Trump plots temporary move from Mar-a-Lago north to New Jersey
Like so many Florida snowbirds, former President Donald Trump and his team will flock back north, to the New York region, after spending his first months out of the White House at his beachside Mar-a-Lago estate.
Trump and his relatively small band of post-White House staffers and political aides are actively discussing when to vacate Mar-a-Lago and temporarily relocate to Trump's golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, according to Trump advisors who spoke with Insider this week.
Mar-a-Lago, a private club that also serves as Trump's residence and post-presidential office, closes just after Memorial Day, when South Florida becomes a decidedly hot, muggy, and flat-out swampy affair.
But for Trump, who's attempting to maintain control over the Republican Party while mulling a 2024 presidential run, climate isn't his only consideration.
"They're moving the whole operation to New Jersey because they're going to start doing more fundraising," one Trump advisor familiar with the deliberations said.
As Bedminster is about 50 miles from Manhattan, the move will put Trump closer to New York City's powerful and prolific community of Republican donors as he considers a third run for president in 2024.
Trump is raising cash for his expanding political operation, which includes two political action committees: Save America and the Make America Great Again PAC.
The move would also effectively shift the center of power for Republican politics from South Florida to the suburbs of New York, at least for a few months.
The dozens of ambitious Republican pols who have traveled Florida for an audience with Trump — or present Trump with an award, as Sen. Rick Scott of Florida recently did — would beeline to New Jersey.
A Trump spokeswoman declined to comment for this story.
The fair-weather Florida man
Trump has been a creature of New York City since birth.
But he's curbed that relationship, changing his residence to Florida from New York about two years ago.
Trump returned briefly to Trump Tower in Manhattan in March, his first trip back to New York since leaving the White House, but has otherwise stayed away.
The Big Apple itself is hardly friendly territory for Trump. He faces significant legal peril there, with state and Manhattan investigators probing his businesses and taxes.
While in office, Trump dubbed his Mar-a-Lago estate the "Winter White House" because he would often spend holidays out of Washington encamped in Palm Beach.
As president, he would occasionally vacation at Bedminster while conducting summertime business, preferring it to Camp David, the official presidential getaway tucked in the wooded hills of northern Maryland.
During the summer of 2019, when Trump sent Vice President Mike Pence to pressure Ukraine to launch an investigation into Joe Biden's son Hunter, Trump holed up at Bedminster debating whether to kick Pence off the 2020 Republican presidential ticket and replace him with a woman.
Bedminster was set to host the PGA Championship in 2022, but the PGA stripped Trump of the prized tournament after his supporters stormed the Capitol on January 6.
When Trump eventually returns to Mar-a-Lago, he'll come home to a place where he's personally thrived since leaving office.
Notably, he's golfed even more often than he did when he was president, something advisors attribute in part to him dropping about 15 pounds since leaving office.
Trump is also likely to face a continuing controversy over him living there in the first place.
That's because when Trump voted last year, he did so by mail from his Mar-a-Lago address. Doing so may have broken the law because of a covenant he signed with other Palm Beach residents saying that Mar-a-Lago could not be used as a residence.
Trump has routinely asserted — falsely — that voting by mail leads to widespread voter fraud.
