Want to get a front row seat to international diplomacy? All you need is $200,000 and an application to join President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach.
Just as news was breaking Sunday night that North Korea had fired a ballistic missile in the direction of Japan—and the dining room staff at the club had served the salad course—Trump’s crisis staff jumped into action. It brought a national security war room to the President and his guest, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, right in Mar-a-Lago’s terrace dining room.
Fellow diners—mostly longtime members of the club get ready to eat their wedge with blue cheese dressing and bacon—were unwittingly drawn into the international drama. Aides pushed briefing papers in front of the two world leaders (lit with cell phones because the ballroom was candlelight only), and Trump and Abe took phone calls.
Nearby diners were reportedly in earshot of the highly classified discussion about North Korea. The Mar-a-Lago member who took the photos, actor Richard DeAgazio, was able to determine that Trump was on the phone with the White House. He insisted to the Washington Post that he heard nothing important.
“There wasn’t any panicked look. Most of the people [on the terrace] didn’t even realize what was happening,” DeAgazio said. “I thought he handled it very calmly, and very presidentially.”
“You can’t hear…I mean, I can barely hear what’s going on at my table.”
Servers were still passing plates and collecting dishes at Trump and Abe’s table as aides rushed around, and Mar-a-Lago members, who do not have security clearances, were coming and going through the dining area and out to the ballroom’s terrace, which overlooks Palm Beach’s intercoastal waterway.
Trump and Abe’s group of aides and advisors eventually disbanded after about ten minutes and reconvened in an empty ballroom, where they later gave a short press conference. After the conference, Trump dropped by a wedding party, and then joined his wife Melania back on the terrace to mingle with guests.
Trump recently branded Mar-a-Lago the “Winter White House” and judging by DeAgazio’s Facebook (much of which is now deleted), Trump’s entire staff was on hand Sunday night, including senior adviser Steve Bannon. It’s clear the Trump Administration was prepared in case something like the North Korea crisis happened.
The “open-air situation room,” as some media are calling it, is right in line with Trump’s reality television presidency, where even private negotiations are now played out in front of a live studio audience. But while conducting business on Twitter is on-brand for Trump, discussing complex international crises in the Mar-a-Lago dining room raises questions of safety, security and confidentiality.
Mar-a-Lago does not require background checks for members, only a yearly membership fee. The club is probably protected well by Secret Service, but it could be hard to ensure that no members or guests aren’t harboring a nefarious purpose in visiting the club. And worse still, it’s clear that at least some members (and probably a large number of staff members) were within earshot of classified security briefings.
For a campaign that focused intently on Hillary Clinton’s mishandling of classified information, the Trump team seems unconcerned that their own procedures may expose them to major security breaches. With a White House increasingly at odds with the intelligence community, and already suffering from a river of internal leaks, it’s not clear Trump can afford such a lack of care.