Joining fee for Mar-a-Largo was $100,000 which went down to $50,000 at one point. -- we asked for a refund go $50,000 and where refused!) -- and only up to $200,000 when he was elected president (Emolument Clause anyone?) However what is less excusable is that the "pants president" as your correspondent calls him, or "The Orange Clown" as we more specifically think of him, has sold off the rather fine, mainly Asian, furniture that Majorie Merriweather Post had in there (reportedly for more than he paid for Mar-a-Lago, and replaced it with the truly naff stuff in there now. But what is really inexcusable surely is the ballroom the he built there to house the "charabanc parties" full of psychophants who now wish to attend special events for non-members.This not only ups Ms. Post's excessive gold leaf with the much more ghastly gold paint, but has 14 frightfully cheap chandeliers, and some of the most appallingly badly fake "stressed" mirrors one has ever seen.
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6 March 2019
at
4:01pm
Guido77
says:
Simon Glynn notes the omitted detail re fees; buried in this piece is an omitted detail re Palm Beach airport in the '90s: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/06/us/politics/donald-trump-mar-a-lago.html
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7 March 2019
at
12:59pm
RobotBoy
says:
'Oh Muffy, that terrible man has driven away the chamber group!'
-
7 March 2019
at
4:28pm
Timothy Rogers
says:
Rod Miller seems right-on in suggesting some jail time for Dubbya - a slight improvement would be to co-indict his English enabler, the ineffable Tony Blair, so that they might engage in pleasant "might have been" colloquies. The way things are going now Trump might wind up owning a privatized prison in which they reside.
Read moreThen this burst of questions at the end. Is Donald any more of a kleptocrat than Dubbya, Reagan or Clinton was? Whatever "kleptocrat" means (to me it can only mean enabling the Rich to steal even more from the Poor). Obama himself did pathetically little to narrow the wealth gap in America.
As for going to prison, we've been promised that for over two years now, and it keeps not happening. Levy does realize that Donald would have to be convicted by the senate, which is in Republican hands, doesn't he? Well, if he becomes enough of an electoral liability ,the Repubs will get rid of him, no kidding. But he remains astonishingly popular with his base, seems to me.
Donald has far less blood on his hands than Dubbya did at this point in his presidency, yet it's near-heresy to point this fact out. Dubbya's the guy who Really belongs in jail, but his crimes are out of fashion.
Finally, maybe the best way to undermine Donald would be to shut up about him. Any publicity is good publicity for a guy like that. Levy's basically weak piece is grist to Donald's mill.
While one might have been able to withstand Trump's assault on democracy, and even on common decency, what is simply inexcusable surely is his assault on one's aesthetic sensibilities!
It pretty much sums Trump and now his adopted party up: the man with the loudest plane sues others for noise violations....
'Well, Ernest, what else would you expect from a man with such awful taste in hookers?'