The room is what’s known as a “sensitive compartmented information facility,” or SCIF, which was erected at Mar-a-Lago to allow the president a space to discuss classified information. It appears to be the same room from which Trump monitored the raid that captured Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro in January. A White House source explained to Vanity Fair that Mar-a-Lago security is handled by the Secret Service, which has also set up secure communications capabilities at the club. Typically, presidents would conduct these operations from the Situation Room of the White House, but according to multiple sources close to the president, he vastly prefers the comforts of his South Florida resort.
“The whole fucking place is his man pad,” explained one longtime friend of Trump’s. “He feels so in control in Mar-a-Lago. That is where he launches some [of the] most important geopolitical activities.” Trump, who seems afflicted with an intense aversion to being alone with his thoughts, also appears to enjoy the incessant stimulation that Mar-a-Lago provides.
“A relaxing night for you and me might be a quiet dinner with friends or at home with family,” said one Mar-a-Lago member who has known Trump for years. “For him, a relaxing night is to sit out and have 500 people watch him.” When Trump is at the resort, as he is many weekends, his presence is all-consuming. “He’ll walk over to get a Diet Coke at the bar,” the old friend said. “Secret Service lets him go. But every eye in the whole fucking restaurant follows every fucking step he takes.”
It’s not an exaggeration to say that many members pay for the privilege of being around Trump. “He’s surrounded by people he likes to impress and he likes to give a show to. That’s almost a membership perk,” said Michael Wolff, a journalist who has spent time with Trump at Mar-a-Lago and written several books about him. “It’s a surreal feeling that such major world events are being discussed and taking place at the same club that we were at,” said Rosalyn Yellin, a Palm Beach socialite and star of Netflix reality show Members Only, a Real Housewives knockoff. She has been a Mar-a-Lago member since 2021 and attended the gala on Friday night. “The energy was electric in the room,” she told me. Yellin said she’s been at the club during other spectacles, including when Javier Milei, the unruly president of Argentina, visited.
It is an extreme demonstration, nightly, of what Gore Vidal called “that peculiarly American religion, President-worship.” Except in this case, the president is a deeply unpopular figure who just launched a deeply unpopular war in the Middle East. No matter. At Mar-a-Lago, Trump is God, and his worshippers have paid a hefty tithe (memberships were ratcheted up to $1 million in 2024). “Trump could shoot someone at Mar-a-Lago and they’d stand up to applaud him for it,” said the old friend. “He walks on water at Mar-a-Lago.”
“All of those people are, to say the very least, uncritical,” said Wolff. “So all of the affirmation that he wants, he can get.” A number of sources I spoke with also suggested that the demographics of his South Florida resort—older, richer, and neoconservative in their politics—are more inclined to support the kind of aggressive foreign interventions he’s pursued while down in Florida, from the Maduro operation in Venezuela to the attack on Iran. “When he goes down there, he gets all these old, fucking wealthy people,” the friend explained. “No one’s going to lose a kid or get shipped off. And they want to blow shit up and blow people up. That’s old-school Republicanism right there.”
