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By Jennifer Jacobs
/ CBS News
CBS News spoke with more than a dozen people with knowledge of events at Mar-a-Lago in the weeks between Election Day and Inauguration Day. They requested anonymity to share accounts of what was going on at the president-elect’s Florida resort ahead of his second presidential term.
“Hello?” Donald Trump said into his cellphone one day last month. “Who is this?”
Music echoed through 1100 S. Ocean Boulevard, where he spent much of the 70-plus days of the presidential transition.
“Wait, let me turn it down,” said Trump, who was at the center of it all at his private club in Palm Beach, Florida, fielding calls on multiple phones while managing the playlist.
Trump has been euphoric since his election, reflecting on his U-turn from embattled criminal defendant to leader on top of the world, according to people close to him.
“He’s a man at his zenith,” one person said.
The parade at Mar-a-Lago was a steady stream of corporate executives, wealthy elites and hangers-on, some vying for plum appointments and favors from the president-elect. On some nights, hundreds of guests visited for multiple simultaneous events.
“It’s like going to the zoo — there are all these exotic creatures,” one Trump aide said on a day when the previous evening’s club guests had included a tattooed crocodile trainer in a red feathered ensemble and trade adviser Peter Navarro in a quiet suit, not long after his release from prison.
Elon Musk and fellow businessman Vivek Ramaswamy on the day the Department of Government Efficiency became public were at one of the club’s bars, scratching out thoughts on a napkin.
Friday marked the end of unprecedented access to Trump, who heard bits and pieces about dramas that unfolded around him — those who drank too much or had romantic entanglements or got into arguments at his club. After gatherings that seemed like a melange of Business Roundtable mixer, U.N. General Assembly and the congressional gym, the seat of his new government moves north.
A portion of the transition work was carried out 20 minutes away from Mar-a-Lago at a nondescript high-rise in West Palm Beach, with job interviews in conference rooms on key-card-controlled floors, security personnel in the lobby and a police squad car parked outside.
Already, some people close to the transition harbor misgivings that they’re off on the wrong foot — too slow to hire, too much infighting, too many loyalty tests, too many shenanigans. Just a handful of Trump’s Cabinet members are poised to be confirmed next week.
But at Mar-a-Lago, where white orchids blossom on trees, a men’s room is adorned with real and fake Time magazine covers featuring Trump as person of the year, and a gift shop sells Trump-branded merch, those who made it through the gates seemed happy to be there.
“The thing you notice is the absolute adoration of him,” one outside adviser said. “This guy can do no wrong there. Like he’s infallible.”
Trump’s incoming chief of staff Susie Wiles made it clear early in the transition that she didn’t want big egos jockeying for positions, but there was plenty of that.
“It’s ‘Real Housewives’ meets ‘The Bachelor’ meets ‘The Apprentice,'” one person close to the Trump team said. “Viper pit.”
Alina Habba, a lawyer who has represented Trump, was initially offered the position of State Department spokesperson. But Habba, who sought a role that combined media and policy, declined. She spoke directly with Trump, and eventually secured the role of counselor to the president.
Financier Duke Buchan, who raised tens of millions as the Republican National Committee’s national finance chair, made no secret of his frustration about not receiving an appointment. He pestered the fundraising and personnel staff so much that they asked him to back off, according to people familiar with the matter. Buchan did not reply to a request for comment.
Wiles — who’s intent on imposing structure while carefully avoiding restricting Trump — is populating the White House with fewer people.
Fewer West Wing badges will be issued than in previous administrations. (The so-called blue badges, a highly-coveted status symbol, are being issued in a new color: platinum. The less exclusive ones for access to neighboring offices on the 18-acre campus will now be gold, instead of green.)
“They’ve done a great job of triaging thought and siloing power and decision-making in this White House,” said one former Trump aide. “This White House will be more inefficient and log-jammed than the first go-around.”
The chess game for offices closest to the Oval Office began during the transition. One proposal would have put Musk across a driveway from the White House in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. But more recently, conversations have moved toward a Musk office in the West Wing. Some of the special advisers, such as Ric Grenell and retired Gen. Keith Kellogg, will likely have offices both at the State Department and in the EEOB.
Early in the transition, Trump returned to golfing after choosing to forgo the sport for months to focus on winning the election. He grumbled that his stroke was rusty.
Business leaders tried to finagle tee times. But Trump, who is choosy about golf partners, preferred players like the head of the PGA tour, Jay Monahan; pro golfer Dustin Johnson; hockey great Wayne Gretzky, who is Johnson’s father-in-law; real estate developer and incoming Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff; South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham and Missouri Sen. Eric Schmitt.
One executive got in to play a round with the president-elect but Trump complained that the man was poor at golf, grousing, “This guy sucks.”
The pace of phone calls from heads of state was so heavy that incoming national security adviser Mike Waltz flew to Mar-a-Lago to establish order and to track conversations, knowing foreign leaders would have their intelligence agencies on the line. Trump’s staff tried to limit some calls to just a minute and asked that they be congratulatory in nature, not substantive.
For a period, all head-of-state calls ceased. “He got burned out,” one aide said of the president-elect. Staffers took phone numbers and said they’d reach out when they could.
Trump could be found some nights past 11 p.m. in the club’s living room, using trusted allies as a sounding board on the world of politics, while staff dashed to and fro to bring in guests or to grab “TRUMP” hats for him to sign. He’d juggle various phones — on one occasion swiveling between a conversation with a CEO and a call with House Speaker Mike Johnson, before turning back to his top fundraising aide, Meredith O’Rourke, to continue hashing over ambassador assignments. When his daughter Ivanka rang, he picked up.
Trump cracked jokes — “everyone calls me chaotic, but look at South Korea,” he said one day. He said he’d meet with Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol “if they ever stop impeaching him.”
During dinner with Akie Abe, the widow of the assassinated Japanese prime minister, Trump, who fondly remembers that Shinzo Abe had written a letter nominating him for easing tensions with North Korea, talked about how he deserves the Nobel Peace Prize, according to multiple people familiar with the matter. The Nobel, one adviser said, has been “a hyper fixation” for Trump, and it re-emerged as he strategized a Middle East deal.
A few regulars — Witkoff, Michael Whatley, Corey Lewandowski, Boris Epshteyn, Waltz — have Secret Service lapel pins for special access to the president-elect. One visitor didn’t need a hard pin: Musk, whose security detail coordinates his arrival.
The rear lawn, nearest the waterway, is usually off limits. But one night in November, it was covered with people, including Trump and Musk, for an opera performance. Starstruck guests took photos from a few paces away, held back by Secret Service. “There’s definitely a lot of buzz for Elon,” one partygoer observed. “There’s President Trump!’ and ‘Oh my God, there’s Elon.'”
And Musk, who donated a quarter of a billion dollars to back Trump and other GOP candidates, was everywhere.
It quickly became an irritant for some of the president-elect’s aides that Musk “shows up at every meeting,” as one adviser put it. They debated assigning a Trump person to wrangle Musk. “He’s not wrangleable,” another aide said.
VIPs with face-to-face appointments with Trump were told to come early, and that they could wait in the living room — a formal reception area just inside Mar-a-Lago’s front doors. Some thought they’d be dining alone with Trump only to find a big show at a crowded table.
“A lot of clown cars had access, and there was an incredible amount of activity,” one adviser said. “It won’t be like that in the White House.”
If someone got to Trump in person or by phone and presented an argument for an administration post, and Trump was in a “yes” mood, snap decisions were made, according to seven sources familiar with such moves.
After eventual attorney general pick Pam Bondi said something nice about a Florida sheriff, he ended up named to lead the Drug Enforcement Administration —- before withdrawing days later. A private equity executive and GOP donor who didn’t serve in the Navy has been tapped to be secretary of the Navy.
When Wiles left for Las Vegas for a couple days — along with inner circle dwellers Chris LaCivita, Taylor Budowich, Tony Fabrizio and James Blair — people nudged Trump into selecting several hires. Wiles undid some of that over subsequent weeks.
Candidates for Cabinet and upper-level posts were brought in to pitch to Trump at Mar-a-Lago. Some interviews had a reality TV show quality. Doors opened dramatically. A candidate might be ushered in to a big reveal: with their image on a large screen behind a seated Trump. A top adviser — at times Wiles or Miller or Lutnick — was at Trump’s side. Staffers ran the video screens. Clips of the candidates’ past remarks were at the ready.
In December, Trump aides fretted about the pace of hiring. “When loyalty is the most important metric, it is going to be difficult to fill a government,” one adviser noted.
Trump transition spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt told CBS News in early January, “President Trump picked a brilliant Cabinet in record and historic time and the Trump-Vance Transition is working non-stop to fill the Administration with hard workers who believe fully in the America First Agenda.”
Almost immediately after the election, prospects for rank-and-file jobs were asked to name four preferences for administration roles and to fill out an application in a Google Docs link. There was no way to upload a resume, and the process came across as “one step above Survey Monkey,” one applicant said. “My reaction was: ‘That’s it? That’s all? I must have missed a secret page.’ Went back. Nope.”
Mar-a-Lago was so packed some nights during the transition that the restaurant did a buffet. The food at Mar-a-Lago can be mediocre, several frequent guests said, but the seafood buffet catches praise. No one hands Trump a menu — a waiter just asks what he’d like to eat. Often it’s a burger or a steak.
Actor Sylvester Stallone waited in the line one night to fill a buffet plate like everyone else, not far from Waltz, the incoming national security chief. “Shark Tank” star Kevin O’Leary posed for photos with guests. The music was cranked up — “Don’t Cry for Me Argentina,” followed by a Sinatra tune. Out in a parking area, a multimillion-dollar Bugatti Veyron was parked by Rolls Royce SUVs and a Ferrari.
“And no one blinks,” one diner said. “It’s just another night at Mar-a-Lago.”
Mar-a-Lago, Spanish for “sea to lake,” is situated on a wisp of a barrier island between the Atlantic Ocean and an intracoastal waterway. Its manicured lawns, beach club, event spaces, spa and Trump’s private quarters cover 20 acres.
One slice of palace intrigue was when Donald Trump Jr., who shares a home with Kimberly Guilfoyle near a Trump golf property 25 minutes north of Mar-a-Lago, started introducing someone else around the club as his girlfriend. Weeks later, Trump announced that Guilfoyle would be moving overseas as his U.S. ambassador to Greece. Three sources said the breakup was unrelated to the appointment.
Some in the Mar-a-Lago orbit were obsessed with details, but, as one outside adviser put it, were more obsessed about booking a lunch or dinner, hoping to bump into the president-elect to lobby for jobs. Reservations are exclusively for members and their guests.
A topic of conversation one December night was about how Scott Bessent and Howard Lutnick, after some tense moments, were speaking to each other again. “Not friends, but cordial,” one adviser said. The two had been rivals for Treasury secretary. Trump ultimately chose the more reserved Bessent, but gave Lutnick, the gregarious co-chair of his transition, the top Commerce Department job.
“That competition was driven by DJT,” one adviser said, adding that he likes billionaire advisers fighting over him. “He let that drag out.”
More to Trump’s liking was the work on his inauguration speech and executive orders, which were the closely guarded realm of two scribes, speechwriter Vince Haley and Stephen Miller, deputy chief of staff for policy.
Despite Democrats’ predictions Trump would support a national abortion ban, that wasn’t a topic under discussion. “He’s done with that,” one adviser said. The executive actions will mostly relate to energy, immigration and a third category aides refer to as “weaponization of government,” plus some “anti-woke” actions, such as on transgender participation in women’s sports.
Trump aides are also strategizing for next year’s 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Expect some wear and tear on Pennsylvania Avenue’s pavement – advisers have discussed tanks in a parade. And while Trump might not hold a rally in every state during the Semiquincentennial, if he drops in on districts where GOP candidates need a lift, “it wouldn’t be a bad thing,” one aide said.
At the back of a lavender-scented courtyard, just beyond the whirlpool with club guests in swimwear, a gift shop sells Trump-branded souvenirs: Trump chocolates, Trump playing cards, Trump coffee mugs, a gold lapel pin with Trump’s face in profile. Guests’ bills can tally in the hundreds for collections of bottle openers, sequined “MAGA” purses and Bibles. One of the trending items is a black Trump cap like the one Musk wore when he bounced onto stage at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, his first public appearance after weeks of covert support.
Mar-a-Lago is viewed as a place of safety for those in Trump circles, who said that being out in public with him can feel risky, after two assassination attempts and one cell phone thrown at his feet that aides momentarily thought was a bomb.
Trump allies don’t always feel safe at bars and restaurants in Washington, D.C., where they say staff might refuse to serve them. The old Trump Hotel, now a Waldorf Astoria, can handle large numbers and “we know our food won’t be spat in,” one adviser said.
Some hoped Tilman Fertitta, a billionaire who owns restaurant and hotel chains (and is Trump’s pick for ambassador to Italy), would open a D.C. haven for Trumpworld. And Trump has been talking seriously about buying back the hotel in the old D.C. Post Office.
Aides expect Trump will return occasionally to Mar-a-Lago during the next four years, but for now, the show is moving 1,000 miles up the road.
Ed O’Keefe contributed to this report.
Jennifer Jacobs is a senior White House reporter at CBS News.
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