Membership at Mar-a-Lago has long been seen as a fast-track to meeting the club’s owner, former president Donald Trump. The cost for new members is about to rise significantly.
In an interview with Bloomberg Businessweek, Trump discussed various topics, including the cost of membership at his Palm Beach, Florida club.
Trump stated that when he opened Mar-a-Lago in 1994, members paid a $25,000 fee to join. The fee increased to $200,000 but was halved in 2012 following the Bernie Madoff scandal. In 2017, just after Trump’s inauguration, the fee was reinstated at $200,000 and has continued to rise since then.
Bernd Lembcke, the club’s longtime manager, mentioned that memberships now start at $700,000, which has more than tripled since early in Trump’s presidency. In October, this fee will increase by another $300,000.
“We are going up to $1 million per membership in October because we have four memberships to sell, so we are not desperate,” Lembcke said.
Annual dues at Mar-a-Lago are just shy of $20,000, with total memberships capped at 500.
Mar-a-Lago has often been referred to as the “Winter White House” during Trump’s presidency, providing an avenue for the wealthy and influential to connect with him.
Robert Weissman, president of the pro-transparency group Public Citizen, criticized the club as a pay-for-access venue to a president with little governmental knowledge.
Notably, when Trump was president, he halted the deportation of Chinese billionaire Guo Wengui after learning that Wengui was a Mar-a-Lago member. Wengui was recently convicted by a U.S. jury of a massive multiyear fraud.
Trump also assigned at least four Mar-a-Lago members to ambassador positions, such as Lana Marks, ambassador to South Africa, and Robin Bernstein, who served as ambassador to the Dominican Republic.
Incidents at the club have raised national security concerns. Notably, Trump held meetings with the late Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in view of other diners, with members photographing and overhearing discussions on national security.
Furthermore, at least two women have been arrested or accused of trespassing on the property. In 2019, Yujing Zhang from Shanghai was arrested with four cellphones, a laptop, a thumb drive, and an external hard drive.