The men were sporting tuxedos, the women were wearing unusual evening gowns. They gathered into Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort, unsupervised and unlicensed at social pace. After cocktails and a sumptuous dinner, the partygoers would dance in the new year to the live music of former rapper Vanilla Ice and Beach Boy.
“We shouldn’t be caged in our homes,” said Amber Gitter, a local estate agent in attendance. No government should “tell you to stay indoors and not be able to work”.
As soon as Trump leaves the White House this week, the two-time president is expected to stay at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida. It is an unfortunate sight for many palm teachers who fear Trump will be present and so Marire a-Lago soirees weaken the tranquility of the village and fight against the pandemic- spread. Mar-a-Lago’s display of unparalleled wealth and party reveals the strange and ugly reality of a wealthy elite who continue to party while the poor working-class neighbors struggle to survive .
Trump in florida
Located on an island off the coast of Florida, Palm Beach is a game for 1% of America. The tree-lined South Sea Boulevard, which runs past Mar-a-Lago, is nicknamed the billionaire series, the site of some of the busiest beach resorts in the world. Residents include Aerin Lauder’s cosmic heiress, billionaire treasurer Stephen Schwarzman and, interestingly, the now dead sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Trump wasn’t even the first to experience the wealthy community with presidents – John F Kennedy used his family’s property as a winter white house.
Trump will divide the inhabitants of his own city into the future, as he does all Americans. While he won the city’s vote in the 2020 primary election and more than 500 fans paid a $ 1,000 ticket to attend the Mar-a-Lago new year party, the president has been joking with neighbors and local officials. In 2006, Trump raised a huge flagpole at Mar-a-Lago, which went against local zoning rules. The city began fining $ 1,250 per day. Trump refused and kept his flagpole. Mar-a-Lago declined to comment on either the controversy or the parties without his mask.
During Trump Mar-a-Lago’s main tour, dozens of police and secret service officers defended the building. Barricades blocked the main road, creating traffic tags. A group of angry neighbors have sought legal advice to prevent him from living at Mar-a-Lago full-time, the Post Washington it was first reported.
Trump bought the Moorish-style baroque house overlooking the ocean in 1985. When he turned the estate into a social club in 1993, Trump agreed to ban members from stays at the property for more than 21 days a year. Residents want the city government to enforce this agreement. Palm Beach city manager Kirk Blouin told the Spectator the council will review the matter at next month’s meeting.
Covid has led another schism between Trump and the locals. Unlike the president, city officials caught the pandemic from the start. They began keeping records of the virus as early as January last year, Blouin said. When it grew in mid-March, the city cured curfews, restaurants, shops, beaches and apartment baths closed. Even Mar-a-Lago was closed. We wanted to “ban the pots and pans to warn people and cities near us that the virus is coming – and it ‘s going to be very serious,” Blouin said. “Many thought we had done too much.”
The hard act saved lives. Despite an old population – two-thirds of city residents are over 65, according to the U.S. Census – Palm Beach counted only 26 confirmed Covid-19 cases and two deaths in the first two months of the pandemic. In comparison, despite its young population, working-class Palm Beach County accounted for an equal proportion by casualty population: 5,429 confirmed cases and 315 deaths, according to data from the Civil Society Palm Beach. “There has been one pandemic from the beginning, and one for everyone else,” complains Omari Hardy, a Democratic state lawyer who represents divisions of Palm Beach County.
While Palm Beachers hunt down in their luxurious homes, poor Floridians have to go out to work. “My constituents have to choose between two evils,” said Hardy. “If they can work, they are at risk of getting the virus. If they can’t go to work, they can’t make an income. “
At Lupita’s, an over-the-water taco restaurant in Lake Worth, co-owner Roberto Alvarez says he’s “struggling”. He went into his personal savings to pay his employees last week. In contrast, the Palm Beach luxury property market has thrived. In the first quarter of 2020, as millions of Americans filed for unemployment, sales of single-family homes in Palm Beach rose to $ 416m higher, an increase of 168% over the same period. time in the previous year, according to a study. Just before the New Year, Sylvester Stallone paid $ 35m for a seven-room, 12-bathroom estate.
Buyers of the big bucks fled Covid areas like New York City for the sun and the beach, said local estate agent Scott Gordon. Trump’s 2017 tax reforms, which will raise taxes on wealthy people in states like New York, will turn Florida and the low tax rate into an attractive home.
Through the pandemic, Palm Beachers has quarantined in luxury. When the Four Seasons beach hotel closed in March, Citadel Securities leased the entire property to the stock traders. Only employees of the company or the hotel were allowed inside, with private security protecting the building. Ten months later, the resort is still under guard. The hotel will not take up accommodation in early April, a hotel spokesman said.
Now, however, this pandemic paradise is frightening. Since Trump-backed Florida governor Ron DeSantis lifted most of the restrictions in September, Palm Beach shops, restaurants and bars have opened, for both indoor and outdoor seating , and they draw a large crowd. Since November, the city has recorded a faster rise in cases than in Palm Beach County, according to local government data. The local population of 8,800 goes up in winter, as people from the north flee the cold, increasing chances of contact and disease, according to Blouin. He also blames “corona fat”, explaining that some residents are tired of rules and restrictions. “We are social animals,” he admits.
Mar-a-Lago is pretty zero for breaking the rules. They were holding an election night party without a mask, indoors, a fashion show, and a stormy young party. Following the New Year’s party, county officials last week sent a warning letter to Mar-a-Lago for a “breach in enforcement” of the mask command. But many do not believe Trump will listen. “A letter with strong words will do nothing to persuade the president and his business,” Hardy said. “It showed nothing but disregard for our rules.”