Four years after the end of Donald Trump's first term in office, Mar-a-Lago, his estate in Palm Beach, Florida, which he has transformed into a private club open to the world's greatest fortunes, is reclaiming its nickname of the "Winter White House." For the president-elect, the estate serves as both his personal residence and the headquarters from which he is currently forming the administration he will lead the country with in January. Celebrities such as billionaire Elon Musk and Doug Burgum, Governor of North Dakota, were on hand to celebrate his victory on November 5. The very next day, according to a BBC article, the hotels around the luxurious mansion quickly sold out, invaded by all those hoping to glean a position in the state apparatus.
The residence, with 114 rooms spread over several wings, covers almost 6,000 square meters. It was built in the 1920s by Marjorie Merriweather Post, heiress to a large family of grain entrepreneurs. In 1985, Trump, then a New York real estate tycoon, bought the villa and turned it into a circle reserved for 500 members, not one more, whose identities remain secret for the most part. In 2012, membership cost around $100,000. After taking office in 2016, Donald Trump doubled the entry fee, reaching $700,000 by the end of his first term. The last four membership cards still on sale today are worth $1 million, to which $20,000 in annual dues must be added.
During Trump's first term, several ambassadors and cabinet members were recruited from the Mar-a-Lago club. Such was the case of Wilbur Ross, former secretary of state for commerce, and Betsy DeVos, secretary of education. Instead of receiving his foreign counterparts at the White House, Trump has often invited them to Florida. In February 2017, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzō Abe was there when North Korea fired a ballistic missile toward the Sea of Japan. The mix of genres earned the owner an indictment for "withholding classified information." In the summer of 2022, an FBI search of Mar-a-Lago revealed that the Republican was storing confidential documents there linked to the security of the US and its nuclear infrastructure.
In less than a decade, Trump has transformed Mar-a-Lago into a meeting place for the most extreme fringe of the Republican Party. The ultra-conservative think tank America First Policy Institute, founded in 2021 by former White House staff under Trump, regularly holds its conferences there. Over the past four years, according to the New York Times, nearly 60 Republican political leaders have visited Mar-a-Lago, hoping to gain public support or even an appearance from the former president during one of their rallies. This politicization is highly profitable for Trump, the sole owner of the premises: In 2022, Mar-a-Lago's profits amounted to $22 million.