The New York Times recently conducted an interview with Anthony Senecal, the longtime butler of Donald Trump. I have to be honest. When I first read the article the immediate thought that jumped into my head was “Who still has a butler?” Of course if anyone did, it would be Donald Trump, wouldn’t it?
Trump seems to split his time between a number of residences, but the one he is most identified with is the Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. The Palm Beach mansion was built in 1927 by Marjorie Post, the grand-daughter of the Post Cereal empire, which shockingly is a thing.
She built the mansion to serve as her residence while she took part in the time-honored tradition of rich old ladies by being an eccentric shut-in.
Trump acquired the estate in 1985 for five millions dollars, by which point it had fallen into disrepair. After adding a huge number of rooms to it, including three bomb shelters (kind of ominous, right?), he reopened the house as a country club members can book for events while Trump isn’t staying in it. If you want to be a member you’ll need to drop an initiation fee that could buy you a house in Ohio. It starts at $200,000, and that’s not to mention the yearly fees.
Mr. Senecal paints an interesting picture of what daily life is like in the Trump house. For instance, despite having a salon in his house, Trump chooses to style his own hair. Kind of explains a lot, doesn’t it? According to Senecal, there are frequently celebrities who come to enjoy life there. While once it was Michael Jackson spending his honeymoon, these days he says Chris Christie drops by a lot. I kind of imagine him slinking around like a fatter version of Renfield from Dracula, slavishly waiting to do the twisted bidding of his master.
Meanwhile, Trump retreats to his private quarters where he wakes every day with a stack of newspapers even as his extensive library of first edition books sits gathering dust. After an hour or so he emerges in a tennis outfit with a ball cap, the color of which signifies his mood. White if he’s happy, red if he’s mad. That’s weird, right? It’s a weird thing to color coordinate what you’re wearing based on your mood. That’s not a thing normal people do, Donald.
Afterward, he takes a tour of the estate, where he will occasionally distribute $100 bills to the immigrant groundskeepers he keeps on staff. Much was made of Trump’s hiring practices at the Republican debate. This interview confirms that he does tend to hire immigrants over American workers. Interestingly, most are apparently from Ireland, Romania, and South Africa. My guess would be that’s because he doesn’t want to pay as much as he would to an American, but still would prefer to largely be surrounded by white people.
Trump also doesn’t seem to get along with his neighbors. He is already engaged in 3 lawsuits with the people of Palm Beach. One to circumvent an ordinance regarding how tall his flag pole can be, another regarding the size of his ballroom, and a third to redirect air traffic away from his house. According to Senecal, the sound of the planes flying overhead drives Trump crazy, and he has been fighting to get them redirected for years.
Apparently, life at the Trump estate is where he gets to pretend he’s already president. The article recounts how Senecal will shout “All rise,” as Trump walks into a room, and once hired a band to play hail to the chief as Trump was landing his plane. Senecal also compared the way Trump runs his house as “like a king in his castle.” It seems like an apt comparison since he even has a phony heraldic crest he had to sue the Scottish Government for the right to use hanging over the door. So if you want to see what kind of president Trump might be, this interview is probably a fairly valuable insight.
It’s tough to say what Trump would be like if he ever took office. But the way he runs his own home might be an indication of what he would do if given legal authority. So if you want to see what kind of president Trump might be, that interview is probably a fairly valuable insight.
