Trump holds court at Mar-a-lago
Events at Fla. club have helped GOP raise millions
The lobby of the Trump Hotel in Washington – dubbed America’s Living Room after loyalists made it their favorite schmoozing ground during Donald Trump’s presidency – has been replaced by the former president’s inviteonly gilded private club, Mar-a-lago.
From GOP leaders to congressional lawmakers to donors to prospective political heir apparents, a steady stream of callers and wooers has steadily descended on the Palm Beach, Florida, club in the past few weeks. All are falling in line in seeking Trump’s blessing and support – and money.
In their doing so, the question of how much clout Trump would retain after leaving office, and how he would wield it, has been answered. In under two months, Trump has established himself as the GOP’S king and queen maker – drawing to his ornate private club some of the party’s top influencers.
“The majority of the party is with him,” said Miami-based GOP strategist and podcast host Gianno Caldwell.
Although Trump’s banishment from social media left him unable to broadcast and boast about his new role in the party online, news reports and posts to social media by others have confirmed Trump is holding court at Mar-a-lago. Unlike his D.C. hotel, which is open to the public, Mar-a-lago is a private club, and only those selected by Trump are allowed in.
The weekly treks by Republican lawmakers and notables come as the party struggles with how it will handle Trump’s efforts to remain a key player in GOP politics. And as GOP strategists plan efforts to retake Congress by electing Republicans while also deepening the party’s grip on state capitals across the country. Mar-a-lago has proven to be a particularly lucrative fundraising destination, for GOP organizations and Trump. Since 2018, the Republican National Committee has spent over $290,000 at Mar-a-lago. The events have helped the party raise millions.
The RNC will spend even more in April when it hosts its annual spring retreat dinner for major donors at the former president’s club, according to The Washington Post. The dinner is traditionally held at the local hotel that hosts the annual weekend retreat.
The RNC moved the dinner to the former president’s private club to accommodate Trump, the headline speaker, and guests who would like to visit the club, according to the Washington Post report. But the RNC’S apparent effort to steer Trump toward detente by moving
its dinner to Mar-a-lago and inviting Trump to speak did not work.
Instead, the intraparty divide took a brow-raising twist March 5 when Trump’s lawyers sent out cease-anddesist letters to the RNC, the National Republican Congressional Committee and the National Republican Senatorial Committee, demanding they no longer use his name and likeness on fund-raising emails and merchandise, according to Politico.
The three GOP groups are the largest fund-raising organizations focused on electing Republicans to state and national offices.
On March 9, Trump’s Save America PAC sent out a statement from the former president saying that while he “fully” supported the Republican Party he would “not support RINOS and fools, and it is not their right to use my likeness or image to raise funds.”
The statement called on Republicans and the Trump base to “donate to our Save America PAC” to help “the America First movement and doing it right.”
The RNC denied Trump’s cease-anddesist demand but agreed not to use Trump’s name and image to raise money without his permission. Apparently, though, the RNC received Trump’s blessing for an email it sent out Wednesday inviting donors to contribute to the party for a chance to meet the president at the party’s spring retreat in Palm Beach in April.
Caldwell said despite the support for Trump among party leadership, donors and elected officials, there is widespread evidence of significant fault lines in the conservative movement.
“The party is fractured, so it’s going to be very difficult to unite the party in a way which is cohesive for legitimate forward movement,” said Caldwell, host of the “Outloud With Gianno Caldwell” podcast on iheartradio.
Caldwell said that split was clear even at Trump’s highly anticipated return to the political stage at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Orlando late last month.
A Democratic communications consultant said Trump is basically kicking the Republican Party to the curb with the acquiescence of the party.
“The Republican Party is being eaten alive from within by this,” said former Obama presidential campaign adviser Spencer Critchley. “He is doing all this stuff that only serves his own impulsive interest of the moment and the Republican Party seems helpless to do anything but go along with it, even though he is attacking one of the things they presumably care most about, their ability to raise money.”
Nonetheless, a top fundraiser for Trump and Republicans said Trump is the undisputable leader of the party and the clear choice among most for the presidential nomination in three years.
“You can’t underestimate he is the de facto ideological leader of the party,” said Blair Brandt, a political consultant in Palm Beach and former Florida cochair of the Trump Victory Finance Committee. “He is the presumptive front-runner for 2024 at this time.”
If Trump does not run again, he will likely hand-pick the party’s next presidential candidate, Brandt said.
Still, it took just eight days after the Jan. 20 inauguration of President Joe Biden for the pilgrimages to Mar-a-lago to begin. House Minority Leader Kevin Mccarthy was the first lawmaker to bend the knee. Mccarthy had angered Trump in January after reportedly accusing Trump of bearing some responsibility for the Capitol attack in a heated phone call during the Jan. 6 riot.
Although Mccarthy later backtracked on his claim, critics his trip was an effort to win back Trump’s favor as Mccarthy eyes the House speaker position should the GOP win the House. A statement issued by Trump’s Save America PAC said the men discussed strategy for winning the majority of the chamber’s seats in next year’s midterm elections. Earlier this month, Donald Trump Jr. and girlfriend Kimberly Guilfoyle hosted a fundraiser for South Dakota Republican Gov. Kristi Noem at Mar-a-lago, per an invite obtained by Daniel Lippman for Politico.
Trump uses invites to Mar-a-lago not only as a strategy to command respect and build power but also as a form of payback. In mid-february, Trump snubbed a request from Nikki Haley, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, to meet with him at Mar-a-lago, according to Politico Playbook. Haley, a potential presidential hopeful and former governor of South Carolina, was critical of Trump after the Capitol riot.