Members are leaving the ‘sad’ Mar-a-Lago after Trump loses

“It’s a very discouraged place,” said Laurence Leamer, historian and author of “Mar-a-Lago: Inside the Gates of Power at Donald Trump’s Presidential Palace”, to MSNBC host Alex Witt on Saturday “Weekends with Alex Witt” . He said members “are not concerned with politics and said the food is not good”.

Leamer said he spoke to several former members who “left quietly” after Trump left office.

Trump moved to Palm Beach, Florida, after his term ended last week. But without the prestige of the incumbent United States president working on the property, guests are discovering that Mar-a-Lago has lost his footing. There is no entertainment on the property during the pandemic, and Leamer added, “It is a sad place … it is not what it was.”

Disgruntled members may lead to a lower payment for Trump. When Trump was president, many people paid up to $ 200,000 for the Mar-a-Lago association, Leamer pointed out, and he said they don’t think they will continue to pay that price.

Mar-a-Lago has long been ridiculed by critics as a dull and stuffy club, full of Trump memories – some of them false. Early morning presenter Jimmy Kimmel reported on Friday a visit to the resort just before Trump became president.

“You couldn’t exaggerate how comical it is,” said Kimmel on The Ringer’s “The Bill Simmons Podcast”. “Everyone is 100 years old.”

Kimmel told Simmons that he went to the resort about six years ago to have dinner with Howard Stern, who lived near the property at the time. He described the Mar-a-Lago participants as “stooped people who are eating soft foods” and said the place is covered in pictures of Trump.

“It was just a quiet and terrible place,” said Kimmel. “And now he lives in this terrible place.”

Trump’s hotels and hospitality companies were hit particularly hard during the coronavirus pandemic, but sales at the Mar-a-Lago resort increased last year, from $ 21.4 million to $ 24.2 million. In 2019, the former president transferred his permanent residence to the Florida resort of Trump Tower in New York. But there are still doubts about whether he will be allowed to live there permanently, because that could violate his 1993 agreement with the city of Palm Beach.

“Even here, people don’t like him,” said Leamer, referring to Palm Beach residents – many of whom voted for Trump in the hope of lower taxes and an expanding stock market. “It’s just another measure of how your power has waned.”

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