Laurence Leamer - Mar-a-Lago: Inside the Gates of Power at Donald Trump’s Presidential Palace

M y wife and I purchased our home in Palm Beach in 1994, the same year that Donald Trump turned his Mar-a-Lago estate into a club. I am not a member but have several friends who are. A number of times each season they invite me for lunch or dinner or to play tennis on the red clay courts. For most of those years, on the weekends Trump was omnipresent, dining with family and friends, strutting around the mansion greeting members, and until he gave up the sport, an exuberant presence on the tennis courts.

When I was researching my 2009 book about Palm Beach, titled Madness Under the Royal Palms, I intended to make Trump a major character. But my editor put the kibosh on that.

He said that Trump was overexposed, a tedious bore whom no one wanted to hear about any longer. Soon afterward, I attended an event at Mar-a-Lago and told him the exchange Id had with my editor. Overexposed? he replied. Youve got to be fucking kidding. Im Donald Trump.

Palm Beach is a very closed and private world. Residents think that if they are written about at all it should be in celebratory tones, and my book was definitely not written that way. It was greeted with outrage. People didnt dare to read it in public in Palm Beach. At an editorial meeting of the Palm Beach Daily News, the editor said my name was never again to be mentioned in its pages, a ban that continues to this day. When I was driving around town with a French television crew filming a documentary, the car was driven off the road by an SUV. A few days later, at a charity event, police chief Michael Reiter suggested I should hire security, as my life might be in danger. When local NBC Channel 5 was filming a segment about the book, a passerby ran into the camera shot and started screaming at me.

I have the same friends I have always had and I like where I live. I asked myself long and hard, Did I want to risk going through that all over again? My answer is this book. I am convinced that Donald Trumps life in Palm Beach is an absolutely essential way to understand his character. All that he learned there contributed greatly to his successful run for president and to his becoming the kind of leader he is.

My research began by going back to the interviews about Trump I recorded for my earlier book but for the most part didnt use. At that time, many people I talked to spoke about Trump with an openness that would be rare today in Palm Beach.

When I started doing new interviews for this book, few members of Mar-a-Lago were willing to have their names attached to whatever they said. Several of them told the story of the member who came into the buffet one day, where, set among the platters of food, was a silver bowl of caviar with a tiny spoon next to it. The man grabbed a soup spoon and dished out enough to make the caviar his main course. When Trump learned this, he threw the man out of the club. I could not verify the story, but people at the club believe it. If Trump would heave a member out for eating too much caviar, what would he do to members who spoke to me if he didnt like my book?

It was amazing how nervous people were. One member had been my friend since I arrived in Palm Beach. When I called her and left a message saying I wanted to interview her, she didnt return my phone call, and despite other calls, she never spoke to me again. But in the end, I did find a number of people to talk openly and I have peppered these on-the-record sources through the book, mixed with anonymous interviews.

I have also been an eyewitness to events in these pages. At one such evening at the Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, I asked President Trump for an interview. Lets make it happen, he said.

My subsequent requests went unanswered, but many other people spoke to me, and the result is this book. While much in these pages might seem unbelievable, I assure you it is true.

Laurence Leamer
Palm Beach, Florida
September 14, 2018