West Palm Beach, Fla. – Last weekend, President Donald Trump welcomed guests to a children’s charity gala inside his private Mar-a-Lago club. “Everybody have a good time,” Trump told the gown- and tuxedo-clad crowd. “We have to go to work.”
Later, beyond the heavy, gold-plated doors and layers of security at the same estate, they watched “Operation Epic Fury” unfold from an isolated space converted into a makeshift “situation room.” From there, the president, along with his top aides and national security officials, watched as B-2 bombers struck Iranian military targets and Israeli forces targeted the senior Iranian leadership, eventually killing Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The White House released photographs of the heavily screened location, complete with classified phone lines and rows of monitors.
Then, early Saturday morning, Trump announced a “massive and ongoing” U.S. military operation in Iran from his Mar-a-Lago presidential press room.
By the end of the night, Trump had moved from war planning to Republican fundraisers without leaving the sprawling Palm Beach compound.
The Iran operation marks the sixth major military action Trump has directed from Mar-a-Lago in his second term, underscoring the resort’s evolution from social playground to presidential command center.
While previous presidents have reserved such moments for the White House’s Situation Room — which recently underwent a $50 million renovation — and Camp David, 60 miles from DC, Trump has repeatedly shown a preference for his private club and primary residence, which he bought in 1985 from General Foods heiress Marjorie Merriweather Post.
Instead of Trump, Vice President JD Vance was in the White House Situation Room during the overnight Iran operation. Vance is pictured with cabinet members Tulsi Gabbard and Scott Besant, seated beneath the “Vice President of the United States” stamp.
Trump has spent the first seven of nine weekends this year at his winter White House. In January, at a golf course in West Palm Beach, the president announced new tariffs on European countries that oppose US control of Greenland.
The weekend before, Trump watched from Mar-a-Lago as service members launched another round of strikes against targets in Syria belonging to the Islamic State. Earlier that same day, Trump attended a routine dentist appointment in the area.
On Saturday, January 3, Trump ended a two-week vacation at his Florida home by announcing an unprecedented operation that led to the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. The White House released photos of the president’s Palm Beach situation room for the first time as he and top Cabinet officials watched the attack unfold.
That day, Trump welcomed reporters for a last-minute news conference where members of his administration explained the task. Between rounds of golf, the president oversaw Maduro’s transfer to a New York City jail and purchased marble and onyx for his new White House ballroom.
This trend goes back to Trump’s first term. After hosting a lavish steak dinner at Mar-a-Lago for Chinese President Xi Jinping in 2017, Trump, still in the compound, oversaw strikes in Syria in response to the government’s use of chemical weapons. He made the remarks that same year, sitting in the open among club diners with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe when he discussed his response to North Korea’s missile launch.
And at the end of his holiday vacation in 2020, Trump was at Mar-a-Lago when he gave the final order to launch drone strikes that killed top Iranian general Qasem Soleimani. He briefly addressed the nation from the same covered room at Mar-a-Lago, but delivered more sweeping statements days later at the White House surrounded by top military officials.
Trump has been spending even more time at Mar-a-Lago this season. He has made 21 visits to the estate so far in his second term, seven more trips than at the same point in his first term, NBC News research shows.
Democrats in Congress have previously raised security concerns about Trump’s use of Mar-a-Lago for sensitive work and meetings with foreign leaders, and ProPublica reported in May 2017 that its Wi-Fi networks were vulnerable. In 2019, a Chinese woman was arrested after trying to enter a club with a thumb drive containing malicious software.
Security at Mar-a-Lago is handled by the US Secret Service in coordination with local partners, a White House official told NBC News. “The USSS and military partners ensure that the president can direct operations from anywhere in the world through state-of-the-art and fully secure communications systems,” the official said.
Aside from security concerns, some criticize the president’s unorthodox use of his Palm Beach mansion.
“The president should be in the White House in the event of any anticipated crisis, unless doing so is irregular and there is no indication that something is going to happen,” said John Bolton, who was White House national security adviser for part of Trump’s first term. “As Jack Kennedy said, ‘That’s where the seat of government lies.’ It is better to hold critical meetings in person. In this case, the B-Team was clearly in the sitting room,” he added, referring to Vance.
Another former Trump White House official from his first term said Trump was “king” in Palm Beach. “He goes there and has a meal and they all tell him what they are doing and give him all kinds of suggestions about what they should do,” the official added.
“He shouldn’t be down there. He should be in the White House. That’s his war room, if you will,” the official said.
White House spokesman Davis Ingle told NBC News: “The United States is fully equipped with the most powerful and efficient operational capabilities that allow President Trump to securely communicate and conduct official business from anywhere in the world at any time in the White House. Only the uneducated and inexperienced fail to understand that.”
The president’s affinity for sunny Palm Beach during the cooler months in Washington has established South Florida as prime territory for official White House business, GOP politics and MAGA’s social scene. One weekend in February, Deputy Chief of Staff Dan Scavino and Alex Brusewitz, a Trump ally, both held separate wedding festivities at the club with Cabinet officials and key advisers.
White House staffers and conservative activists hang around the 20-acre estate, where early memberships cost $1 million, but so do foreign dignitaries. The president has hosted four world leaders at his private club since December. Over the Christmas break, Trump held back-to-back meetings here with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky. In January, Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico said that “a meeting with Trump at his private residence gave the meeting a strong sense of informality and openness,” calling the format “a sign of great respect and trust.”
A White House official said Trump “regularly meets with foreign leaders around the world, whose meetings are not just held at the White House — as other presidents have done in the past.”
US Special Envoy Steve Wittkoff and Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and adviser, have brokered peace talks in the Sunshine State, Florida residents acting as unofficial diplomats for the president.
On Monday, Palm Beach officials announced the indefinite closure of roads around Mar-a-Lago amid rising tensions over US-Israeli strikes on Iran. In a statement to NBC News, Palm Beach Police Department spokesman Sgt. Michael Ogrodnick described the move as a “precautionary measure” to “keep our community and the president safe.”
Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., defended Trump’s use of an unofficial situation room at Mar-a-Lago. “Our intelligence people know how to set up a safe room anywhere in the world,” he said. “If some have to complain, count their blessings.”
Trump’s use of the alternative scenario room is unique. At other times, urgent matters sent the president back to the White House. President Joe Biden cut short a two-week vacation from his home in Wilmington, Delaware in 2021 to address the rapid drawdown of US troops from Afghanistan. Despite largely canceling his planned vacation, Biden still faced intense scrutiny for appearing to vacation during the crisis.
The list of highly sensitive operations green-lit by Mar-a-Lago guarantees that the private club will fall not just as a glitzy, top-dollar Palm Beach oasis in US history, but as a high-profile seat of presidential decision-making.
The president’s influence on Palm Beach was cemented earlier this year with the renaming of the 4-mile stretch of Southern Boulevard that runs from Palm Beach International Airport to Mar-a-Lago.
Now, club members and presidential staff arrive at the resort on “President Donald J. Trump Boulevard.”
