Trump has helped make his neighbours richer than ever. They aren’t pleased

Palm Beach, Florida: There are no star maps of Palm Beach, and many of its biggest estates are hidden behind elaborate landscaping. To learn what belongs to whom, and how much it cost, a guide is needed – and Dana Koch, who has been selling real estate here for 22 years, knows the area cold.

“Howard and Beth Stern live here,” he said, pointing to a gate flanked by shrubbery. “This whole place, he paid about $US50 million ($76.6 million) for it years ago. Now it’s worth $US200 million.”

Donald Trump has made Palm Beach a tourist attraction.Credit: Getty

On it goes, an inventory of rich and famous people. Jon Bon Jovi lives there. That’s where Roger Ailes slipped in the shower and died. William Lauder built this, after buying Rush Limbaugh’s place for $US155 million and tearing it down.

Some homes are identified by job (NFL owner, sugar magnate), others by names (Dr Oz, Tom Ford, Charles Schwab). That lot once belonged to Jeffrey Epstein, whose place was razed. A new house is under construction, and the owners, Koch speculates, are going to apply for a new address.

These have been busy months for Koch, 52, who is not related to the famous Republican donors. (“Same name, different bank account.”)

Palm Beach is, of course, home to President Donald Trump’s private club, Mar-a-Lago. After the election in November, there was a “Trump bump”, with $US100 million worth of property in Palm Beach going under contract in the span of a week. Late last year, Fox News host Sean Hannity purchased a $US23.5 million mansion in nearby Manalapan, then spent $US14.9 million on an oceanfront townhouse in Palm Beach in January.

The real surge happened later on, with sales of single-family homes rising by 67 per cent in the seven months between November and May compared with the same period last year. This Trump-ward migration had little to do with Trump, realtors say. Most of these purchases were made by people waiting for post-election clarity about taxes, regulations and the direction of the economy.

But for years, Trump-adjacent celebrities and multimillionaires have been moving to the area, one of the world’s priciest ZIP codes. Sylvester Stallone spent $US33.5 million for an oceanfront estate in 2020. Citadel CEO Ken Griffin has reportedly spent years and $US450 million snapping up 25 acres of parcels in what’s called Billionaires Row.

But the true economic – and cultural – impact of the second Trump administration here isn’t in the dust of construction sites. It’s the noisy influx of Republican insiders, favour-seekers and pols who have altered the delicate social ecosystem of one of the richest enclaves in the world, home to more than 50 billionaires.

The newcomers regard Trump as a living tourist attraction, and Palm Beach, an 18-mile sliver of land off the east coast of South Florida, as his buzzy natural habitat.

Palm Beach is home to Donald Trump’s private club, Mar-a-Lago.Credit: Getty Images

Trump has played a key role in the stratospheric real estate transactions here, though indirectly. During his first term, he signed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, which sharply limited the amount of state and local tax that could be deducted from federal taxes. For high-net-worth individuals, moving to a state with no state income tax, like Florida, was suddenly an idea worth many millions of dollars.

“The ripple effect has kept prices soaring for years,” said Holly Meyer Lucas, a real estate agent in South Florida.

For decades, Palm Beach was a redoubt of old-money families, with names like Whitney and Harriman. A strain of country-club antisemitism had been embedded in Palm Beach for years, many residents say, and it surfaced, inevitably, in the country clubs. Only one, the Palm Beach Country Club, was dominated by Jews.

Enter Donald Trump. He’d bought Mar-a-Lago in 1985, and turned it into a membership club a decade later. He welcomed anyone who could pay the $US25,000 initiation fee.

“It became an overwhelmingly Jewish club,” said Laurence Leamer, author of Mar-a-Lago: Inside the Gates of Power at Donald Trump’s Presidential Palace.

It was also, soon enough, the hoppingest spot on the island. At the time, Trump owned casinos and had pull with the best entertainers in the industry. Billy Joel performed. So did Tony Bennett, Celine Dion and Rod Stewart.

“And Trump was a wonderful host,” Leamer said. “He would stand at the door, greet everyone. He didn’t do this to change the world. He did it to make a buck. But who cares? The results were terrific.”

Mar-a-Lago has evolved. After 2016, and the start of Trump’s first term, locals who had flocked to it for a bit of networking found it was soon overstuffed with people they didn’t like. Getting a reservation for dinner became a chore. Many in the old guard quit, replaced by the new contingent, even after the initiation fee was doubled to $US200,000 in 2017.

Andrés DePew, a 27-year-old entrepreneur, spends a lot of time at Mar-a-Lago. Credit: NYT

Today, the initiation fee is $US1 million, and the Moorish mansion is busier than ever.

The MAGA crowd at Mar-a-Lago and around the island is something new, and as with everything that is new in a place that has a style of its own, not exactly welcome.

“It’s like new convertibles, fake nails, fake boobs, fake hair, fake eyes and big jewellery,” said Celerie Kemble, an interior decorator who grew up in Palm Beach.

At dinners and galas at Mar-a-Lago, Secret Service agents tell guests to stay in their seats when the president walks in, and please, ladies and gentlemen, do not take any photographs.

“I think this town is a little bit aghast at itself. But the fact is, everybody here is safe because of their money.”

Celerie Kemble, an interior decorator who grew up in Palm Beach.

This rarely works.

“It’s like you’re asking kids not to eat sugar, right?” said Andrés DePew, a 27-year-old entrepreneur who founded a chapter of the Conservative Political Action Conference in his native Colombia.

DePew has posted many images of his own from Mar-a-Lago, part of an Instagram feed crammed with parties and dinners with other young, photogenic conservatives. On one memorable night, he met Mike Tyson and Russell Brand (“Great guy”) along with Michael Flynn, a former US national security adviser; Bo Loudon, an 18-year-old conservative influencer; and one of the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills.

Leta Austin at her store Leta Austin Foster & Daughters.Credit: NYT

For revellers in search of more rarefied, less politicised air, there’s the Carriage House. It’s one of a relatively new style of private club catering to a younger audience seeking a bit of New York City’s always-on energy. A membership reportedly costs $US400,000.

Put off, but staying put

Republicans outnumber Democrats in Palm Beach County 2-to-1, according to data from the Supervisor of Elections. If the resistance to the MAGA tide has a spiritual home here, it is Leta Austin Foster & Daughters, a twee little store that sells bedding, children’s clothing, gifts and interior design services near Worth Avenue. In June 2020, the only person to show up at a Black Lives Matter protest in front of Town Hall was Foster, then 80. Many retailers boarded up their stores, braced for vandalism that never happened.

Foster’s daughter India grew up on Palm Beach, and one recent afternoon she sat on a staircase in the store and mused about the changes she’s seen over the years. On the plus side, the place has gotten younger. When she moved back in 2006, after living in San Francisco, she looked up some stats and found that less than 1 per cent of the island’s population was under 35 years old.

“Here’s a young person,” she said to a 20ish customer, and everyone else within earshot. “This never happened before.”

But many of the members of Generation Z and plenty of Millennials she meets grate on her. One guy told her that he is “part of the new world order.” So as gorgeous as Palm Beach is, India Foster isn’t sure she can handle the rightward tilt of the place for the rest of her life. (And at least for her business, the influx of young MAGA types has not helped the bottom line.)

The MAGA day-trippers notwithstanding, Republicans here still tend to be the variety that gets their news from The Wall Street Journal, not Newsmax. Many are deeply put off by Trump. But they will benefit from much of the president’s agenda, like tax cuts for the rich, and their beloved island will continue to prosper, whether they like him or not.

“I think this town is a little bit aghast at itself,” said Kemble. “But the fact is, everybody here is safe because of their money.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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