Sunday's meeting of the presidents of the United States and Ukraine will take place at Donald Trump's estate and private club, Mar-a-Lago. Since taking power, Trump has referred to it as his “winter White House” and has repeatedly welcomed state leaders there, despite security concerns.
The property, owned by Trump since 1985, is located in the South Florida resort of West Palm Beach. It owes its name – Spanish for “from sea to lake” – to its location between the Atlantic Ocean and the Lake Worth Lagoon. The villa, built in the Spanish colonial style, is almost 100 years old. It was built there in the 1920s by the then richest woman in America, Marjorie Merriweather Post, daughter of CW Post, the founder of General Foods, known for the production of breakfast cereals.
Although the villa was initially intended to serve as Post's winter residence, it was she who first thought of Mar-a-Lago as a potential winter residence for US presidents. For this purpose, the property was donated to the state-run National Park Service after her death in 1973. Due to maintenance costs, it did not meet this goal, and Congress returned the estate to the Post foundation in 1980. Five years later, it was bought by Donald Trump, then a millionaire playboy. He also forced the sale of the villa at a price lower than the requested price by purchasing a plot of land right next to Mar-a-Lago and threatening to build a house there that would block the view of the Atlantic Ocean.
After taking over the estate, Trump renovated it, maintaining its original style and building, among others: ballroom. In 1995, he transformed the estate into a private club with guest rooms and a spa, to which only invited guests have access. It still serves this function today: donor events are regularly held there. The nature of the place as a club and residence of the head of state was controversial from the beginning for security reasons.
In 2019, 33-year-old Chinese citizen Yujing Zhang was arrested for illegally entering the club with a number of electronic devices. In 2022, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported on the case of Ukrainian-born Russian-speaking fraudster Inna Yashchyshyn, who visited Mar-a-Lago for months — and even met with Trump — while posing as a member of the Rothschild family. As the FBI investigation showed, in unsecured rooms at Mar-a-Lago – including: in the ballroom or in the bathrooms – boxes with documents taken by Trump from the White House were stored. Many of them were classified as top secret.
During his first term, President Trump hosted world leaders there many times. It was there that his first meeting with the President of the People's Republic of China, Xi Jinping, took place in 2017. He also received Prime Minister of Japan Shinzo Abe and President of Brazil Jair Bolsonaro there.
Trump also received foreign dignitaries at Mar-a-Lago before taking power for the second time. As president-elect, he met there, among others: with the Prime Minister of Italy, Giorgia Meloni, and the Prime Minister of Hungary, Viktor Orban. A visit by the President of the Republic of Poland, Andrzej Duda, was also initially planned, although it never took place.
Since taking power for the second time, Trump has stopped hosting foreign leaders at Mar-a-Lago. In March, the US president met with Finnish president Alexander Stubb while playing golf at a nearby golf course in West Palm Beach, but the conversation took place without cameras or formal protocol. Volodymyr Zelensky will therefore be the first leader whom Trump officially receives at Mar-a-Lago as the 47th president of the United States. However, it will not be the last, because on Monday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will visit the villa.
From Washington Oskar Górzyński (PAP)
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