The ornate ballrooms and manicured lawns of Mar-a-Lago have hosted a variety of affairs for the wealthy and connected in the Florida resort’s nearly 100-year history: philanthropic galas, lavish banquets, society lunches. During the presidency of Donald Trump, who has owned the property since 1985, the club drew a paying clientele of establishment Republicans and others currying favor from the president.
But since Trump left office in 2021, Mar-a-Lago has transformed into a White House in exile and the nerve center for some of the most extreme elements of the party’s MAGA wing. This includes a nearly steady stream of promoters of conspiracy theories that include lies that the 2020 election was stolen and that the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021, was a federal setup.
This portrait of the company Trump keeps was assembled from a New York Times analysis of people and groups that have spent significant time and money at the resort, which has been his primary residence since his presidency ended.
The analysis, built on a review of videos, photos and other evidence of attendance at Mar-a-Lago, found that events hosted by ultra-right organizations and political fundraisers now dominate Mar-a-Lago’s calendar, and even officially non-political events can feel like rallies. In this gilded echo chamber, Trump enjoys unwavering devotion — and collects the staggering price of admission.
From black tie to red hats
Before Trump became president, Mar-a-Lago was a magnet for Palm Beach society, hosting opulent galas from fall through spring that raised funds for some of the nation’s most prestigious charities.
Political events were rare. During the 2014-15 season — the last before Trump officially entered politics — the Times counted 52 fundraiser events at Mar-a-Lago. Of them, just one was political: the Republican Party of Palm Beach County’s annual Lincoln Day dinner.
This past winter, the Times found only six of those events were still being held at Mar-a-Lago — including the GOP’s Lincoln Day event. Traditional charities began peeling away from the club in August 2017, after then-President Trump said there were “very fine people on both sides” of a violent rally to save a Confederate statue in Charlottesville, Virginia. Of the groups that departed, 10 moved their events to Mar-a-Lago’s chief rival in the Palm Beach banquet business: The Breakers resort.
Groups aligned with Trump’s politics have taken their place.
Turning Point USA, a right-wing student organization, began hosting an annual gala at Mar-a-Lago in 2018. America First Policy Institute, a nonprofit set up in 2021 by former Trump administration officials, has thrown an “America First Gala” at Mar-a-Lago every year since its founding. America’s Future Inc. — a group led by Michael Flynn that has amplified the false conspiracy theory that a global cabal of pedophiles controls the media and politics — has held two events, as has Border911, founded by Thomas D. Homan, who served as acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement during the Trump administration.
“This is where we come to recharge our batteries and to know we will retake our nation,” Sebastian Gorka, a former White House aide for Trump, said from the Mar-a-Lago stage in December. Gorka is the host of a radio show that describes itself as “the new front lines in the ongoing Culture War against the Left.”
Event organizers, speakers and attendees use their proximity to display loyalty to and admiration for Trump. They say he is the “greatest president” (in “modern history,” “the history of America” or “since Abraham Lincoln”). They give him awards (“American Defender of Zion,” “Founding Fathers” and “America’s Champion for Children”). They tell him they love him and sing songs in his honor.
All campaign trails lead to Palm Beach
The presidential race is not the only one rooted at Mar-a-Lago. A visit to the resort has become an essential rite for Republican candidates. Since 2021, more than 60 Republicans in or running for Congress or state office have spent money at Mar-a-Lago, most on fundraisers. Their ultimate objective: securing an endorsement or a surprise appearance from Trump.
According to federal and state campaign finance filings through the first quarter of 2024, more than $4.7 million has been spent on the property by candidates and political committees since Trump left the White House and made Mar-a-Lago his permanent residence. Trump’s campaign, and super political action committees supporting it, make up about a quarter of that total.
Publicly, Trump has downplayed the idea that his club is a central political destination.
“We don’t do too many of these things at Mar-a-Lago,” Trump said in March 2022 at a Mar-a-Lago fundraiser for Vernon Jones, who was running for the Republican nomination in Georgia’s 10th congressional district.
“I don’t want to make it a totally political place,” Trump added. But in reality, that’s largely what Mar-a-Lago had become. More than two dozen midterm candidates had already held fundraisers on the property when Trump made that statement.
The political is profitable
As Mar-a-Lago’s owner, Trump is the beneficiary of its profits — and the club’s evolution seems to have been good for his bottom line.
The Trump Organization is a private business, and, for years, very little was known publicly about the financial health of its clubs, including Mar-a-Lago. But that changed when Letitia James, the New York attorney general, sued Trump for exaggerating the value of his properties. Detailed records of the club’s finances were made public as evidence.
Those records show that Mar-a-Lago actually lost money in 2012, but then its profits began to climb as Trump entered politics. They hit a peak in 2017, as the club added new customers — including the U.S. government, which paid for bedrooms used by Secret Service agents and liquor drunk by Trump’s aides — without losing its existing ones, like the charities that rented out the club’s ballrooms for fundraiser galas.
But many of those charity customers began to flee Mar-a-Lago during Trump’s presidency, with operating profits bottoming out at $4.2 million in the COVID-stunted year of 2020, according to an analysis by Laurence Hirsh, a consultant hired by James.
Since Trump left office, however, Mar-a-Lago’s profits have shot up again — even as the club has been in the headlines for its role in both the New York civil case and one of several criminal cases against Trump. (According to federal prosecutors, Trump used Mar-a-Lago to store classified documents — often in close proximity to partygoers — that he had illegally removed from the White House. Trump has pleaded not guilty to these charges.)
Records entered into evidence in the New York fraud case by an analyst for the Trump Organization, Greg Christovich, showed that Mar-a-Lago had a net profit of $22 million in 2022. The analysis showed that profits at Trump’s 11 other U.S. clubs — most of them golf clubs he visits far less often than Mar-a-Lago — had also rebounded since their lows in 2020. But Mar-a-Lago still stands out: Its profits were more than double those of any other Trump club, according to Christovich’s analysis.
One major reason for that increase: Christovich said that Mar-a-Lago had raised its membership initiation fee to $600,000, the highest it had ever been. The fee, which entitles the club’s roughly 500 members to use its dining rooms, beach club, tennis courts and other facilities, had been $100,000 when Trump won the 2016 election. The club’s new members paid $12 million in initiation fees in 2022, Christovich’s records showed — money that was effectively all profit for the club.
Another reason for the club’s surge: Mar-a-Lago reported $11 million in profits from its food and beverage operations, which appeared to include both the club’s member dining areas and its catering business. Mar-a-Lago has two large ballrooms that host banquets, weddings and private parties. The Trump Organization did not respond to questions about whether the club had raised its rates for banquets, and the turnover among its customers makes it hard to compare the cost of the same events from year to year. But one of the club’s steadiest customers, the Republican Party of Palm Beach County, reported paying more. Its Lincoln Day dinner in 2023 cost $318,000, up from $158,000 in inflation-adjusted dollars seven years earlier, campaign finance records show.
“I believe there was an increase in the cost, steadily, over the years,” said Michael Barnett, who was chair of the county GOP until 2023, and who is now an elected county commissioner. But Barnett said the cost increase had not deterred the party. “You can’t ask for a better venue,” he said. “We would never consider going anywhere else.”
Frank Vain, a consultant who advises private clubs, said that other clubs in Florida, with no connection to politics, had also seen huge increases in profits over the same period. “We’re calling this a bit of a golden age for private clubs,” he said.
A recent study by the firm RSM, which serves as a consultant to golf clubs, found that private clubs in the same area as Mar-a-Lago had also sharply raised their initiation fees, though their average fee was still far lower than Mar-a-Lago’s. The average initiation fee in the area increased to $176,000 in 2023 from about $126,000, adjusted for inflation, in 2021.
A MAGA oasis
Of course, a key distinction sets Mar-a-Lago apart from other clubs a wealthy Palm Beach resident might consider joining. A motivation beyond luxury or privacy motivates the true believers who have flocked to South Ocean Boulevard: MAGA is a movement, and Mar-a-Lago is its epicenter.
Fred Rustmann, a former member of the club who supports Trump’s policies, said he canceled his membership in 2021 because the clientele had “started to change to people who were kissing his butt all the time,” he said, referring to Trump. And, unlike when Trump was president, “he was there a lot,” Rustmann said. “There was a lot of hand-shaking, and applause, and everybody stands up, and wow-wow-wow. It just wasn’t my kind of thing anymore.”
Since Trump left office, and as he has increasingly aligned with the extreme fringe of the Republican Party, photos posted on social media of people and events at Mar-a-Lago reflect that right-wing personalities have become more woven into the tapestry of the club.
— This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
