Trump heading off to Florida
Unwelcome in NY, president plans to live at Mar-a-lago
President Donald
Trump will leave Washington this week politically wounded, silenced on social media and essentially unwelcome in his lifelong hometown of New York.
The defeated president will take up residence at his Mar-a-lago Club in Palm Beach, where duespaying members applaud him whenever he eats meals or mingles on the deck.
South Florida has fast become a hub of right-wing power brokers and media characters, and some of Trump’s adult children are making plans to move to the area.
Even as Trump broods privately over his second impeachment last week and the election he continues to falsely insist he won, his aides are at work to establish a Trump fiefdom in the Sunshine State aimed at maintaining his influence over Republican politics, according to allies and advisers.
Some of Trump’s associates are buzzing about a possible presidential library and museum and about the birth of a family dynasty, should his children, Donald Jr. or Ivanka, someday run for political office. Florida is seen as a better launchpad for the Trumps than New York.
Trump has become something of a pariah in Washington and New York in the wake of the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol, but Florida offers him a place to try to rehabilitate himself.
Newsmax chief executive Christopher Ruddy, a Trump friend and Mar-alago member, predicted that the president would remain a powerful force in politics and the media.
“We don’t know what legal issues are going to arise, but discounting those, I think he’s going to remain a global force,” Ruddy said. “I think he’s going to like being postpresident
more than he liked being president, because you have a lot of the perks without as many of the restrictions.”
Trump is winding down his presidency largely out of public view. There remain sharp disputes among the president and his advisers about a final round of pardons he may issue, according to people familiar with the discussions.
Other than flying last Tuesday to Texas to autograph a piece of the soaring steel border wall his administration constructed, Trump has demurred on suggestions from advisers to spend his final days touting his achievements and attempting to burnish his legacy.
Rather, Trump has been consumed with anger over his impeachment Wednesday for inciting the Capitol riot, advisers said. He is also upset by the silence from many of his most vigorous defenders, they said.
Trump complained bitterly to aides about Rep. Liz Cheney, R-wyo., and other Republicans who voted to impeach him. “They’ll have primaries, all of them,” one aide recalled Trump saying on Thursday.
Aides said Trump has occasionally brought up the Georgia Senate races, arguing that he is not to blame for Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue losing both seats in the Jan. 5 runoff elections.
Michael D’antonio, a
Trump biographer, said the president’s state of victimhood fits the narrative he has concocted for his entire life. “This is the end that he would have scripted for himself, actually,” D’antonio said. “He has always imagined himself as an embattled person. He’s talked about life itself being a constant struggle for survival and how he’s surrounded by enemies . . . that the world conspires against him and that he is a lonely hero who is underappreciated and besieged.”
Trump, who has refused to participate in traditional transfer-of-power rituals, plans to leave Washington on Wednesday morning, just before Biden is inaugurated. Trump will stage his own departure ceremony at Joint Base Andrews before his final trip aboard Air Force One. A military ceremony is being planned.
In New York, residents have long shunned him.
But in Florida, Trump looks to be surrounded by supporters, including some of his adult children.
Trump will have a small post-presidential staff working for him in Florida, according to an administration official, who confirmed a Bloomberg report.
South Florida is home to talk-radio stars Rush Limbaugh and Mark Levin, conservative commentator Ann Coulter and several Fox personalities. And at least two of Trump’s Cabinet members have homes in South Florida.
Ruddy said, “There’s a lot of New Yorkers there, a
lot of personal friends he has that live down there. It’s a New York environment.”
Speculation is also coursing through Trump World about a possible presidential library and museum. No announcements have been made, but two people familiar with discussions said it is likely to be located in Florida and run by Dan Scavino, one of Trump’s longestserving and most loyal aides.
A top fundraiser on Trump’s campaign said the president has told supporters he wants to raise $2 billion for the library and thinks he can collect it in small-dollar donations from his grass-roots supporters.
“I thought to myself, what is this alternative fantasy life you’re living?” this fundraiser said. “I have no clue where they think they’ll get this money raised. Anyone who gives to him will be radioactive.”