Letter from Mar-a-Lago: How times have changed – and haven’t

Palm Beach, Fla. | Oct. 19, 2026, 1:15 p.m. ET | 3 min read The last time I visited Mar-a-Lago – President Donald Trump’s swanky residence and club in Palm Beach, Florida – was in March of 2016. The businessman and reality TV performer had just won the Florida presidential primary in his first-ever run for office, forcing home-state Sen. Marco Rubio out of the race in humiliating fashion.Members of the media were invited into the estate’s gold-encrusted Donald J. Trump Grand Ballroom to watch Mr. Trump deliver his victory speech, while club members in cocktail attire divided their attention between the man of the hour and the scruffy press denizens lurking behind a rope at the back of the room.My how times have changed – and haven’t. Ten and a half years later, Mr. Rubio, once mocked by candidate Trump as “Little Marco,” is now his secretary of state, and Mr. Trump is entering the home stretch of his presidency. And as with most second-term presidents, his party is bracing for big losses in the coming midterm elections. This past weekend, as a member of the White House traveling press pool, I visited Mar-a-Lago for the first time since that 2016 peek inside. In fact, the small corps of reporters traveling with the president was invited inside two evenings in a row. On Friday night, we were summoned into the estate’s White and Gold Room for presidential remarks to about 100 people at a fundraiser for the Republican National Committee.Not surprisingly, the room was essentially a smaller version of the grand ballroom, awash in gold filigree, including the ceiling. That style has infiltrated the second-term Oval Office in a way it didn’t during the first.On Saturday night, we got the call to drop by again, same room, this time for a quick visit at a candlelight dinner for MAGA Inc., a pro-Trump super-PAC. Some 40 guests gathered around a big table with the president, who was flanked by fellow billionaires, Google co-founder Sergey Brin and OpenAI president Greg Brockman. But perhaps most striking were Mr. Trump’s remarks on Friday night. Instead of trashing the press, part of his usual banter, he was actually kind of nice.“The media – they’ve been very fair lately,” the president told the assembled guests. “And as long as they’re fair, we’re fair to them.”The next day, at a campaign rally at Northern Kentucky University, Mr. Trump was back to the usual insults.“Look at all the fake news back there!” he said, pointing to the array of TV cameras at the back of the arena. The crowd booed. “Now they’ll say, ‘Massive protest against President Trump at the big Kentucky rally.’”As I sat writing on Sunday morning, Mr. Trump was at his golf club in West Palm Beach, just over the bridge from Mar-a-Lago. The press pool was working, eating, and chatting in a conference room at the public library across the street. I was still marveling at the scenes from the past two nights, and, as I have many times before, wondered what Marjorie Merriweather Post would think. It was she, the businesswoman and philanthropist of Post Cereal and General Foods fame, who built Mar-a-Lago in the 1920s. The 126-room Mediterranean-style estate gets its name – meaning “sea to lake” in Spanish – from its location spanning Palm Beach Island, from the Atlantic Ocean to Lake Worth Lagoon. Deepen your worldviewwith Monitor Highlights.Politics with respectGet political stories with respectful analysis.There‘s a world of new ideas in everyBooks newsletter.There‘s more to life, enrich yours withCulture & Learning weekly.Follow humanity‘s discoveries withScience & Nature stories in your inbox.Gain a spiritual perspectivefrom the stories in your inbox.Want to understand the deeper impact of critical events? Learn the Monitor‘s insight.Already a subscriber? Log in to hide ads. Upon Post’s death, in 1973, she bequeathed Mar-a-Lago to the U.S. government with the intent that it become the “Winter White House.” But in 1980, the government returned it to Post’s heirs, as it did not want to handle upkeep. That year, Mar-a-Lago was also designated a national landmark.In 1985, Mr. Trump purchased the property for $8 million. The rest is history. ALREADY A SUBSCRIBER? LoginReal news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.The Christian Science Monitor was founded in 1908 to lift the standard of journalism and uplift humanity. We aim to “speak the truth in love.” Our goal is not to tell you what to think, but to give you the essential knowledge and understanding to come to your own intelligent conclusions. Join us in this mission by subscribing.