Donald Trump, from president to uncomfortable neighbor in Palm Beach

Trump speaks to the media outside the Mar-a-Lago mansion last December.Carlos Barria / REUTERS

"He's watching you."

It's going down now.

You better go.

The gardener warns the journalist that he has crossed a red line and that everything is registered on the security cameras.

“Let's keep talking but on the street.

What bothers him is that you are here at the entrance.

Better get out because you are going to call the police and they are going to take you away.

This is private property ”, insists in Spanish the Mexican worker of one of the mansions on the beach of Palm Beach, the new neighbors of Donald Trump.

The street is actually a highway.

The sidewalk is also a half-meter strip between the hard shoulder and the first tiles of the house.

No fences, no bushes, no gates.

Without any signage.

They are not necessary because everyone knows that, when in doubt, everything is private in Palm Beach.

How does it seem to the owner of the house that Trump now lives here?

"He's worried," says the employee.

He fears the consequences for the neighborhood of having a former president nearby.

And more to one like Trump, who has spent almost compulsively demanding attention during the four years of his government.

A magnet for the curious, fans for or against, journalists, or people in general who come to harass the residents of one of the most exclusive corners of the world, the playground of the American aristocracy since the late nineteenth century.

The Rockefellers, the Carnegies or the Kennedys resided here.

Trump has decided to leave New York and move to Florida mostly for tax reasons.

It is one of the least taxed states in the United States.

The former president has had a mansion on the beach in Palm Beach since the eighties.

Florida, especially the south, is also a Trumpist stronghold, where it has won both elections.

Last Wednesday he was greeted like a hero upon his arrival in Palm Beach, a wealthy county 110 kilometers from Miami.

Hundreds of followers packed the journey of the family caravan to the island.

Middle-class women, bikers with patches of the paranoid ultra QAnon movement, white working class who came from other parts of the state: "I have driven almost two hours to be here and support my president," said Mike Reynolds, 52, driver of truck.

Trump fans don't live in the most expensive spot in Florida, where the median home price is $ 7 million, triple that of Miami Beach, according to local realtor Douglas Elliman.

The island of Palm Beach is also a refuge for illustrious Democrats such as Michael Bloomberg, former mayor of New York and declared enemy of Trump.

And the owner of Amazon, Jeff Bezos, one of the richest men in the world and also an opponent of the Republican, is looking for a house.

The letter to the intelligence services

The rejection of some neighbors comes from afar.

In December, they sent a joint letter addressed to both the county and the secret services in which they stated that the former president cannot live in the Mar-a-Lago mansion for legal reasons.

In the nineties, the magnate himself changed the deeds of his private residence to a social club.

"Palm Beach has many other charming properties, surely you can find one that meets your needs," closes the letter, promoted by the lawyers of the neighbors of the Trumps, the DeMoss, a rich family of evangelical philanthropists.

In 1985, a Donald Trump already millionaire thanks to the businesses of his construction father bought the seven-hectare farm, for 10 million, including the mansion, built in the 1920s by the New York oligarch Marjorie Merriweather Post, once the oldest woman. rich from the United States.

The lady of high society hired American architects and European designers who conceived a set of Mediterranean inspiration, with tiles from Cuba and thousands of Spanish tiles.

Merriweather Post died in 1973 and in his will ordered that Mar-a-Lago become a winter residence for the presidents of the United States.

His wishes were never fulfilled and his heirs ended up selling the property to Trump, persuaded by his ex-wife Ivana.

In the mid-1990s, at a difficult time for his business, he first tried to tear down the mansion to divide the land and put it up for sale, but the county wouldn't let him.

His next move was to convert the property into a private club with tennis courts, a spa, more than 100 rooms and a membership registration fee that is now $ 200,000.

The Anglo-Saxon patricians of Palm Beach feared an invasion by the nouveau riche and put pressure on the county.

This time with no luck.

Trump continued to exasperate his neighbors by raising a 24-meter high US flag in the garden, which violated height regulations, but above all, the discreet taste of his neighbors.

The tension was mounting when he became president.

His continuous trips to what he called

the South White House

clogged traffic for several blocks around, with roadblocks, beaches, and crowds of onlookers, fans and journalists.

Just what happened again this Wednesday after his arrival at what will now be his home.

Since Tuesday night the vicinity of the mansion had been taken over by the police, with helicopters flying over the area and traffic cuts that on Wednesday reached the bridge that connects the island with the mainland.

“It's very uncomfortable because you can't walk or go to the beach.

Besides, I can hardly even leave the house because I am not from here, ”explained CK Magalli, 22, a psychology student of Filipino origin.

The penultimate controversy of the Mar-a-Lago house came on New Year's Eve.

The mansion's ballroom, decorated in the Louis XIV style, hosted a party for more than 500 guests at $ 1,000 per person.

In a video uploaded to social networks by the tycoon's eldest son, Donald Trump Jr, he addresses the audience without a mask while on stage he sings Vanilla Ice, the white and faded replica of hip-hop in the nineties.

The county intervened again with a letter to the property manager warning him that a new violation of sanitary regulations would carry a fine of $ 15,000.

Local Democratic Representative Omari Hardy lamented days later: "The permissiveness of the county sends the message that you can skip the rules if you are rich and have good connections."

An argument similar to that of journalist Lysandra Ohrstrom, a former friend of Ivanka Trump, classmates at an elite school for girls on Manhattan's Upper East Side.

In a tough

Vanity Fair

article

,

she definitely turned her back on him for siding with her father's wildest policies with this parting message from the liberal, cosmopolitan New York where they first met: “I hope Ivanka finds a soft landing in Palm Beach, and live where white supremacy is de rigueur and most misdeeds are forgiven if you have enough money. "