Mar-a-Lago resort: Trump's future winter White House

Palm Beach

WHEN President-elect Donald Trump rang in the new year, he did it in Gatsby-like opulence, joined by actor Sylvester Stallone, the gossip page fixture Fabio and a crowd of wealthy developers revelling under the swaying palm trees at Mr Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach.

President George W Bush had his ranch in Crawford, Texas. His father had a compound in Kennebunkport, Maine. President Barack Obama has taken frequent vacations in Hawaii, staying at a private home.

But Mr Trump's 118-room private club in Florida, where he has spent the past two weeks away from his home in New York City, is likely to eclipse them all as the 45th president's winter White House. And that was always the intention of Marjorie Meriweather Post, the cereal heiress and the property's original owner, who left Mar-a-Lago to the federal government when she died in 1973, hoping…