WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. – Last weekend, President Donald Trump greeted guests at a children’s charity event inside his private Mar-a-Lago club. “Have a good time, everybody,” Trump told the crowd, dressed in suits and tuxedos. “We have to work.”
Then, beyond the heavy, gold-plated doors and layers of security in the same area, he watched “Operation Epic Fury” appear from a different location and was transformed into a temporary “situation room”. From there, the president, along with his top aides and national security officials, watched as B-2 bombers hit Iranian and Israeli military targets targeting Iran’s top leadership, eventually killing Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The White House released photos of the heavily curtained space, complete with isolated phone lines and monitors.
Then, early Saturday morning, Trump announced a “large and ongoing” US military operation in Iran from the president’s Mar-a-Lago press room.
At the end of the night, Trump went from war planning to a Republican fundraiser without leaving the packed Palm Beach arena.
The Iran operation marks the sixth major military action Trump has directed from Mar-a-Lago during his second term, underscoring the resort’s evolution from sports arena to presidential command center.
While previous presidents reserved those moments for the State Room of the White House – recently renovated for 50 million dollars – and Camp David, a country retreat 60 miles from DC, Trump has repeatedly shown his love for his private club and primary residence, which he bought from General Foods heiress Marjorie Merriweather Post in 1985.
Instead of Trump, it was Vice President JD Vance in the White House Situation Room during the overnight operation on Iran. Seated under the “Vice President of the United States” seal, Vance was photographed with Cabinet members Tulsi Gabbard and Scott Bessent.
Trump spent the first seven of nine weekends this year at his so-called Winter White House. In January, while on his golf course in West Palm Beach, the president announced new tariffs on European countries that oppose US control of Greenland.
Last weekend, Trump watched from Mar-a-Lago as service members launched another round of targeted strikes against the Islamic State in Syria. Earlier that same day, Trump attended a local dental practice.
On January 3, Saturday, Trump capped off a busy two-week vacation at his home in Florida by announcing an unprecedented operation that led to the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. It was the first time the White House released images of the president’s Palm Beach suite, as he and senior Cabinet officials watched the attack.
That day, Trump hosted reporters at a last-minute news conference where members of his administration detailed the project. The president oversaw Maduro’s transfer to a New York City prison between rounds of golf and shopping for marble and onyx for his new White House ballroom.
The trend goes back to Trump’s first term. Shortly after hosting Chinese President Xi Jinping for dinner at Mar-a-Lago in 2017, Trump, still at the compound, presided over strikes in Syria in response to the government’s use of chemical weapons. He came under fire that same year after sitting with then-Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in public between club dinners as they discussed their response to North Korea’s missile launch.
And at the tail end of his vacation in 2020, Trump was at Mar-a-Lago when he issued the final order to launch strikes that killed General Qasem Soleimani of Iran. He spoke to the nation briefly in the same room at Mar-a-Lago, but gave broader remarks alongside top military officials at the White House days later.
Trump is spending a lot of time at Mar-a-Lago this term. He has visited the building 21 times so far in his second term, seven more visits than at the same point in his first term, an NBC News survey shows.
Democrats in Congress have raised security concerns about Trump’s use of Mar-a-Lago for sensitive work and meetings with foreign leaders, and ProPublica reported in May 2017 that its Wi-Fi networks were vulnerable. In 2019, a Chinese woman was arrested after trying to enter a club with a thumb drive containing malicious software.
Security at Mar-a-Lago is managed by the US Secret Service in cooperation with local partners, a White House official told NBC News. “The USSS and our military partners ensure that the President can direct operations with sophisticated and fully secure communications systems from anywhere in the world,” the official said.
Aside from security concerns, some have criticized the president’s illegal use of his Palm Beach mansion.
“The president should be in the White House at any critical moment that is expected, unless that may be unusual and he gives a report that something is going to happen,” said John Bolton, who was the White House’s national security adviser for part of Trump’s first term. “As Jack Kennedy put it, ‘That’s where the seat of government is.’ It is better to have serious meetings in person. This time, the B-team was clearly in the Sit Room,” he added, referring to Vance.
Trump is “king” in Palm Beach, says a former Trump White House official from his first term. “He comes down to dinner and they all tell him what a great job he’s doing and give him all kinds of advice on what to do,” the official added.
“He shouldn’t be down there. He should be in the White House. His war room, if you will,” the official said.
White House spokesman Davis Ingle told NBC News: “The United States is fully equipped with powerful and capable operational capabilities that allow President Trump to communicate securely and conduct legitimate business anywhere in the world at any time, unlike him in the White House. Only the illiterate and the illiterate fail to understand that.”
The president’s familiarity with sunny Palm Beach during the cold months in Washington has established south Florida as a key region for White House official business, GOP politicking and MAGA social media. One weekend in February, deputy chief of staff Dan Scavino and Alex Bruesewitz, a top Trump ally, both held separate wedding celebrations at the club with Cabinet officials and key advisers in attendance.
Not only White House staff and conservatives hang out at the 20-acre property, where the first membership costs $1 million, but foreign dignitaries too. The president has hosted four world leaders at his private club since December. During his Christmas vacation, Trump held back-to-back meetings here with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy. In January, Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico said meeting Trump “in his private residence gave the meeting a strong sense of informality and openness,” calling the approach “a sign of great respect and trust.”
A White House official said that Trump “regularly meets with foreign leaders around the world, his meetings are not necessarily held at the White House – like every other president has done before.”
US special envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner, both Florida residents who also serve as the president’s unofficial ambassadors, have mediated peace talks in the Sunshine State, most recently hosting Russian special envoy Kirill Dmitriev in nearby Miami as part of ongoing efforts to resolve the conflict in Ukraine.
On Monday, Palm Beach officials announced permanent road closures around Mar-a-Lago amid heightened tensions over US-Israeli strikes on Iran. In a statement sent to NBC News, Palm Beach Police Department spokesman Sgt. Michael Ogrodnick described the move as a “precautionary measure” to “keep our community and the president safe.”
Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., defended Trump’s use of his unofficial stateroom at Mar-a-Lago. “Our smart people can set up a secure room anywhere in the world,” he said. “If that’s all some people have to cry about, they’re counting their blessings.”
Trump’s use of another state room is different. Sometimes, urgent matters send presidents racing back to the White House. President Joe Biden cut short a two-week vacation, returning from his home in Wilmington, Delaware, to talk about the immediate withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan in 2021. Despite spending more time on his planned vacation, Biden is still facing intense scrutiny for appearing on vacation during the crisis.
A growing list of the most serious jobs greenlit from Mar-a-Lago all but ensures that the private club will go down in US history as more than just a glitzy, high-dollar Palm Beach oasis, but a place of high-level presidential decision-making.
The president’s influence in Palm Beach was strengthened earlier this year with the renaming of a 4-mile stretch of Southern Boulevard from Palm Beach International Airport to Mar-a-Lago.
Now, club members and presidential staff alike arrive at the resort on “President Donald J. Trump Boulevard.”
