It’s always sunny at Mar-a-Lago

In the middle of the screening, the chandelier flickered on, and Trump walked in. People stood and cheered, and a “U-S-A!” chant began. After a tour of LoBaido’s paintings, Trump took the stage with a microphone.

“I didn’t want to interrupt the middle of your movie, that’s terrible,” he said, grinning. To LoBaido, Trump said, “I liked the one over there with the big arms,” pointing to a portrait that portrayed the former president with the muscles of a bodybuilder. “But I gotta tell you, those arms would not hit a golf ball as far as I do.”

The former president also mused about buying the big-armed Trump painting, LoBaido recalled in an interview after the event. Alas, that particular artwork had already been sold. But the artist said he’s working on another piece, and he plans to give it to Trump gratis — a nice gesture, considering the president is, as the artist put it, “going through some financial situations.”

Arguably, a safe zone has never been more important to Trump, who is facing legal peril in four criminal cases and financial headwinds in the form of two court losses that could cost him more than $500 million. Although he appears to be banking on deliverance via a presidential victory in November (and a financial windfall from his ownership shares in a media company), Trump is nonetheless stalked by threats to his reputation, his wallet and his freedom. He has been charged in New York with falsifying records to allegedly cover up a hush money payment to an adult-film actress; in Washington with interfering with the 2020 election results; in Georgia with trying to overturn the state’s election; and in Florida with mishandling classified documents and obstructing justice, totaling 88 counts across four cases. He has denied wrongdoing in all of the cases.

In the eyes of his adoring fans at Mar-a-Lago, he can do no wrong. The club’s menu has “Mr. President’s Wedge Salad,” the hamburger buns at the nearby golf course come emblazoned with his likeness, and the lobsters are, he loves to brag, bigger than at any other club around. A well-done steak is always available. There is often a swarm of well-wishers, suck-ups and freelance advisers who — much to the chagrin of his actual advisers — often find a way to get his ear.

“People would be able to walk up to him unvetted and have all sorts of crazy ideas or things they wanted him to do, or advice they’d be giving on anything from national security to domestic policy,” said Stephanie Grisham, who served as Trump’s press secretary and later worked for Melania Trump as the first lady’s chief of staff.

The place had something of a porous border, in that members were allowed to bring guests of their choosing, said Grisham, who fell out with the Trumps at the end of their time in the White House. In practice, this could mean never knowing whether the dining rooms were filled with foreign nationals, kooks or bad actors. And because Trump liked to dine out in the open, there were times in which it felt like anyone inside the walls of Mar-a-Lago could have unfettered access to the commander in chief.

“A year into his presidency, we put a rope around the dinner table to try and slow people down,” Grisham said. “He would sometimes get irritated with staff if he saw us stopping people.”

In the White House, aides tried to limit access to some people at Mar-a-Lago, complaining how the members filled Trump’s mind with cuckoo ideas. None of the precautions seemed to stick. In 2022, Nick Fuentes, a far-right figure known for his white-nationalist and antisemitic rhetoric, dined with Trump at the club. His current advisers, again, said they would put in more precautions.

It remains common for guests at the club to provide unsolicited counsel to the former president. In early April, according to multiple Trump advisers, a Mar-a-Lago guest approached Trump’s dinner table with what they considered to be disparaging information about the newly appointed chief counsel of the Republican National Committee, Charlie Spies. The guest — a former mid-level agency official in the Trump administration — wanted to tell Trump that Spies, a longtime respected Republican lawyer, did not support Trump’s claims that the 2020 election had been stolen. She came prepared with materials.

Trump had been briefed by top aides on Spies — who has worked for Jeb Bush, Mitt Romney and Ron DeSantis — and had agreed to the hire at the time. But, after hearing the critical things Spies had said and written about him, Trump wanted him gone, repeatedly raising the prospect of having him fired with his top aides and Republican Party officials.

Spies resigned last weekend. A Trump spokeswoman said he left because of “potential time conflicts” and that his advice and professionalism were appreciated. Spies told The Washington Post that “working full time at the RNC wasn’t the right fit with my law firm client commitments,” adding that he will keep working to get Trump and other Republicans elected.

The boss was pleased.

“Great news for the Republican Party. RINO lawyer Charlie Spies is out as Chief Counsel of the RNC,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

In recent months, Trump has used Mar-a-Lago to host foreign leaders such as Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban for a concert in the ballroom; billionaires including Steve Wynn and Ike Perlmutter; and election denier and current Mar-a-Lago member Mike Lindell. Lindell said he celebrated one year of marriage at the club, where he chatted with Trump about the need to conduct the 2024 election on paper ballots and about the “cancellation” of MyPillow, his pillow company.

On a recent evening, Roseanne Barr danced on the patio after attending a fundraiser. Melania Trump mingled with Republicans for a gathering of the Log Cabin Republicans, making a rare speech and dining on the patio. A recent visitor said that as he spoke with Trump on a recent evening, he saw former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani; Lindell; Bernie Kerik, the former New York police commissioner; and a range of B-list celebrities.

“Mar-a-Lago is a truly special place that everybody wants to visit,” Jason Miller, a Trump spokesman, said. “It’s only natural it has become the center of the universe.”

Last month, 20 oil executives traveled to Mar-a-Lago for dinner and were surprised by an appearance from the actor Jon Voight, who made what one person with direct knowledge of the meeting called a “theological argument for Trump,” before guests were served chopped steak, along with a dossier of the former president’s accomplishments and poll numbers.

There’s a strict dress code, but the dining hall, according to one member, is often filled with people who never learned “which fork is used for which dish.” Nonetheless, it’s a cocoon of privilege.

“They’re all rich people. There are no poor people,” Trump told a crowd of Republican donors gathered at Mar-a-Lago last Saturday. “The one thing I don’t like about Mar-a-Lago. I like diversity. Di-ver-si-tay,” he said, prolonging the syllables.

Indeed, anyone looking to become part of this club must be willing to shell out. New members, a person familiar with the fees said, are asked to pay about $700,000 for an initiation fee, a significant increase from previous years. And then they are expected to spend at least $15,000 every year on food and drinks, along with paying a yearly membership fee.

“It’s the center of everything,” Trump told the Republican donors, describing the club during a meandering speech in which the former president accused Democrats of “running a Gestapo administration,” called special counsel Jack Smith a “f---ing a--hole” and boasted that his ballroom had “raised more money for charities than any other ballroom in the United States.”

He bought the estate in 1985, years after the death of its first owner, the socialite and heiress to the Post cereal empire Marjorie Merriweather Post. But it wasn’t until Trump’s financial difficulties in the 1990s that the businessman even considered the idea of a private club.

“What do you mean?” Trump told a lawyer who suggested the private club plan, according to the book “Mar-a-Lago: Inside the Gates of Power at Donald Trump’s Presidential Palace,” by Laurence Leamer. “Like 21 or Studio 54? A nightclub?”

Trump scoffed at the idea at first, according to Leamer, but eventually relented, and when the club opened in 1994 he was claiming credit for coming up with the idea in the first place.

It wasn’t long ago that the sanctity of Trump’s paradise was punctured, when federal agents searching for classified documents raided the club. But that feels like a distant memory at Mar-a-Lago, one mostly forgotten by those who spend time there. The law may be bearing down, forcing the former president into uncomfortable reckonings and somnolent weekdays in a courtroom in his former kingdom of New York City. Within the walls of the “winter White House,” however, Trump remains in complete control. He straightens pictures on the walls, involves himself with new renovations (according to one member, Trump helped pick out faucets for a new bathroom), and on some nights he DJs the music at Mar-a-Lago from his iPad — offering a mix of music from “The Phantom of the Opera,” Luciano Pavarotti, Elton John and the Beach Boys.

“He is second to none at creating an energy and excitement at dinner through his incredible music selection,” said Cameron Moore, a club member, who noted that “the majority of the diners will partake in that famous ‘Y.M.C.A.’ dance,” when Trump plays the Village People.

“It’s the most magical place in America,” Siggy Flicker, a Mar-a-Lago member and former cast member of the Real Housewives of New Jersey, said of the club. Flicker said she goes to the club three or four times a week to be in a place that feels like “what America used to be” before the country was overrun with “jihadis” and criminals.

She believes Trump can Make America Mar-a-Lago again. She tells him as much when she sees him at the club, and in return, she said, he treats her “like family,” even if he usually calls her by the wrong name.

“I don’t care that he calls me Ziggy,” she said. “I’m just so happy and honored to be in his presence.”

Trump has long enjoyed bringing honored guests to his club, just as long as he gets to be the most honored among them.

In 2002, Terry McAuliffe, then chairman of the Democratic National Committee, went with former president Bill Clinton to Trump International Golf Club — a Trump dominion located minutes away from Mar-a-Lago, which doesn’t have its own course — to play a round. As they played, McAuliffe recalled, they were tailed by a photographer. In the clubhouse afterward, Trump disappeared for a few minutes. He then returned with a surprise for Clinton and the other guests: a manila envelope with pictures from the tee boxes, signed with a sharpie in big block letters by Trump.

“I remember thinking to myself, ‘What does a former president do with an autographed picture of Donald Trump?’” said McAuliffe, who added that he no longer has the pictures.

When Trump became president himself, there was a noticeable change at the club, according to one regular guest: Before the presidency, they couldn’t recall a time Trump received applause just for entering a room.

“There were those that didn’t like Trump,” Leamer wrote in his book about Mar-a-Lago. “But they only whispered this. Publicly they rose and applauded Trump with the rest of his fans.”

One of the great benefits of Mar-a-Lago is that Trump can usually find a crowd eager to shower him with approval. There are weddings and galas and charity events and political fundraisers — which Republicans pay for knowing Trump is more likely to show up there than anywhere else. Sometimes, the problem for Trump is that there are just too many options for pop-ins. When that happens, the former president said last weekend, he asks, “Who’s spending more?”

That day, he said, he would give preference to the wedding of a man who was paying more per person for the Mar-a-Lago location than Republican donors were.

As it is with the Republican Party, it almost doesn’t matter if everyone truly loves Trump; all he needs is for them to pretend to. It certainly beats being forced to listen to potential jurors in his New York criminal trial say things like, “I don’t like his persona,” and call him “selfish and self-serving.” So, it was only natural that after days of sitting in a “freezing” criminal courthouse late last month, Trump returned to the warm embrace of his private club.

“The scene was amazing,” said Flicker, who was dining out in the garden when she saw him. “He walked in and everyone stood up and cheered. I shouted, ‘The greatest president in the history of America!’”

On that night, Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-N.Y.) was hosting a fundraiser for her reelection campaign. Naturally, Trump took the opportunity to talk about his sojourn in the wilderness beyond the boundaries of the club to an audience that was glad to hear his side of it.

“Bragg is 100 percent dishonest, ” the former president said into a microphone, speaking about the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, who is leading the New York prosecution. He spoke about how the case against him was “falling apart.”

“And it better damn well fall apart,” he went on, “Because everybody knows …” But Trump never completed that thought. It was like the trial was happening in a different world. And so instead he just said this:

“I want to thank everyone for the support. And I hope everyone is enjoying the food because there’s no place like Mar-a-Lago. There’s no place like Mar-a-Lago.”