Trump's Second Term Transforms Palm Beach into Political Power Hub

Between this December and mid-January, the center of the political world will be Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence and private club in Palm Beach.

Just days after Trump’s solid election to a second term as president, business for hotels and restaurants in the West Palm and Palm Beach areas has been “booming,” said one hotel executive, who asked to remain anonymous.

“The stock market’s booming and Trump is here,” the executive said.

Air Force One will soon be parked at Palm Beach International Airport. Presidential motorcades will be scooting down Southern Boulevard. Mar-a-Lago, according to Republican sources, will be the Winter White House, and Trump, they say, is expected to spend much time there.

“The transition team is going to be operating down here in Florida,” Corey Lewandowski, a Trump campaign advisor, said in a statement.

Such exclusive hotels in the Palm Beaches such as The Breakers, which has 534 rooms in its new Mediterranean Courtyard, are pretty much booked, according to Palm Beach resort officials.

This transition period for Trump will be different than it was when he first took office after the 2016 election. Then, the transition took place mostly at Trump Tower in Manhattan and at Trump’s golf country club in Bedminster, N.J. But Trump later moved to Florida, where he votes and which he considers home.

A crush of media people, Republican politicians, business executives, Secret Service agents, and MAGA-types has descended on West Palm and Palm Beach since election night. Many of the political types are jockeying for jobs in the new administration.

According to some local sources, among the luminaries are Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the anti-vaxer and member of America’s most famous Democratic political family. Kennedy was spotted at the swanky Ben Hotel.

Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, has been close by Trump’s side, and has even set up residence inside Mar-a-Lago.

All this is only two years after the FBI, on a search, found classified documents about U.S. nuclear weapons and spy satellites stashed in a bathroom at Mar-a-Lago.

Mar-a-Lago is a place of outsized objects. Huge golden Great Dane dog sculptures are posted in the lobby and on every floor of the main estate. Doors to each room are an opulent dark wood and gold.

The whole estate is an eye-popping 62,500-square-feet. Mar-a-Lago, Spanish for “Sea-to-Lake,” encompasses 126 rooms on 17 acres of land. It was built for the socialite and Marjorie Merriweather Post, a cereal company heiress who bequeathed the Mar-a-Lago property to the National Park Service.

Trump bought the property in 1985 and in 1994 converted it into Mar-a-Lago Club, with guest rooms, a spa and hotel rooms. Trump’s family maintains private quarters in a closed-off-area on the grounds.

Trump hosted foreign leaders there as well as used the facility for weekends and vacations. But controversy and Trump seem to go hand-in-hand, even in a heavenly spot such as Mar-a-Lago. In 2006, Trump raised an 8-foot flagpole at the club. Zoning officials asked him to take it down, saying codes limit flag poles to 42 feet. Town officials charged Trump $1,250 for every day the flag stayed up.

Trump sued the Town of Palm Beach, but eventually dropped the suit and the town waived its fees. Trump was allowed to keep a pole that was 10 feet shorter than the original.

Trump has also tangled with Palm Beach County over aircraft going to and from Palm Beach International Airport, which he said affected Mar-a-Lago. The suits, filed in the 1990s, ended when the county collaborated with the Federal Aviation Administration to change flight patterns so the noisiest airplanes flew over a wider area.

The president-elect has held numerous Republican fundraisers at Mar-a-Lago. He said they have been so successful he sometimes calls the estate and club “the Mar-a-Lago machine.”