Trump shuns White House for his Florida mansion
THE US Presidential mansion is pretty flash, but it’s got nothing on the opulence of the ‘winter White House’.
PRESIDENT Donald Trump has been spending a lot of time in Florida lately.
His opulent resort Mar-a-Lago hasn’t just been a getaway from Washington but the location of some major moments of the presidency.
It was from here that he announced Lieutenant General Herbert Raymond McMaster as his replacement for national security adviser.
And where security concerns were sparked after a dinner with the Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
The meal was interrupted by news that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un launched a ballistic missile towards Japan, in his most antagonistic move since Mr Trump’s inauguration.
The President and Mr Abe began discussing the incident in plain view of everyone else in the room, while aides used their smartphones to provide light for the leaders to read confidential documents.
Other diners quickly whipped out their own phones, posting images of the exchange on social media before the pair delivered a press conference.
In February he tweeted: “Meeting with Generals at Mar-a-Lago in Florida. Very interesting!”. However, the post mysteriously vanished a short time later and officials refused to comment on the reason.
The glitz and glamour of the resort seems to fit Trump’s often larger than life antics but he isn’t the creator of the lavish spread, which in a strange quirk of history was always meant to be a presidential retreat.
It was built by cereal magnate and socialite Marjorie Merriweather Post, one of the world’s richest women at the time and was completed in 1927.
According to the property’s website, “there was little else here but undergrowth and swampy grounds, seemingly of not much use for a building site”.
“With her realtor, Post crawled through underbrush of jungle-type growth in search of the perfect piece of property; the consequence of that search is the main house Mar-a-Lago, which is Spanish for Sea to Lake.”
Mrs Post Hutton, as she became, bequeathed the property to the US Government after her death at 86 in 1973 with the intention that it would be used for Presidents and other dignitaries in the colder months.
Author Laurence Leamer told CTV News then-President Jimmy Carter didn’t want it (there were also concerns about security), so the property was “basically mothballed” and then handed back to the Post Foundation in 1981 and then it went up for sale.
Mr Trump bought it for a bargain in 1985 for a reported $US5 million.
According to its website, the 118-room resort “sits royally amid 20 valuable acres of manicured lawns, vibrant gardens and sweeping sea-to-lake vistas”.
It has all the facilities you’d expect from a glamorous resort: fine dining, an oceanfront swimming pool, a day spa and salon, tennis courts, a croquet court, a chip golf course, a fitness centre and two elegant ballrooms.
The club provides “an elite lifestyle reserved for a select few”, and as you’d expect, membership isn’t cheap. In January, the company hiked the price of buying in from SUS150,000 ($A194,690) to SUS200,000 ($A259,580), plus members are required to pay annual dues of US$14,000 ($A18170).
Mr Trump’s butler of 30 years, Anthony Senecal, last year revealed some details of the daily routine when he’s in residence at Mar-a-Lago.
Mr Trump reportedly rises before dawn to read the bundle of newspapers at the door of his private quarters, and on Sundays he drives to the golf course — alternating between his black and white Bentleys. Mr Senecal also said Mr Trump turned the library full of rare books into a bar, complete with a painting of himself in tennis whites on the wall.
It’s clearly a favourite spot — not only did it host the reception for his lavish wedding to the First Lady in 2005, but he returns every year for a New Year’s Eve bash, selling hundreds of tickets for more than US$500 each.
The Florida trips have not been cheap with The Washington Post estimating each visit has cost $3.89 million.
The article also reported club guests may be getting in the way of security.
One example, captured on video, showed a female Mar-a-Lago diner fawning over burly agents on her way into the club, saying: “The Secret Service is so hot”.
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