Toni Holt Kramer, founder of the women’s group Trumpettes USA, has lived seasonally in Palm Beach for over a decade and is a longtime member of Mar-a-Lago. Trump’s handling of the virus, political experts say, could hurt his chances for reelection in Florida, which has an abundance of older voters and has rushed to reopen. At least 23 storefronts, including a huge Neiman Marcus that closed last month, are empty, Baker said. and Louis Vuitton - were practically deserted and blasting air-conditioning through open doors onto empty sidewalks. On a sweltering Tuesday last month, stores on Worth Avenue - an upscale shopping district with shops like Gucci, Tiffany & Co. Most have not returned.Īs Trump’s campaign has struggled amid the pandemic, so has the Palm Beach economy. She said that if charities “have a conscience” they would not hold events at the club, and she quoted Dante in an interview with the Washington Post, saying “the darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their neutrality in times of moral crisis.”Ĭharities canceled fundraising galas at Mar-a-Lago in droves. So the man bought the classic Russian novel “Crime and Punishment.”īaker turned heads when she spoke out against Mar-a-Lago in 2017 after Trump said there were “very fine people on both sides” of the deadly “Unite the Right” white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va. The bookstore didn’t yet have “Rage” in stock. “A lot of people in Palm Beach like Trump” because they benefit from his tax policies, he said. He said that he was a member of Mar-a-Lago for two years in the early 2000s and that when Trump showed up, he “put on a great show.” But at the time, “it was harmless. He would not give his name because he associates with Trump supporters on the island, but he said he was a 63-year-old Republican who splits his time between New York and Palm Beach. “I’d vote for Joe Biden if he were in a coma,” the man declared. Last month in Palm Beach, a tanned man in a blue surgical mask walked into Classic Bookshop, asking for a copy of Bob Woodward’s book, “Rage,” in which Trump acknowledges downplaying the danger of the coronavirus.

He fought with the California Coastal Commission for nearly a decade, got retroactive approval from the city and was allowed to keep it. He pulled a similar move outside Los Angeles by hoisting an oversize flag on a 70-foot pole at his golf club in Rancho Palos Verdes without a permit. The dispute was settled when Trump agreed to a pole 10 feet shorter and to donate $100,000 to charity. The government gave it back to her foundation. Mar-a-Lago, designated a National Historic Landmark four decades ago, was built in the late 1920s by cereal heiress Marjorie Merriweather Post, who left the 126-room, crescent-shaped mansion to the federal government after her death for use as a winter White House. Rockefeller, opened the Royal Poinciana Hotel, then the world’s largest resort hotel, and extended his Florida East Coast Railway south through the region. In 1894, Henry Flagler, a Standard Oil tycoon and business partner of John D. Palm Beach’s high-society lifestyle harks back to the Gilded Age. One reads, “Trump: You are the virus.” Another, “Dogs 2020: Because humans suck.” But just across the Intracoastal Waterway, in West Palm Beach, signs for Trump and Democratic nominee Joe Biden compete for attention in neighboring yards. Residents who support the president say they don’t post yard signs or fly Trump flags because they don’t want their homes targeted by protesters.

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