A few Mar-a-Largo members have silently left after the former president Donald Trump moved into his own luxury resort.
Guests have been walking out of Trump’s private club Mar-a-Lago this month, located in Palm Beach, Florida, allegedly because of the former president’s arrival.
This is according to historian, author and journalist Laurence Leamer, who wrote Mar-a-Lago: Inside the Gates of Power at Donald Trump’s Presidential Palace.
According to Leamer, members are silently leaving the resort, which Trump dubbed his ‘Winter White House’, because they do not want to be affiliated with the press surrounding him.
Speaking to MSNBC, Leamer said:
“Many of the members are not going [to Mar-a-Lago] very often because it is a very dispirited place.”
Members are reportedly ‘not all that concerned about politics’, but have complained about the food and lack of entertainment at the resort.
Leamer continued, saying residents in the area were paying up to 200,000 dollars for a membership to the Mar-a-Lago resort while Trump was president. However, the historian expressed doubts about whether members would continue to want to pay now Trump’s presidency is behind him, and his power has declined.
With the loss of revenue, the resort could face troubled times.
Similarly, neighbours of Mar-a-Lago are reportedly ‘up in arms’ over Trump’s return, according to MSNBC. This stems from a history of conflicts between neighbours of the club and the former president, who once tried unsuccessfully to subdivide his plot. Trump also attempted to get building permission for a dock, which he said the secret service wanted him to build for security purposes, only to later retract this statement and say it was for personal reasons.
Neighbours of Mar-a-Lago sent a demand letter last month addressed to the town of Palm Beach and the secret service, asserting Trump had lost his legal right to live at the resort because of an agreement he signed in the early 1990s when he converted the storied estate from his private residence to a private club, The Washington Post reports. Whether the letter had effect remains to be seen.
