TRUMP AS PRESIDENT/TRUMP BUSINESS: “In 1993, Donald Trump took on the political establishment of Palm Beach, Florida, and took from that experience a blueprint for the future. This formative political campaign started with a business proposition. The town council of Palm Beach had recently turned down Trump’s plan to build eight homes that he planned to sell on his 17-acre Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach. Trump, who had bought the estate from cereal heiress Marjorie Merriweather Post in 1985, had looked at the development plan as one way out of his infamous early 1990s financial troubles, which included four business bankruptcies and millions of dollars lost for his investors. But the town council disliked the flamboyant New York businessman so much that its members had voted against the subdivision plan. They left Trump with the same problem: a financial mess and a historic Palm Beach estate with endless potential and an enormous mortgage but a community of establishment elites standing in the way of turning it into something profitable. Trump turned to Paul Rampell, a lawyer who lived in Palm Beach and came recommended by a banker with whom Trump had done business.”
–Laurence Leaner, “How Mar-a-Lago Taught Trump to Play Politics,” Politico, February 1, 2019