March 15, 2016
By Jason Horowitz
Palm Beach, Fla. — Everything (click here) seemed to sparkle at the Mar-a-Lago estate here on a recent afternoon. The sun glinted off the pool and the black Secret Service S.U.V.s in the circular driveway. Palm trees rustled in a warm breeze, croquet balls clicked and a security guard stood at the entrance to Donald J. Trump’s private living quarters.
“You can always tell when the king is here,” Mr. Trump’s longtime butler here, Anthony Senecal, said of the master of the house and Republican presidential candidate.
The king was returning that day to his Versailles, a 118-room snowbird’s paradise that will become a winter White House if he is elected president. Mar-a-Lago is where Mr. Trump comes to escape, entertain and luxuriate in a Mediterranean-style manse, built 90 years ago by the cereal heiress Marjorie Merriweather Post.
Few people here can anticipate Mr. Trump’s demands and desires better than Mr. Senecal, 74, who has worked at the property for nearly 60 years, and for Mr. Trump for nearly 30 of them....
Reading newspapers is just a good habit. Donald Trump concentrates on domestic papers. My interest has always included international papers. Before the International New York Times changed to it's current name, the European version was the International Herald Tribune. In the Tribune on page 2 was a discussion of countries and their people. I thought page 2 was fascinating and was where I received most of my international orientation. I had no idea at the time I was reading the Tribune I would be doing this, but, I understood my country in the real world.
...The next morning, before dawn and after about four hours’ sleep, Mr. Trump would meet him at the arched entrance of his private quarters to accept a bundle of newspapers including The New York Times, The Daily News, The New York Post and the Palm Beach papers. Mr. Trump would emerge hours later, in khakis, a white golf shirt and baseball cap. If the cap was white, the staff noticed, the boss was in a good mood. If it was red, it was best to stay away....
...In the early years, Mr. Trump’s daughter Ivanka slept in the same children’s suite that Dina Merrill, an actress and a daughter of Mrs. Post, occupied in the 1930s. Mr. Trump liked to tell guests that the nursery rhyme-themed tiles in the room were made by a young Walt Disney....
The mention of Mr. Senecal's retirement is interesting. Donald Trump becomes attached to people like family. It tells a tale about Donald Trump. The tiles by Walt Disney is an enchanted place.
...“It’s like 275 yards,” Mr. Senecal would respond, though he said the actual distance was 225 yards....
It would seem Donald Trump has a propensity for exaggeration and supported by his staff. Bad habits are hard to break.
...The candidate is suing the county-run airport. He has also sued the town in a dispute over the size of his estate’s flagpole; the size of the banquet hall he added to the property; and the size of the club, which, to frighten the local gentry, he once threatened to sell to followers of the Rev. Sun Myung Moon....
I read about the lawsuit regarding the airport and it looks as though Donald Trump has a real case and probably will win. The estate has a long history of being a remote getaway with insured privacy, peace and rest. It is only right the estate maintain it's original ambiance. If the estate had it's own runway it would be a different, but, the Trumps use the local airport to reach the estate. They obviously love the peace and quite the estate provides.
It is a good article. It portrays a man of his own ideas. My only thought is that Donald Trump could be living in a bubble and conducted a reality television show to balance that. I doubt living with Secret Service now changes much of his perception of the world.
